Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/105

 Several scholars dissatisfied with this reputed motive of the siege, and of Homer's Iliad, take refuge in a theory of light-worship, and of a conflict between the Orient and the Occident, the Dawn and the Dark, such as no doubt underlies many of the ancient myths whose names bear allusion to such phenomena. These commentators torture the names and incidents of the Iliad to clear it of the stigma of having no motive-power beyond the stealing of a light wife, and a re-delivery of her to a complacent husband who makes no inquiries. Ten years of siege and battle, of domestic broil and murder, of Odyssean adventures by sea and land, that Helen may be transferred, warm from the arms of Priam, back to the condoning embrace of Menelaus! Truly, when the ugly thing stands thus stripped of its Homeric mantle, we hurry to demand that it shall be decently clothed in travesty.

After the Prologue announces that expectation is "tickling skittish spirits on one and other side," the scene soon opens with the indecent Pandarus trifling with the famous epic names, as he taps them lightly with his battledore to keep up his little game, which is to get Troilus thoroughly involved with Cressida: "An her hair were not somewhat darker than Helen's (well, go to), there were no more comparison between the women;" then the puppy says, "I will not dispraise your sister Cassandra's wit." Think of the jaunty go-between thus estimating the terrible prophetess of the Agamemnon, while he is only whetting Troilus's passion for Cressida, and devising means to bring them together.