Sex in the City Troy Vienna London orfrom

Sex in the City: Troy, Vienna, London -or‘from the casque to the cushion’ the comic turn? Sexual intercourse began In nineteen sixty-three (Which was rather late for me) – Between the end of the Chatterley ban And the Beatles’ first LP. Up till then there’d only been A sort of bargaining, A wrangle for a ring, A shame that started at sixteen And spread to everything. (from Philip Larkin, ‘Annus Mirabilis’)

For his [honour], it stuck upon him as the sun In the grey vault of heaven, and by his light Did all the chivalry of England move To do brave acts. He was indeed the glass Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves. ( Kate on Hotspur, 2 Henry IV, 2. 3. 18 -22) My dear, dear lord, The purest treasure mortal times afford Is spotless reputation. Take that away Men are but gilded loam or painted clay… Mine honour is my life. Both grow in one. Take honour from me, and my life is done. (Mowbray in Richard II, 1. 1. 176 -183) Fare well the plumed troops and the big wars That makes ambition virtue! … the neighing steed and the shrill trump, The spirit-stirring drum, th’ear-piercing fife, The royal banner, and all quality, Pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war! Othello’s occupation’s gone. (Othello, 3. 3. 354 -59)

‘It is held That valour is the chiefest virtue, and Most dignifies the haver. ’ (Cominius in Coriolanus, 2. 2. 79 -81) For men, then, ‘valour’ = ‘honour’ = active ‘virtue’ = state of DOING What is ‘virtue’ for women? What constitutes ‘virtue’? What constitutes female ‘honour’? Answer: a state of BEING. Honour = chastity And the loss of female honour = ? Notice: in Shakespeare, men who betray men are called traitors. Women who betray men – Emilia, for instance, betraying Iago (‘I charge you, get you home’; ‘Be wise and get you home’: ‘Perchance, Iago, I will ne’ er go home’) by telling Desdemona’s truth – are called whores (‘Villanous whore!’). Men’s betrayal is politicised. Women’s betrayal is sexualised, which is to say, that women’s sexuality is politics. And to kill a woman for adultery or ‘folly’ is to punish her failure of honour. The killing is an ‘honour’ killing, and the killer an ‘honourable murderer’ (or so Othello frames himself at the end).

An early modern paradox: Men desire women, need women, and depend on women, not least to ensure dynastic succession and legitimate inheritance. But men are taught to mistrust women, to suspect them. See Iago on women: ‘she must have change, she must’; ‘I know our country disposition well. In Venice …’ The ‘disposition’ of women: changeable, inconstant, carnal, insatiable, irrational, petty, deceivers, wayward, seemers. ‘She did deceive her father marrying you / And when she seemed to shake and fear your looks, / She loved them most … / She that so young could give out such a seeming …’ When women say ‘no’, they mean ‘yes’. Cf. Ben Jonson’s Epicoene where rape is ‘an acceptable violence’ Who says so? Men. Are domestic relationships always headed for crisis?

Questions: How do men value female honour? How do men construct the female? How do men manipulate that construction to emasculate other men and literally un-do them? Is sex (in the city) always (culturally constructed) an act ‘between men’? Is chastity an absolute value, equivalent to male honour, the ‘purest treasure mortal times afford’, so that ‘[her] honour is [her] life’? See Othello and Much Ado (‘Yet she must die’; ‘Give not this rotten orange to your friend’). Or is chastity (like Falstaff’s honour) something altogether less absolute, less prized, more negotiable, ‘commercial’, a bargaining point between men? See Measure, Troilus and Cheapside.

Absolutist male hysteria? Troilus: Was Cressid here? … She was not sure… think this not Cressid… This she? No, this is Diomed’s Cressida. If beauty have a soul, this is not she; If souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimonies… This is not she…This is and is not Cressid…. * * * Troilus & Cressida (5. 2. 131 passim) Nestor: A woman of quick sense. Ulysses: Fie, fie upon her! There’s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out At every joint and motive of her body. O, these encounterers, so glib of tongue, That give accosting welcome ere it comes And wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts To every ticklish reader! Set them down For sluttish spoils of opportunity And daughters of the game. Troilus & Cressida (4. 5. 55 -64) Relativist male phlegmatism? Lavatch: He that ears my land spares my team, and gives me leave to in the crop. If I be his cuckold, he’s my drudge. He that comforts my wife is the cherisher of my flesh and blood; he that loves my flesh and blood is my friend; ergo, he that kisses my wife is my friend. If men could be contented to be what they are, there were no fear in marriage. All’s Well that Ends Well, 1. 3. 39 -45)

Shakespeare Writing The City Observation 1: Wherever Shakespeare takes us – Rome, Venice, Elsinore – he’s always writing about home and the present. Consider this view of pre-imperial Rome that ‘looks’ like the London of Essex’s martial progress, en route to Ireland 1599 that Shakespeare cites at the end of Henry V: ‘All tongues speak of him, and the bleared sights / Are spectacled to see him. Your pratling nurse / Into a rapture lets her baby cry / While she chats him. The kitchen malkin pins / Her richest lockram ’bout her reechy neck / Clambering the walls to eye him. Stalls, bulks, windows / Are smothered up, leads filled and ridges housed / With variable complexions, all agreeing / In earnestness to see him …

Observation 2. In comedy, the city location produces generic affect. See for contrast the ‘green world’ ‘festive’ comedies and the ‘sea’ comedies, which deal in romantic love and which resolve to ‘wonder’ and end in ‘miracle’. City comedies talk about sex, not love. They end problematically. The ‘miracles’ feel like the work of charlatans and mountebanks. The controversies that polarise urban life remain unresolved. There’s ending without closure -leaving a sour taste in the mouth? City as containing antithetical possibilities: splendid human achievement, dismal human failure. City problems: enclosure; over-crowding; sanitation; law and order; disease; noise; pollution; commerce. A place always already ‘fallen’, ‘corrupt’? A predatory trap? Or the highest invention of ‘artful’ mankind improving ‘nature’? (See Gail Kern Paster, Shakespeare

Sex and the City: Troilus and Cressida In Troy there lies the scene. From isles of Greece The princes orgulous … Put forth toward Phrygia, and their vow is made To ransack Troy, within whose strong immures The ravished Helen, Menelaus’s queen With wanton Paris sleeps. and that’s the quarrel … Priam’s six-gated city – Dardan and Timbria, Helias, Chetas, Troien, And Antenorides … Spar up the sons of Troy. Prologue

War, Sex, and the City: A Sex War? Cf. ‘desiring imaginaries’, ‘legitimating fictions’ A war conducted on ‘a theme of honour and renown’? A war ‘for a placket’ where ‘all the argument is a whore and cuckold’? ‘Lechery, lechery, still wars and lechery’; nothing else holds fashion. ’ A whore war? ‘The enterprise is sick. ’ (Narrative curves: over-arching = Paris/Helen; interior curves = Troilus/Cressida, Hector/Achilles) A city besieged … A play that Leaps o’er the vaunt and firstlings of those broils Beginning in the middle … (Prologue) A time of ‘dull and long continued truce’ (1. 3. 261 -212) when warriors, ‘rusty grown’, exercise in desultory skirmishes or challenge each other to mock combats as displacement activity that mocks the main event …

Troy and the flesh trade … where men trade in flesh: ‘Let Helen go. ’ ‘She is Not worth what she doth cost / The holding’ (2. 2. 17; 50 -1) Troilus: there ‘Tell me Apollo … / What Cressid is, what Pandar, and what we? / Her bed is India; she lies, a pearl. /…Ourself the merchant, and …Pandar …our convoy and our bark’ (1. 1. 95 -100)’ Troilus: turned ‘Why she [Helen] is a pearl / Whose price hath launched above a thousand ships/ And crowned kings to merchants’ (2. 2. 81 -3). Achilles: ‘Now, Hector, I have fed mine eyes on thee; /I have with exact view perused thee, Hector, / And quoted joint by joint… / As I would buy thee …’ (4. 5. 231 passim). A play built on -- argument/ council debate (1. 3, 2. 2): order v. emulation; worth v. cost; and interruption -- warped wooing/sour love scenes (Troilus/Pandarus; Paris/Helen; Troilus/Pandarus/Cressida; Hector/Achilles; Achilles/Patroclus/ Polyxena; even Ajax/Thersites) -- spectacular bodies: ‘parade’ scenes ‘passing over the stage’ scenes ‘Hark they are coming from the field…Who’s that? ’ (1. 2) ‘Where is Achilles? ‘Within his tent’ (2. 3) ‘Achilles stands i’th’entrance to his tent … our general, pass strangely by him

Reading Bodies 1: Manliness That’s Hector, that, look you, that! There’s a fellow! Go thy way, Hector! There’s a brave man, niece. O brave Hector! Look how he looks! There’s a countenance! Is’t not a brave man? Is ’not? It does a man’s heart good. Look you what hacks are on his helmet, look you yonder! (1. 2. 191 -197). Hector: Why, then will I no more. / Thou art, great lord, my father’s sister’s son, / A cousingerman to great Priam’s seed. /The obligation of our blood forbids /A gory emulation twixt us twain. / Were thy commixtion Greek and Trojan so / That thou couldst say, ‘This hand is Grecian all, / And this is Trojan; the sinews of this leg / All Greek, and this all Troy … by Jove multipotent, /Thou should’st not bear from me a Greekish member / Wherein my sword had not impressure made / Of our rank feud. But… (4. 5. 120– 133). Achilles: Now, Hector, I have fed mine eyes on thee: / I have with exact view perused thee, Hector, / And quoted joint by joint. Hector: Is this Achilles? Achilles: I am Achilles. Hector: Stand fair, I pray thee. Let me look on thee. Achilles: Behold thy fill. Hector: Nay, I have done already. Achilles: Thou art too brief. I will the second time, / As I would buy thee, view thee limb by limb. Hector: O, like a book of sport thou’t read me o’er; /But there’s more in my than thou understand’st. / Why doest thou so oppress me with thine eye? Achilles: Tell me, you heavens, in which part of his body / Shall I destroy him? Whethere, or there? / That I may give the local wound a name / And make distinct the very breach whereout / Hector’s great spirit flew. Answer me heavens!. Hector: It would discredit the blest gods, proud man, / To answer such a question. Stand again … Henceforth guard thee well/ For I’ll not kill thee there nor there But … everywhere … Ajax: Do not chafe thee cousin. And you, Achilles … You may have every day enough of Hector if you have stomach. The general state, I fear, / Can scarce entreat you to be odd with him. Hector: I pray you, let us see you in the field. / We have had pelting wars since you refused the Grecians’ cause. Achilles: Dost thou entreat me, Hector? /

Ulysses: The great Achilles, whom opinion crowns The sinew and the forehand of our host, Having his ear full of his airy fame, Grows dainty of his worth and in his tent Lies mocking our designs. With him Patroclus, Upon a lazy bed, the livelong day Breaks scurril jests, And with ridiculous and awkward action – Which, slanderer, he imitation calls – He pageants us. Sometimes, great Agamemnon, Thy topless deputation he puts on, And, like a strutting player…He acts thy greatness… The large Achilles, on his pressed bed lolling, … Cries ‘Excellent! Tis Agamemnon just. Now play me Nestor…’ (1. 3. 142 - 165) Achilles: What, am I poor of late? … They passed by me As misers do by beggars. What, are my deeds forgot? Ulysses: Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion… … Perseverance, dear my lord, Keeps honour bright; to have done is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mock’ry (3. 3. 74, 143 -154).

Achilles: I’ll heat his blood with Greekish wine tonight Which with my scimitar I’ll cool tomorrow (5. 1. 1 -2). My sweet Patroclus, I am thwarted quite / From my great purpose in tomorrow’s battle. / Here is a letter from Queen Hecuba / A token from her daughter, my fair love, / Both taxing me and gaging me to keep / An oath that I have sworn. I will not break it. / Fall, Greeks; fail, fame; honour; or go or stay; / My major vow lies here; this I’ll obey (5. 1. 36 -44)

Anti-Bodies?

There’s Ulysses and old Nestor – whose wit was mouldy ere your grandsires had nails on their toes – yoke you [Achilles and Ajax] like draught oxen and make you plough up the war

With too much blood and too little brain, these two may run mad; but if with too much brain and too little blood they do, I’ll be a curer of madmen. Here’s Agamemnon, an honest fellow enough, and one that loves quails, but he has not so much brain as ear-wax. And the goodly transformation of Jupiter there, his brother, the bull – the primitive statue and oblique memorial of cuckolds, a thrifty shoeinghorn on a chain, hanging at his brother’s leg, to what form but that he is should wit larded with malice and malice farced with wit turn him to? To an ass were nothing; he is both ass and ox. To an ox were nothing; he is both ox and ass. To be a dog; a mule; a cat; a fitchew; a toad; a lizard; an owl; a puttock; or a herring without a roe, I would not care; but to be Menelaus! I would conspire against destiny!. . That same Diomed’s a false hearted rogue, a most unjust knave…The sun

You see him there, do you? . . . Nay, look upon him…Nay, but regard him well…But yet you look not well upon him; for, whosomever you take him to be, he is Ajax…I say, this Ajax … has not so much wit as will stop the eye of Helen’s needle for whom he comes to fight (2. 1. 55 -79).

Reading Bodies 2: The Woman’s Part ‘You are such another woman! One knows not at what ward you lie’ (Pandarus, 1. 2. 250) ‘Upon my back to defend my belly, upon my wit to defend my wiles, upon my secrecy to defend mine honest …’ (Cressida, 1. 2. 251 -2. By that same token, you are a bawd. Words, vows, gifts, tears and love’s full sacrifice He offers in another’s enterprise; But more in Troilus thousandfold I see Than in the glass of Pandar’s praise may be. Yet hold I off. Women are angels, wooing; Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing. That she beloved know naught that knows not this: Men prize thing ungained more than it is. That she was never yet that ever knew Love got so sweet as when desire did sue. Therefore this maxim out of love I teach: “Achievement is command; ungained, beseech”. Then, though my heart’s contents firm love doth bear, Nothing of that shall from mine eyes appear. 1. 2. 272 -286

‘He that will have a cake out of the wheat must tarry the grinding’ (Pandarus, 1. 1. 15) ‘Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice; …her hand, /In whose comparison all whites are ink’ (Troilus, 1. 1. 51 -53) ‘Tell me, Apollo for thy Daphne’s love, What Cressid is … ? / Her bed is India; there she lies, a pearl’ (1. 1. 94 -96) ‘I am giddy; expectation whirls me round. Th’imaginary relish is so sweet That it enchants my sense. What will it be, When that the wat’ry palates taste indeed Love’s thrice-repurèd nectar? Death, I fear me, Swooning destruction or some joy too fine, Too subtle-potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness For the capacity of my ruder powers. Calchas: You have a Trojan prisoner called Antenor, Yesterday took. Troy holds him very dear… I fear it much. And I do fear besides Let him be sent, great princes, /And he shall buy my That I shall lose distinction in my joys, daughter’, ‘my Cressid in right great exchange’ As doth a battle, when they charge on

‘Hard to seem won; but I was won, my lord, With the first glance that ever – pardon me; If I confess much, you will play the tyrant’ (3. 2. 113 -15). ‘She’s making her ready; she’ll come straight…Come, come, what need you blush? Shame’s a baby…What, are you gone again? … an you draw backward, we’ll put you i’th thills’ (3. 2. 28 passim). Pandarus: ‘How now, how now: how go maidenheads? Here, you maid! Where’s my Cousin Cressid? ’ (4. 2. 24) Troilus: In all Cupid’s pageant there is presented no monster. Cressida: Nor nothing monstrous neither? Troilus: Nothing but our undertakings, when we vow to weep seas, live in fire, eat rocks, tame tigers, thinking it harder for our mistress to devise imposition enough than for us to undergo any difficulty imposed. This is the monstruosity in love, lady, that the will is infinite and the execution confined; that the desire is boundless and the act a slave to limit’ (3. 2. 71 -86)

Cressida: Ay, come…Do come…I prithee, come. Troilus, farewell! One eye yet looks on thee, But with my heart the other eye doth see. Ah, poor our sex! This fault in us I find: The error of our eye directs our mind. What error leads must err. O, then conclude: Minds swayed by eyes are full of turpitude. Thersites: A proof of strength she could not publish more Unless she said, ‘My mind is now turned whore’ Agamemnon: Is not yond … Calchas’s daughter? Nestor: Our general doth salute you with a kiss. Ulysses: …’Twere better she were kissed in general … May I, sweet lady, beg a kiss of you? Cressida: You may. Ulysses: I do desire it. Cressida: Why, beg too. Ulysses: Why then, for Venus’ sake, give me a kiss, When Helen is a maid again, and his – Cressida: I am your debtor; claim it when tis due. Ulysses: Never’s my day, and then a kiss of you. Diomedes: Lady, a word. I’ll bring you to your father. Nestor: A woman of quick sense. Ulysses: Fie, fie upon her! There’s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out At every joint and motive of her body. O, these encounterers, so glib of tongue, That give accosting welcome ere it comes, And wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts To every ticklish reader! Set them down

‘Name her not: she’s a deadly theme’ (Menelaus, 4. 5. 183). ‘She is a pearl / Whose price hath launched above a thousand ships / And turned crowned kings to merchants’ (Troilus, 2. 2) ‘Brother, she is not worth what she doth cost / The holding’ (Hector, 2. 2) ‘What’s aught by as ’tis valued? ’ ‘But value dwells not in particular will’ (Troilus/Hector, 2. 2 ‘Yet, ne’ertheless, My sprightly brethren, I propend to you/ In resolution to keep Helen still’ ‘[She is] a spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds Whose present courage may beat down our foes

Helen: ubiquitous, evasive, elusive Helen in 3. 1 Her only scene…

Hector: Paris: most, Let Helen go. Since the first sword was drawn about this question. Every tithe soul ’mongst many thousand dismes Hath been as dear as Helen – I mean, of ours. If we have lost so many tenths of ours To guard a thing not ours, nor worth to us (Had it our name) the value of one ten, What merit’s in that reason which denies The yielding of her up? (2. 2. 18 -24) ***** And tell me, noble Diomed…Who in your thoughts, merits fair Helen Myself or Menelaus? Diomedes: Both alike. He merits well to have her that doth seek her, Not making any scruple of her soilure, With such a hell of pain and world of charge; And you as well to keep her that defend her, Not palating the taste of her dishonour, With such a costly loss of wealth and friends. He, like a puling cuckold, would drink up The lees and dregs of a flat ’tamed piece; You, like a lecher, out of whorish loins Are pleased to breed out your inheritors.

Both merits poised, each weighs nor less nor more, But he, as he, which heavier for a whore. Paris: You are bitter to your countrywoman. Diomedes: She’s bitter to her country. Hear me, Paris: For every false drop in her bawdy veins A Grecian’s life hath sunk; for every scruple Of her contaminated carrion weight A Trojan hath been slain. Since she could speak, She hath not given so many good words breath As for her Greeks and Trojans suffered death. (4. 1. 53 -76)

Of sleeves, and gloves and the end of the play…A letter… Golden armour…A treacherous death…Farewells… Troilus: Hence broker-lackey! Ignomy and shame Pursue thy life, and live aye with thy name. Pandarus: A goodly medicine for my aching bones! O world, word! Thus is the poor agent despised. O traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set a-work and how ill requited! Why should our endeavour be so desired and the performance so loathed? What verse for it? What instance? Let me see: … Good traders in the flesh, set this is your painted cloths: As many as be here of Panders’ hall, Your eyes, half out, weep out at Pandar’s fall; Or if you cannot weep, yet give some groans, Though not for me, yet for your arching bones. Brethren and sisters of the hold-door trade, Some two months hence my will shall here be made. It should be now, but that my fear is this: Some galled goose of Winchester would hiss. Till then I’ll sweat and seek about for eases, And at that time bequeath you my diseases. (5. 11. 33 -56)