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Give pardon to my speech: therefore ’tis meet
Achilles meet not Hector. Let us like merchants
First show foul wares and think perchance they’ll sell;
If not, the luster of the better shall exceed
By showing the worse first. Do not consent
That ever Hector and Achilles meet,
For both our honor and our shame in this
Are dogged with two strange followers. (1.3.366–73)
Ulysses addresses these lines to Nestor as they formulate their plan to get Achilles back in the fight. This plan relies on psychological manipulation, which they hope to achieve by arranging it so that Ajax, not Achilles, will be chosen to engage in single combat with Hector. This choice will, they believe, infuriate Achilles and propel him onto the battlefield. What’s significant about this quotation is the way Ulysses explicitly couches his suggestion in economic terms. Ajax becomes, in his figuration, a second-rate commodity. If he “sells” (i.e., beats Hector), then the Greeks will have made a profit. But if not, then they can bring out their best merchandise (i.e., Achilles), and when they “sell” him, they will, as it were, make a killing. Ulysses’s language suggests that mercantile logic is replacing the traditional economy of honor and prestige. Thus, there is a crisis of value afoot.
HECTOR Brother, she is not worth what she doth cost
The keeping.
TROILUS What’s aught but as ’tis valued? (2.2.54–56)
This exchange between Hector and Troilus occurs in the context of the Trojan leaders’ discussion of whether to return Helen to Menelaus or else keep her and persist in the fight. At this point, the debate turns to a discussion about how to determine Helen’s value. Hector draws attention to the amount of bloodshed her presence has cost Troy. He measures value in concrete terms of life. Troilus, by contrast, suggests a more abstract theory of value with his proverbial phrase, “What’s aught but as ’tis valued?” The basic sense of this rhetorical question is that worth is relative and comes from how something is valued, as it were, from the “outside.” Thus, rather than being based on intrinsic qualities or features, value is created from a combination of desirability and availability. These competing theories indicate a crisis of value in the play, where older notions of honor are now rivaled by a more modern, market-driven notion of exchangeability.
When I am hence,
I’ll answer to my lust, and know you, lord,
I’ll nothing do on charge. To her own worth
She shall be prized; but that you say “Be ’t so,”
I speak it in my spirit and honor: “no.” (4.4.141–45)
Diomedes utters these snarling lines to Troilus, who has just bid him to take care of Cressida and “use her well” (4.4.135). Though his phrasing is ill-considered, Troilus is attempting to convince Diomedes that Cressida should be treated according to her worth, which in his estimation is quite high. Diomedes, however, says he will prize her not according to any sense of her intrinsic worth, but rather in line with his own “lust” for her. This exchange is an ironic echo of the debate Troilus had with Hector in act 2, scene 2. There, it was Troilus who advocated for a theory of value in which worth comes from desirability. Now, however, Troilus has adopted Hector’s concept of intrinsic value, and it is Diomedes who gives voice to the more abstract, market-driven theory.
