SOURCE: "The Demands of War and Honor," in Shakespeare's Troilus & Cressida and Its Setting, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964, pp. 112-37.

In the following excerpt, Kimbrough focuses on the pursuit of honor by Hector and Troilus.

The Trojan plot opens with an acting out in II. ii of a grammar school debate which must have been familiar to many of Shakespeare's audience: should Helen be returned to end the war, or should she be defended out of deference to Paris' love and the Trojans' honor? Priam asks Hector, the eldest son and chief warrior, for his opinion, then, except for one short speech, sits silently throughout the ensuing debate which gives shape to the thematic concern of the appropriate demands of war and honor on the state and on the individual. Yet Priam should be visualized in a central position during the scene, his head turning from one...