From the second episode of the three-part 1998 BBC Radio 3 drama, Troy (Jeremy Mortimer, prod./dir., Andrew Rissik, writer) now available for a limited time on BBC Radio 4 Extra, the words of Helen of Troy (portrayed by Geraldine Somerville, later cast as Harry Potter's mother, Lily, in the Harry Potter films),
I dressed for the first time in memory, alone, with no servants. I wore rough sailor's cloth. I remember, when I kissed Paris in the dark his body would not stay still. It moved under my hands. He took me ashore in a boat which let the water in. He sat in a puddle as he rowed, and when I laughed at him, he lept up like a baboon and stopped my mouth with his kisses. I think I grazed an elbow shouting, "Slower! Slower!" And as he came the thunder came, too. God-light arched across the bay. The cliffs shook. The clouds split open. They pelted arrows of water upon our delighted bodies....
We passed three days and nights on the isle of Cranae, sleeping and making love, eating cheese and black bread, drinking only goats' milk and rough local wine.
As the bird flies home to its nest, as the soul returns at last to god, so the spirit in love finds and receives the beloved.
The cast also includes the late Academy-award winner* Paul Scofield CH CBE, Julian Glover, Michael Sheen OBE, Lindsay Duncan CBE, and as Achilles, Toby Stephens, the son of Dame Maggie Smith and Sir Robert Stephens.
Achilles:
We are wretched creatures, ignorant, selfish, and cruel. My life has gone by and the time has been wretchedly used. I have been ungentle and unloving, and serving myself above all others, I have wasted my best days.
In wine there is some oblivion, yet it does not last. In sleep there is some rest, yet it is not perfect. In memory there is some peace, yet it is fleeting. In love there is some ecstasy, yet it is changeable and shifting. Forgetfulness is ever denied us, for the imagination does not forget except briefly, but possesses its own inequities until the end of consciousness, which if the gods are kind is death, a sleep secure and senseless--inanimate as the earth.
After each episode's initial Saturday broadcast it will be available for seven days to listen to on demand using BBC iPlayer.
*Best Actor, won for his portrayal of Sir Thomas More in the 1966 film A Man for All Seasons, for which he also was awarded a BAFTA Award and a Tony Award.
Image: promotional photo of Whatanui Flavell and Roimata Fox as Paris and Helen in the Ngakau Toa Company's Maori production of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressdia (Toroihi raua ko Kahira), which represented New Zealand at The Globe to Globe Festival as part of the Cultural Olympiad in London, April 2012.
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