we will hear the same word in the voice of the cynical Greek Thersites, who sums up the stakes of the conflict, unforgettably, in a single line: “All the argument is a whore and a cuckold” (2.3.65). To him this is the true, unvarnished story of the Trojan War. Helen is the whore; Menelaus the cuckold. But if this is the “argument” of the war, what is the “argument” of the play?
