Pandarus (Troilus and Cressida)
Pandarus is very eager to get his niece Cressida into bed with Prince Troilus. Why? Is it for some sort of voyeuristic, pornographic pleasure? Maybe, but--
Pandarus seems almost completely asexual. I think his attitudes are more masculine than feminine, but he's not really interested in girls--at least, not the way that Cressida is interested in men.
I suspect it's for the rather trivial reason that he wants his family to be associated with the royal family of Troy. (This attitude is apparently not unusual. I'm writing this on January 26, 2020, 4:20PM, and on Yahoo News there are three articles about Meghan Markle, American commoner and now Duchess of Sussex, maybe Royal Highness, and one article about Kate Middleton, British commoner, Duchess of Cambridge, future queen consort of Great Britan. My friend Leslie Carroll, who's something of an expert on the French Revolution, wrote a book about Duchess Markle's progress, American Princess.)
Pandarus makes that trip to see Paris and Helen for the express purpose of letting Paris know that Cressida is spending the night with Troilus. And it works! Paris knows where to find Cressida and Troilus when he arrives to dispatch Cressida back to her father the next morning. (Of course it also give Shakespeare a chance to put Helen on stage. No smart playwright would write a play about the Trojan war without putting in Helen. Shakespeare portrays Helen as beautiful but dim. You cannot cast a dumb actor to play a dumb character. At NYU I had a smart, pretty girl to play Helen. Hi, there, Clair!)
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