Tiger at the Gates

The Trojan War Will Not Take Place (La guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu) is a drama by Jean Giraudoux, written in 1935 and first staged on 21 November of the same year at the Athénée Theatre in Paris by Louis Jouvet.

In it, Giraudoux seeks to decipher the fratricidal motives behind the First World War, highlighting the cynicism and manipulations of politicians. The play reveals the author’s pacifism, shaped by his own experience fighting in France during the First World War, at a time when the signs of a second global conflict were already emerging with great force.

Ulysses, the Greek envoy sent to negotiate, meets Hector and exchanges noble words with him in the name of peace. With the leaders agreeing to Helen’s return, the threat of a devastating conflict between Greeks and Trojans seems finally averted.
And Ulysses’ farewell line to Hector, recalling their wives in order to make their shared desire for peace deeply believable, is unforgettable:

“Why not war?” asks Hector.

“Because Andromache has the same blink as Penelope.”

But the machinery of war has already been set in motion, and the temple doors reopen — a terrible symbol of the inevitable beginning of the Trojan War…