(NOTE: Trailblazer English is used in this monologue.)
Character: Helen of Troy (Queen of Sparta)
Setting: Before the ruined Palace of Ancient Troy
Background: After being derided by Hecuba for attempting to cast herself as Paris’ unwilling captive, Helen decides to go the opposite route and embrace the role that her contemporaries have agreed upon for her — Manipulator of Men.
HELEN
Oh, Hecuba, your legendary compassion is not without its limits!
Or is it just that you refuse to extend it to me?
It’s of no consequence now. The war is over,
and it has broken as many reputations as bodies.
So let Helen of Troy – Helen the Trollop! –
offer you now that admission you have waited a decade to hear!
Yes, Virtuous Mother, I determined to have your son Paris
from the instant I first laid eyes upon him!
So young and cocky he was —
and, as it turns out, a much more imaginative lover
than my own prosaic consort, Menelaus.
I appreciate a man who can keep up to my expectations…
even as I bring him to his knees!
Forget the arrows of Philoctetes.1
Beauty is the wiliest of weapons and the surest of shields.
And beauty serves me still!
My poor plaything, Paris, is now ashes laid in an urn,
whereas I am still very much alive to return to Greece
with my ‘liege lord,’ Menelaus – the king whom I subjugated
to my will years ago in our marriage bed. —
He simply cannot bring himself to pass judgment
upon one so fair of face, no matter how I humiliate him…
or with whom!
So when tomorrow comes, we, the happy couple reunited,
will begin our voyage home to Greece
where I shall resume my role as Queen of Sparta.
And it will be as if these tiresome Trojan years had never been —Your disapproving scowls, Hecuba;
The slights of your sanctimonious daughter-in-law, Andromache;
The sneers of your pious Trojan Wennen;
Your own son’s puppy dog deference…
All these shall be as mere dalliances in a dream gone by!
And Prosterity will see me exactly as I truly was, Hecuba,
and realize that your son had it backwards:
Aphrodite did not give me to Paris. Oh, no!
The Divine Feminine gave Paris –
and every other man alive –
to me!
© Justy Fairfield 2008, 2022
- Philoctetes: The Greek soldier who killed Paris in battle.
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