“What’s aught but as ’tis valued?”

Shakespeare's version of the debate in Troy about whether or not to return Helen to the Greeks sets a range of different values in conflict with each other. There is what modern psychology might call a "cognitive dissonance" between the group's decision to back Paris's abduction of Helen and their acknowledgement of the disastrous consequences. Hector then repeats his assertion that Helen is not worth the cost, which excites Troilus's question, "What's aught but as 'tis valued". In Troilus and Cressida and in Cymbeline, ideas of commodity, exchange and debt combine with the valuing and de-valuing of characters and ideas in rhetoric. The 2016 production of Cymbeline by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) drew deliberate parallels between the Britons' refusal to pay the Roman tribute and the UK's referendum that year to leave or remain in the European Union.