The Trojan Women - Hecuba lines

Scene 1 Poseidon: …..Whatever you dream, even the most horrifying dream Cannot be worse than what you will awake to Here is the end of meaning. Here is loss beyond comprehension.

(asleep) In a moment, a stone will be thrown at the sleeping crows. They will flap upwards, shocked from their home on the ground. They will circle upon each other, screaming, twisting the air like rope. At the center of this coil of wings, I am the blackest crow, the mother of all the confused and lost. It will be for me to make order from this chaos. Our flight will be eternal, for sustenance we will eat the wind. Stay the hand that throws the stone. One more moment. Just one more moment let us weigh the soft, ordinary dirt with our accustomed bodies.

Scene 2 Helen: I too loved Troy. Like you, soon I will stand at the back of a ship…….Such a city. The city i came to destroy.

(wakes) My Troy! Cross roads and shade trees! Market paces and schools! Graves of my ancestors! Wake, my women! Today is our death! Lift up your heads. Rise and be slaves.

Women (London then London + Meagen ): I keep thinking i’ll wake up from it. And then we wake to this.

Day is braking and with it, our lives. Today the fleet will leave and we will go with it to Greece. Today we leave our home and each other. We scatter, each alone to our fates. We will be strangers in a foreign land forever after.

Scene 3 Women(s): What is that fire? Look, a blaze! What a terrible brightness comes here? Is the city on fire?

No, it’s just a girl, but her mind is aflame.

Cassandra: Burn high! Burn strong! Burn bright! Burn long!

Oh, look on her, and let her break your heart. It is my mad daughter. My beautiful Cassandra.

Cassandra: ……That wife. Home to her! With mad me in the crook of his arm! Happy, happy day! Raise the torch high!

Oh, my poor child. You don’t know what you’re saying. You are still in the power of Apollo who loved you and cursed you at once.

Cassandra: Happy day! Happy Trojans!

You can’t mean what you’re saying.

Cassandra:….Are you there, my father? Are you there, my brothers? I’m coming. I’m coming. Where is the bridegroom? My stamping general? Here is the bride! Here is the bride!

Oh, Apollo! She was your favorite. Is this your ecstasy? Is this your blessing? Raving and laughing as she goes to her death? What can it mean to be a favorite of such a god? Have all the gods gone mad? What kind of world is this? Women, help me. Sing

Women (ppl in order): Our lovers Our friends Our children

(Scene 4.5, Helen enters) Was it only yesterday you were still my subject? Only yesterday when you still had to watch me from your place at the long table and wait until I raised my glass before you could begin to drink? How long ago it seems. And how like you, coward that you are, to wait until we are reduced to chattel, slaves at auction, before you dare to walk among us.

Helen: ….When you’ve endured it as long as I have, years and years, you’ll learn to stand up to it without so much self-pity. And then you’ll know what I have had to bear.

What have you ever borne besides a lovers weight?

Helen: The contempt of the world…….;when servants, children and strangers on the street spit at you and call you a whore, then, then, oh, I hope you think of me.

You actually expect sympathy from us? You, who never drew a breath that didn’t cause an innocent person pain?

Helen: I gave up on sympathy long ago…..I’ve never known the cool shadow of privacy, never known anything like ordinary kindness.

And you accuse me of self pity. What can you pretty vanities mean here? Look at the cost of your little drama and weigh your words. We may be slaves, but we still have the freedom to take our justice as we find it. What can keep us from having our revenge now that your are finally helpless against our hatred and without protection?

Helen: When have I ever had protection? This is so familiar. And hatred? it’s all I’ve ever known?

You had your choice

Helen: And you think I would chose this?………behind every man who took me stood a goddess who steadied his hips and whispered in his ear.

The shame of your actions can’t be blamed on a god. You saw your chances, you sniffed the air and you went where the pillows were the softest, where the wine was sweetest. What has it cost you? Nothing.

Helen: I’ve lost everything.

What have you lost? What have you ever valued beyond your own comfort? Your country? You abandoned them to wretched turmoil only to drag them behind you in your wake to us. Troy? You “love” Troy, perhaps? Fools that we were, we opened our shining gates to you only to let you seed your infection of woe in our perfect city.

Helen: I went where I was taken.

When the war was feeding at our city and our husbands, sons, and brothers were dying, the air shaking with the keening of women bereft, still you walked the battlements to flash your hateful beacon of beauty before the sea of troops and make them writhe and toss into a furry at the sight of you.

Helen: I was the cause. My place was there. It was my duty to bear it in public.

I watched you. Not a flicker of remorse crossed that face of yours as the massacre raged beneath you. No screams of pain ever moved you. All our wrack and ruin reflected in you unearthly open eyes. Impassive as a bird of prey you looked down upon the awful doings you had brought into the world and calmly watched the balance of the scales dip and rise with every death. Which side was winning was all you ever cared about?

Helen: I alone belonged to both sides of the battle……….I was unique in that. I could imagine no victory.

No victory? Nothing but victory? Either way you won. Look at you. You came to us unharmed, at the height of your power and beauty, and now you will be taken home intact.

Helen: Of course. I am a piece of property. Something to be stolen, hidden, rescued or restored. A statue. A symbol. Nothing more.

I cannot even kill you for the pleasure of justice. That is for your husband.

Helen: You think he’ll kill me?………..It is what legend demands. What it has always demanded. You know that.

I have wasted all of bitterness.

Helen: It would seem. I did nothing to you.

If this is the price of beauty, let beauty perish with everything else. Take her and defile her.

Helen (being dragged away): What I have was given to me by the gods…………Shave my shining hair to stubble. I will endure.

(Helen is gone) What shall become of me? Old bee without a sting. I, who was the mother of a pride of warriors. Who walked my palace floors upon golden sandals amidst the bobbing of plumed fans. Shall i watched at a master’s door or sit the night watch for his coughing child? Might I hold a plate of figs for an idle Greek, standing like a statue as the night wears on, listening to the drunken talk spiral into babble as the wine takes hold? Wind a prating girl’s ringlet around my bony finger to curl her hair? Crawl at my mistress’ feet to hem her gown? Shall I turn the spinning wheel or scramble down the dark slope before dawn to carry water from the well? Shall I walk the dung pile of a back yard, tossing cracked corn to skittering chickens or sling soapy water across another’s floor? What won’t be asked of me? Curled with the dogs on dirty straw in my corner of the yard, I will hug my rags around me at night and think of the life I had, the city I lost. And perhaps someday, if I am lucky, I will be \[past weeping for it. And the faces of my dead will mottle and blur until they become indistinct, like stones seen at the bottom of a rushing river bed.

Helen: So you think you’re free of me now?……………………..The eating flame of beauty. She happened to the world. It had nothing to do with me.

Take her to her husband. Let him see her what she is. We are done with her. Let him take her. And kill her. We shall not taint our sacred soil with her blood.

Helen: Whatever you dream, you will always be dreaming of her………………..The shining beauty of her will flood you again. Try to forget me. You will fail. (women begin to drag her out)

Give her back to her husband. His plucked chicken. His stranger. Let him take his beauty home. Andromache!

Scene 5 Andromache: Mother! My queen!

My brave son’s wife! Where are you going? What do you take with you?

Andromache: I go to the Greeks. I take all I have. My son. Was I a good wife?

He loved you deeply. He called you his shield. There never was a better wife.

Andromache: And that is to be the nature of my punishment………………Perhaps one can only hate man so much. No matter who he is. Perhaps there will be some light for me in this life, not just the watery dim light of duty and memory. Perhaps I will forget.

You must never forget. You were blessed above all women. You must never cease mourning. He was without peer. No one can ever replace him.

Andromache: He’s gone! He’s gone! He left me here in this agony and shame. I envy him! He feels no pain, he cannot be disgraced. He is free. How am I to live?

You will live in gratitude and service to his memory.

Andromache: Without joy?

Without joy.

Andromache: Without hope?

Without hope.

Andromache: The dead ask too much of us…………It is only my body that can be owned. My mind, my spirit belongs to me.

You who were so blessed in that marriage .

Andromache: I was blessed before I ever saw him……………..I will find a way. Oh, Hector, I loved you!

You were a good wife and sweetness in his life. And you have given me my only grandchild. Be careful and raise him well in his new home. Teach him to remember. Tell him about his father. Murmur stories of us quietly into his ear when he sleeps so he will dream of his fathers city, shining again, high on its parapets. And let him come back to the hollow shell of this place and raise it again, long after all of us are dead. Let him raise his father’s city from the ashes and neglect of history. Let him marry well and have many children and let these walls echo with Trojan laughter once again. Will you do that? For me? For your father? Then we will live again.

Scene 6 Talthybius: Do note hate me

You are only Greek. Give me more reason.

Talthybius: I have come for the child.

Which child?

Talthybius: That he must die

How?

Talthybius: He must be hurled form the battlements of Troy. The top of the city walls. You must reason with her. It will only be worse if she resists.

You talk to her.

Talthybius: Lady. Please. Let it happen. No one can help you………………………He will not understand. And it will be quick. A moment in the blinding air and then it will be over. Lady. Give over.

Let her speak top him. Let her see him alone, for the last time.

Women (Meagan): They still tell the stories. About the blessed city. That when gods walked the earth, they walked her in Troy.

I told you that story. I was raised on that story.

Women: No city on earth as splendid as ours………..We are blessed. Troy is blessed. That’s what I always thought. That’s what I was told.

That’s what I was told. Oh, Gods! I don’t want to live through the moments that are coming. I don’t want to feel the suffering that is on it’s way. Why do I still call on you? I say your names still and feel protected. Just a childish habit, But still I call for you.

Talthybius: I washed the blood off in the river that still flows through the city………I will go dig the grave and then we must go. (he leaves)

Scene 8: Such a little child still. So small. And to think that I had planned your wedding already. Saw it all so clearly. The flowers and shouts. Because you would’ve been king. And when you died. late in life, your family and people around you, you would lie in state, mourned by half the world. Find something to cover him.

Women all at once: Here. I found something. There’s enough to wrap him in. This will do.

Not that it matters to him. His head is broken as an egg. Oh, dark butcher Death. You closed your eyes and swung wild. I have seen the end of all my children. Oh, my dear women. Troy was not meant to last, all that we have loved vanished from the quickening air.

Women: The dead are safe in their nothingness………..We will track your ashes throughout the world, and when they ask us where we came from we will say “nowhere.” Nowhere.

Children of this city. Now we are motherless.

Talthybius: To the ships. It is over.

You Trojan soil. You that I was laid upon as a newborn baby. You that nursed my mother and her mother’s mother. You that nursed all my children. Hear me! I call now to the dead. I beat the ground with my hands. Listen! Listen!

Women: Listen! Listen! I call to my dead. I call to my love. I call to my husband. My children. My friends!

Troy! Troy! Troy!

Women: Troy! Troy! Troy!

We will remember you!

Women: We will remember you!

We will remember you!

Women: We will remember you! What was that? What was that? Did you hear? I heard the city fall. She is gone. She is gone. She is gone.

I dreamed there was a city. Spires glinting in the sun. Stones cool to the touch, even on the hottest draw. A city of such people, such faces, such hands, vivid language, with stories, with plans. I dreamed there was a city. My home. And the sky arched blue above it as if to hold it in its gaze. As if it would last forever. Great in its history. Famous in its exploits. Known throughout the world for its fine waters, high vistas and the smell of the sea.

Women: We must go. We must go.

Yes. We must go.