Shakespeare's Sick and Twisted Troilus and Cressida - Waggish 3 Replies From a Maori production of Troilus and Cressida Troilus and Cressida is certainly sick and twisted, but not in the same way that Measure for Measure is. They are nearly perfect complements to each other, as if Shakespeare had set himself twin challenges: for Measure for Measure, to write an unfunny comedy, and for Troilus and Cressida, to write a silly tragedy. People very nearly die in the “comedy” Measure for Measure, while Troilus and Cressida survive their “tragedy,” albeit unhappily. In both cases the cross-genre pollution doesn’t yield a healthy hybrid, but a self-conscious mutant. But the two don’t mix their enzyme and substrate in the same way. Measure for Measure sucks the life and humor from its antics while leaving plot and character more or less intact and merely darkening them, while Troilus and Cressida trivializes the Trojan War by lowering the intelligence and dignity of its characters.

Measure for Measure is overseen by a frequently malevolent manipulative demigod, the Duke, while absolutely no one at all seems to have much of a clue in Troilus and Cressida, and everyone is out of their depth. And while Measure for Measure holds together narratively and tonally, Troilus and Cressida fragments like mad, frequently and jarringly shifting tone, moving into abstract philosophy at times and ending with a ten car pile-up in the last act that ends the play quickly and clumsily. At some point mid-20th century, people didn’t believe Shakespeare had written the messy, chaotic last act with its dozen short scenes, but that claim seems to have died down. The fragmentation and general confusion makes Troilus and Cressida less powerful than Measure for Measure, which has a cogent and visceral build-up of increasingly serious horrors. Troilus and Cressida doesn’t even attempt that, since whenever something “serious” occurs, it’s quickly followed by something that makes it much harder to take it seriously. The question then is what to make of it, since the lack of coherence is clearly a deliberate strategy but only seems to be make things more diffuse.

I’ve read a fair number of analyses claiming that it holds together in spite of itself or that the chaos powerfully subverts narrative expectation, but they’ve all been quite unconvincing (though I. A. Richards’ “Troilus and Cressida and Plato” is memorably strange), since we aren’t dealing with King Lear here. Jan Kott’s assessment in Shakespeare Our Contemporary is probably the most powerful–he makes the play sound amazing, more amazing and coherent than it actually is. Rosalie Colie , having made extensive studies on Renaissance paradox, was especially well-suited to analyze the play, and her explanation of how the play undermines the very shared conventions of linguistic use is brilliant: The lovers demonstrate the reduction of expressive intentional language to social and linguistic counters. As they milk language of meaning, so their names lose private, individual meaning too, to signify impersonal morality-functions. Rosalie Colie, Shakespeare’s Living Art The language, which Colie and others treat at great length, is often remarkable at a conceptual level. I won’t dare analyze it here, other than to say that the excesses of the language make the banality of the plot and character that much more evident.

Trivialization clearly seems to be the order of the day, but the question of why one would write a play that merely trivializes its subjects remains. Shakespeare shows off his genre-savvy here, but to what end? My answer is that the play is a reductio ad absurdam, an attempt to mimic the analysis and response of the most jaded and cynical theater-goer, and yet let some modicum of human dignity remain. I think that unlike Measure for Measure, which leaves an uneasy sick feeling, Troilus and Cressida is ultimately affirming of something, though not a lot. By taking a Euripidean plot but writing it in the style of Aristophanes (via Plautus or Terence), he makes it difficult to cling on to anything without suspecting that there’s one more level of irony underneath it. But remember that Aristophanes came out exalting Aeschylus. Certainly, most of the play undermines any ideals its characters purport. On the Greek side, Ulysses comes off as the classical Burkean/Rumsfeldian conservative, speaking eloquently and with seeming intelligence, but advocating for awfulness. Achilles is a joke.

On the Trojan side, romantic lead Troilus lacks any common sense and intelligence. Here is his “argument” for fighting for Helen, which boils down to “Less thinking, more ass-kicking!” TROILUS You are for dreams and slumbers, brother priest; You fur your gloves with reason. Here are your reasons: You know an enemy intends you harm; You know a sword employ’d is perilous, And reason flies the object of all harm: Who marvels then, when Helenus beholds A Grecian and his sword, if he do set The very wings of reason to his heels And fly like chidden Mercury from Jove, Or like a star disorb’d? Nay, if we talk of reason, Let’s shut our gates and sleep: manhood and honour Should have hare-hearts, would they but fat their thoughts With this cramm’d reason: reason and respect Make livers pale and lustihood deject. Helen and Paris are about as worthy of fighting over as ever. Hector does appear to act with dignity, but all that signals is that dignity can’t exist in a vacuum.

He is speaking for a virtue that the rest of the characters don’t even understand, and he can’t uphold it in a vacuum, and eventually he doesn’t. So he’s useless too in the face of the “Most putrefied core” of the anonymous Greek he slaughters in 5.8. Hell, the whole play could be said to be concerned with the absurdity of holding up any virtue that isn’t valued by the surrounding community, be it honor or fidelity–or love itself. What is fascinating is that into this hybrid, Shakespeare stuck one of his most assertive and complex women. The reaction to her over the centuries has been predominantly scathing. Personal preference grants me a strong affection for Cressida. In her first appearance she engages in a long stint of Groucho-Chico/Bob and Ray doubletalk with her sleazy uncle. CRESSIDA What, is he angry too? PANDARUS Who, Troilus? Troilus is the better man of the two. CRESSIDA O Jupiter! there’s no comparison. PANDARUS What, not between Troilus and Hector? Do you know a man if you see him?

CRESSIDA Ay, if I ever saw him before and knew him. PANDARUS Well, I say Troilus is Troilus. CRESSIDA Then you say as I say; for, I am sure, he is not Hector. PANDARUS No, nor Hector is not Troilus in some degrees. CRESSIDA ‘Tis just to each of them; he is himself. PANDARUS Himself! Alas, poor Troilus! I would he were. CRESSIDA So he is. And so on and on. She is witty, coy, and apparently savvy. She adapts to her changing circumstances, none of which are under her control, perhaps covering up inexperience with raw smarts. She resists Troilus at first and then, after she falls for him, seems to think somewhat more of him than he deserves, as her dialogue switches from doubletalk to inflated rhetoric. While he still forces more of a unity than I think can be assigned to her, Jan Kott captures something of what makes her uniquely modern among Shakespearean characters, comparing her to Hamlet : This girl could have been eight, ten, or twelve years old when the war started.

Maybe that is why war seems so normal and ordinary to her that she almost does not notice it and never talks about it. Cressida has not yet been touched, but she knows all about love, and about sleeping with men; or at any rate she thinks she knows. She is inwardly free, conscious and daring. She belongs to the Renaissance, but she is also a Stendhal type akin to Lamiel, and she is a teen-age girl of the mid-twentieth century. She is cynical, or rather would be cynical. She has seen too much. She is bitter and ironic. She is passionate, afraid of her passion and ashamed to admit it. She is even more afraid of feelings. She distrusts herself. She is our contemporary because of this self-distrust, reserve, and a need of self-analysis. She defends herself by irony. Jan Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary Were she in a less self-reflexive play, she’d easily be one of the best characters in the canon. As it is, she lacks the space to fully become what Kott describes her as being, yet even the partial portrait is sui generis.

Troilus and Cressida in Stephen Wangh’s aerial production As for the lovers together, their pledges of love to each other are very odd and epistemological: TROILUS O virtuous fight, CRESSIDA Prophet may you be! If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth, When time is old and hath forgot itself, When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy, And blind oblivion swallow’d cities up, And mighty states characterless are grated To dusty nothing, yet let memory, From false to false, among false maids in love, Upbraid my falsehood! when they’ve said ‘as false As air, as water, wind, or sandy earth, As fox to lamb, as wolf to heifer’s calf, Pard to the hind, or stepdame to her son,’ ‘Yea,’ let them say, to stick the heart of falsehood, ‘As false as Cressid.’ Are there any passages in Shakespeare that use the words “true” and “false” as incessantly as these two do, respectively? It’s numbing.

And overblown: Cressida herself undermined the distinction in an earlier gabfest with Pandarus when she said “To say the truth, true and not true.” Troilus himself undermined it in the previous scene when he tautologically declared, “I am as true as truth’s simplicity,” spelling out the meaninglessness of the comparison with truth-values. The speeches do set up Troilus later shrieking “False, false, false!” at Cressida in the last act, which, again, doesn’t quite rise to the level of King Lear here, especially considering that Cressida was just sold into slavery by her own people in exchange for the return of a prisoner. There’s no secret escape plan for Cressida this time, unlike in Chaucer, and her father Calchas, a defector to the Greeks, seems indifferent to her arrival. Her pledge to Diomedes is a bitter tactical move designed to save herself from becoming one of the “sluttish spoils of opportunity,” in the words of that fine fellow Ulysses.

In light of the chaotic movement of the play and Troilus’ character, Cressida’s resignation and compromise with circumstance seems far more realistic than Troilus’ cloddish tantrums–although Troilus’ breakdown while Thersites jeers at him does contain genuine pathos. No, Cressida didn’t have to give Diomedes Troilus’ sleeve, but Shakespeare consciously weakened the case against Cressida (also by having her affair with Troilus last for hours rather than months, as in Chaucer). Troilus and Cressida as American Indians because why not? And then there is Thersites on the Greek side. Thersites is pretty insufferable. At first he may seem like the truth-teller of the Iliad, but soon reveals himself to be far less. In the Iliad, he was clearly a threat. Moses Finley observed that Homer wouldn’t have bothered having Thersites speak out and be smacked down if what he said weren’t dangerous to the warrior caste. In Shakespeare, Thersites is ridiculed, beaten on, but generally tolerated, because he is defanged.

His words have no bite, no matter how much he tries to give them. The deeper he digs himself into ridicule and cynicism, the more impotent he becomes. Not that he even seems to care about making a difference. Unlike his somewhat more decorous Trojan counterpart, Pandaraus, who turns from bawd to malevolent force over the play, Thersites just rants from the bleachers, amusing himself but no one else. I think he is meant to be the point of identification for smug audiences who think themselves above it all, who want to laugh at the archaic heroics of Hector as well as the dumb romance of Troilus and Cressida (ably assisted by Shakespeare portraying them rather badly). But Thersites represents a dead end as much as Hector does. Both signify polar positions, dignity and cynicism, in a world that is too chaotic and stupefied to justify either. So what do I see as the ultimate purpose here? A play that is designed to tempt the viewer with cynicism and then throw it back in its face. Yes, be apathetic and say a pox on all their houses, yes, be like Thersites.

And look at who you’ll be: a prude, sex-hating and joyless, unable to affirm anything, ignored by everyone. This is what makes the play so apt today, because while it was just confusing to earlier audiences, recent productions have embraced Thersites’ position to the hilt, not realizing that a certain race-to-the-bottom critical mindset that refuses to endorse any clear values, lest they then be trumped by the next subversion, will produce nothing that any one will ever care about. Yet when Cressida is led away to become a sex slave for the Greeks, some care has survived, that despite the hardened cynicism of nearly everyone, you would have to be a monster to embrace Thersites’ or Ulysses’ points of view. So maybe that is the challenge Shakespeare set himself: to trivialize things as much as possible and then at the end say, “Look, I still made you care.” It hasn’t always worked, judging by how hard people have come down on Cressida, but it works on me.

The fatuous “True Troilus” and “False Cressida” speeches are an analogy for that goal–that even in light of the linguistic nonsense and exaggerated silliness of True and False made by Troilus and Cressida, we still aren’t willing to give up the very robust distinction between truth and falseness, and so even this very cynical and sophistic play has left us still giving them some affirmation. Share this: Troilus and Cressida | Folger Shakespeare Library FOLGER SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY 201 East Capitol Street, SE Washington, DC 20003 Open to the public every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas. January 24 – March 5, 2017 Stage Director Talk: As You Like It January 26, 2017 at 6:30 PM The Folger's online catalog is your first stop for finding items in our rich rare and modern materials collections. The Folger is looking for exceptionally qualified individuals who are committed to the mission, vision, and values of our organization. You are here Buy the play Set during the Trojan War, Troilus and Cressida recounts the love affair of its title characters.

Inside the besieged city of Troy, the Trojan prince Troilus is lovesick for Cressida. Cressida is drawn to Troilus, too, and her uncle, Pandarus, brings them together. In the Greek camp outside, Cressida's father, Calchas, asks that Cressida be brought to him in return for the help he has given the Greeks. The morning after the lovers’ night together, Cressida is exchanged for a Trojan prisoner and taken to the camp by the Greek warrior Diomedes. The great Trojan warrior Hector, Troilus’s brother, engages in single combat with the Greek Ajax, a fight that ends inconclusively. Hector and Troilus join the Greeks for a feast. Cressida, meanwhile, is seduced by Diomedes. Distraught at Cressida's betrayal, Troilus fights Diomedes and others. Patroclus, favorite of the Greek warrior Achilles, dies in battle. Achilles fights with and loses to Hector, who is then, on Achilles’s orders, dishonorably slain. Grieving, Troilus and the other Trojans return to Troy.

Early printed texts Troilus and Cressida exists in two different early versions, both of which have complicated histories, although the textual variants are not significant enough for most readers to notice. The play was first published in 1609 as a quarto that exists in two different states. The earlier state (Qa) has a title page describing the play as a "Historie" published "As it was acted by the Kings Majesties servants at the Globe." The second state (Qb), however, has a title page that does not refer to the play's performance and includes a prefatory letter, " A never writer, to an ever reader ," that asserts that the play was "never stal'd with the Stage, never clapper-clawd with the palmes of the vulger." (Scholars are divided on the assertion that the play was never performed.) The play was then included in the 1623 First Folio (F1) as The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida, albeit only after some confusion; a few copies of F1 survive without the play and it was never listed in the book's " Catalogue ," or table of contents.

The play seems to have been intially slated to appear in the middle of the tragedies, just after Romeo and Juliet, and a few copies still include a leaf that has the ending of Romeo and Juliet on one side and the start of Troilus and Cressida on the other. (The Folger's Fo.1 no.45 is one such copy.) But before the full play could be printed, there was apparently a change of plans. The play was moved to appear after the last play in the history section, Henry VIII, and the first play in the tragedy section, Coriolanus. A prologue to the play (not in Q) was also added, facing the ending of Henry VIII. Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare. Search eText, Read Online, Study, Discuss.

Priam, King of Troy, married to Hecuba, Queen of Troy Priam's sons: Paris, Deiphobos, Helenus, Troilus, Hector, Margarelon (a bastard son) Priam's daughters: Cassandra and Polyxenes Helen, originally wife of Menelaus from Greece, now wife of Paris Andromache, wife of Hector Calchas, a Trojan lord who has defected to the Greeks Pandarus, Calchas' brother (still in Troy) Cressida, Calchas' daughter (still in Troy) Alexander, Cressida's servant Trojan commanders: Aeneas and Antenor The Greeks Menelaus, Agamemnon's brother, ex-husband of Helen Greek commanders: Achilles, Ajax, Ulysses, Nestor, Diomedes, and Patroclus Thersites, a deformed and scurrilous Greek The play opens with a prologue explaining that the Greeks have sailed to Troy to wage war against the Trojans since Menelaus' wife Helen has been kidnapped by Paris (and now loves him). The prologue tells us the story starts in the middle of the wars rather than at the beginning.

In Troy, Troilus (son of Priam) speaks with Pandarus how he loves Cressida, yet he doesn't want his brother Hector or his father to know this. We learn that Troilus feels the war over Helen is dumb; also that Pandarus refuses to woo Cressida for Troilus and that she is stubborn, chaste, and against all suitors. Separately, Pandarus and Cressida joke about Troilus' looks compared to his brothers, while Pandarus begins to flatter Troilus at every turn, trying to convince Cressida to like him. Privately, we begin to see signs that she does indeed love him, but she asserts she will not let anyone know this. At the Greek camp, Agamemnon and his generals debate as to why, after seven years of war, Troy still stands unbeaten. Ulysses states that he believes that disorder in the Greek ranks is the cause, and not that Troy is still strong. Specifically, Ulysses believes the refusal of Achilles and Patroclus to follow Agamemnon's lead in battle (or to fight at all) hurts the Greek army's effectiveness and morale.

Nestor points out that Ajax too has grown "self-willed". The Trojan general Aeneas arrives to speak with the Greek generals. He tells them that Hector challenges the Greeks that he is very honorable and loyal to his wife and wishes to battle any Greek that declares himself more loyal than Hector. Agamemnon accepts the challenge for the Greeks and invites Aeneas to dine with him. Separately, Ulysses and Nestor discuss that Achilles will most likely meet Hector's challenge, but this would make the Greeks look bad since he is so insolent lately. Rather, they decide Ajax (ironically Hector's cousin) would be good to fight Hector since Ajax is relatively harmless. They plan to get Ajax chosen via a rigged lottery. At the Greek camp, Ajax quarrels with Thersites since he won't tell Ajax what Hector's challenge is. We learn from Thersites that Ajax detests Achilles and continually complains about him. Achilles and Patroclus appear and scorn Thersites, then tell Ajax of Hector's challenge. In Troy, Priam reads a letter demanding Helen's release, in return for which the Greeks will return home.

Hector asserts they should let her go since the war fought over her is not worth the loss of lives. However, Troilus declares they should keep her and continue fighting since it would be dishonorable to return a prize which they had all cheered Paris for acquiring seven years ago, namely Helen. Further, Helen is happy with Paris. Priam's daughter Cassandra, who is plagued by dark prophetical visions, storms in and declares Troy will burn, unless Helen be returned to the Greeks. Troilus ignores her and, at length, he and Paris convince Hector to continue waging war against the Greeks. At the Greek camp, Patroclus, Achilles, and Thersites trade wits until Agamemnon approaches and Achilles retreats into his tent. Patroclus tells them Achilles is sick, but they know better. Even after both Patroclus and Ulysses visit Achilles, he still refuses to come out of his tent and see Agamemnon, further scorning the Greek lords. They decide to let Achilles and Patroclus be, and go to battle without them. In Troy, Pandarus asks Paris to dine with Troilus while Helen blatantly (yet playfully) flirts with Pandarus.

In private, Paris asks Helen to flirt with Hector too in order to convince him to continue fighting. Separately, Pandarus brings Cressida to Troilus for him to woo her. While wooing, Troilus' actions eventually cause Cressida to admit she has loved him for many months, unintendedly breaking her vow to herself to hide her emotions. They both rejoice in their mutual love and promise to be true to one another. Pandarus, too, rejoices and tells them to seal their promises in bed (The editor states Pandarus' actions imply he gains sexual pleasure from helping Troilus and Cressida come together, both in love and in bed). Further, he says, if either Cressida break her oath of loyalty to Troilus, "Let all constant men be Troiluses, all false women Cressids, and all brokers-between Pandars." At the Greek camp, Cressida's traitorous father Calchas requests that Agamemnon swap their new Trojan prisoner Antenor for Cressida, since Calchas desires her to be with him. Agamemnon grants the request, asking Diomedes to see it done.

Ulysses then suggests all walk past Achilles tent and either ignore him or look upon him strangely to get a rise out of him since he has vowed to no longer fight against Troy. Ulysses speaks to Achilles, urging him to begin fighting again by telling him all are starting to honor Ajax for fighting Hector and forget Achilles' deeds. Ulysses also tells Achilles he knows he is in love with Priam's daughter Polyxenes, and urges him to change his mind, lest he be ridiculed in Greece. Patroclus also urges Achilles to resume fighting. Achilles refuses, and asks Thersites to ask Ajax to invite Hector to Achilles' tent after his fight with Ajax. Diomedes comes to Troy and meets Aeneas and Paris, informing them of the proposed trade of Cressida for Antenor. Diomedes tells Paris of his hate for Helen for deserting Greece and allowing the war to continue. At Calchas' house, Cressida and Troilus wake from their first night together, when Aeneas arrives and informs Troilus of the trade. Troilus leaves to speak with his father and Pandarus is stuck with informing Cressida, at which she falls into deep despair.

Troilus returns and informs her she must leave "Troy and Troilus". Both promises to stay true to the other during their separation, then Troilus gives Cressida part of his sleeve and she gives him a glove of hers, as tokens of their love. Troilus meets Diomedes and charges him to promise to use Cressida well (i.e. chastely), but Diomedes rudely declares she will be his mistress, greatly enraging Troilus who promises he will kill him in battle. At the Greek camp, Ajax prepares for his battle with Hector, when Diomedes arrives with Cressida. All of the generals give her a welcome kiss, though she manages in riddle to insult them. Aeneas, Troilus, Paris, and Helenus (not Helen) arrive with Hector to fight Ajax; they fight and Hector wins, but will not kill Ajax as he is Hector's father's sister's son (aka, his cousin). Ajax (as dictated by Thersites) asks Hector to dine with Achilles and Hector agrees. However, upon meeting Achilles, he immediately starts ridiculing and threatening Hector, while all the other Grecian generals had been polite to him.

Tensions are calmed, though, and all go to dinner with Agamemnon while Troilus entreats Ulysses to bring him to Calchas' tent (to see Cressida) after dinner. Ulysses, not knowing of Troilus' love for her tells him Diomedes dines with her and Calchas and grows increasingly amorous of her. Still at the Greek camp, Achilles vows to get Hector overly drunk so he'll be hung over the next day in battle. However, he then receives a letter from Hecuba and Polyxenes reminding him of his promise not to fight. He remembers and again vows not to fight. Hector goes to Achilles' tent while Ulysses and Troilus follow Diomedes to Calchas' tent. There, they oversee Cressida toying with Diomedes, first promising herself to him, then saying no, then promising, then not. This confuses and angers Troilus, but he stays hid.

Eventually, she offers Troilus' sleeve to Diomedes, then asks for it back, but Diomedes refuses and swears to wear it to battle hoping to provoke her (unknown to him) lover to fight him. After Diomedes leaves, Troilus hears Cressida proclaim she has "one eye" on Troilus, but her heart is bending toward Diomedes. Of course, this greatly depresses Troilus, even to the point that he questions whether it is really her or just a spirit. At length, he vows to forget her and kill Diomedes in battle. Back at Troy, Hector's wife Andromache and his sister Cassandra beg him not to go to battle, as both have had visions and dreams of dread for him. Still, he vows to fight. Troilus too vows to fight, even though Hector, to no avail, begs him not to. Priam even asks his son Hector to say home, but he will not. Pandarus, sick with a cough, delivers a letter from Cressida to Troilus, but he tears it up, to Pandarus' amazement and dismay.

In the battlefield, Troilus and Diomedes fight while Thersites observes and privately makes fun of them. Later, Diomedes tells his servant to take Troilus' horse to Cressida as (false) proof that Troilus is dead. Separately, Agamemnon learns that the Greeks are losing with many lords captured or dead, including Polyxenes and Patroclus. He orders Diomedes to get reinforcements, while Nestor reports that Hector is fighting like a madman, killing many, as too is Troilus, adds Ulysses. Patroclus' death has newly invigorated Achilles and Ajax to fight. In the field, both Ajax and Diomedes fight Troilus, while Achilles and Hector duel. Troilus learns Ajax has captured Aeneas and vows to rescue him. Separately, Achilles instructs his personal troops to surround Hector and empale him. While Hector rests unarmed, Achilles appears and, without honor, has his minions kill him, then Achilles vows to take the body to the Trojans, dragging it behind his horse.

The Greeks, of course, rejoice, while Troilus vows to kill the coward Achilles and fears Troy will soon fall after Priam learns of his son's death (Hector). As for Pandarus, he curses himself for bringing Troilus and Cressida together and predicts he will die from disease within two months. Fan of this book? Help us introduce it to others by writing a better introduction for it . It's quick and easy, click here . Recent Forum Posts on Troilus and Cressida Troilus and Cressida Themes | GradeSaver Troilus and Cressida Themes Buy Study Guide De-Romanticizing Troilus and Cressida In Troilus and Cressida , the main characters display startlingly little respect for tradition and history. In fact, one quality that endears the play to a modern sensibility is its disdain for the conventions of honor, class structure, and chivalry. Clearly Shakespeare sees his characters and their situation with a jaundiced eye - a perspective that speaks to the contemporary view towards politicians and wars.

It is important to remember, when looking at Troilus as an anti-Romantic play, that Shakespeare is not incorporating Homer and the Iliad, but is also taking on the tales of the Middle Ages. Troilus and Cressida were characters from English legend, not Greek mythology; in de-romanticizing their story he is thus addressing the tendency in his own era to see men as predominately true and women as predominately false. This view, popularized in Chaucer's work and promulgated in pamphlets and treatises, stemmed in part from the story of Troilus and Cressida. By showing the ghastly context of that romantic legend, Shakespeare removes much of its applicability. True, Cressida is still false, and as she herself says, she is guided more by her eye than her heart, but in setting this betrayal against a backdrop of relentless cynicism as opposed to chivalric heroism, Shakespeare takes some of the sting out of Cressida's falseness, and reveals Troilus' honor and honesty as inexcusably naive.

Domesticity and War Achilles ' tent and Pandarus ' garden - two brief bastions in a brutal and senseless war - represent common grounds on either side of the Trojan Wall. In each location, a tested warrior (Achilles and Troilus, respectively) finds tranquility with his beloved ( Patroclus or Cressida) while a bawdy comedian ( Thersites or Pandarus) watches and comments on the action. In both instances - though to differing degrees - these places of seeming comedic contentment are in truth unlikely sources of anxiety. Troilus considers his passion for Cressida "womanish": his love for her keeps him from fully committing to the battlefield. And of course Achilles' choice to spend time in his tent rather than at arms is the Greeks' chief worry in the play. This decision, too, is feminized, as when Thersites comments that Patroclus is his "masculine whore." This tendency to criticize Achilles and Patroclus or Troilus and Cressida in their attempts to establish domestic strongholds makes sense to some degree. In times of war, questions of domesticity often take a backseat to the action on the field.

Yet there is a central irony here, in that the Trojan War is being waged in revenge for a domestic affront: the cuckolding of Menelaus . The dichotomy between domesticity and war falls apart upon closer examination, and many of the characters (particularly Thersites, who calls the argument a simple matter of a whore and a cuckold) are willing to enthusiastically point out this irony. The question, then, is this: why should Achilles and Troilus neglect their own domestic pursuits in favor of those of Menelaus, Helen , and Paris ? Why does one love affair warrant a war, while theirs must flounder? Troilus and Cressida does not answer this question explicitly, but the play does suggest that Paris and Helen are no different than any other set of lovers. That their dalliance hurt a king's pride is unfortunate, but that it resulted in a brutal and horrific war is the true tragedy of the play. The empty political language of honor is what ultimately drives the war. Without the stubborn selfishness of Paris and Menelaus, Troilus would have Cressida, Achilles would have Patroclus - and the pursuit of domestic happiness would not be seen as aberrant behavior.

The Exchange of Women One of the chief ways that patriarchal societies - such as those of the Ancient world and Jacobean England - maintained themselves was through marriage. Traditionally, the head of the household - the man - reserved the right to give his daughter to another man. This exchange of a woman between her father and her husband is depicted in countless dramas of the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage. Usually when the patriarchal exchange is disrupted, tragedy ensues (think, for example, of Romeo and Juliet ). In Troilus and Cressida, however, this exchange of women is treated quite cynically. The go-between, Pandarus, who is Cressida's acting father after Calchas ' defection, is little more than a pimp. His attentiveness to Cressida's virginity (or lack thereof) is alarming, and his relentless pandering cheapens the sanctity of love. If he is a merchant, to borrow Troilus' analogy from his first soliloquy, then Cressida is no more than merchandise being shipped from shore to shore. Troilus and Cressida also provides us with an odd example of a reverse-exchange.

The Greeks and Trojans conspire to take Cressida from her husband and give her back to her father. This husband-to-father exchange flies in the face of the traditional social order. If Cressida was not debased enough by Pandarus, her status as chattel is clarified in this second exchange. Indeed, to hammer the point home, Shakespeare has Cressida passed around by the Greeks upon her entrance to their camp. Cressida's subsequent decision to forsake Troilus for Diomedes can only be considered in the context of her treatment. At least with Diomedes, perhaps she will find stability. = Genre One of the most frequent criticisms of Troilus and Cressida has to do with genre. Is it a comedy, a history, or a tragedy? Nowadays, it is often categorized as a tragedy or a "problem play" - a designation that includes All's Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure .

In the seventeenth century, however, it was considered a comedy, at least judging from the original publisher's foreword ("A Never Writer to an Ever Reader"), even though its full title is "The History of Troilus and Cressida." Jacobean critics, playwrights and playgoers were much less attentive to the question of genre than modern audiences. Tragedies were often called histories, and both genres almost always had comedic elements. But there is something about Troilus and Cressida's modulations between bawdy comedy and bitter tragedy that makes it at once difficult to characterize and a commentary on genre itself. Speech to speech, scene to scene, the genre of the play seems to shift, and yet there is method to this madness: a current of cynicism and disappointment runs through the whole of the drama. In addition, part of this disappointment stems from the failings of the language of romance and chivalry - in other words, a failure of genre language. This is a love story, but it isn't. It's a heroic history, but it is hardly heroic. Part of the play's point thus seems to be to subvert the very conventions of genre.

The speeches of Agamemnon , Nestor , and Ulysses belong to a recognizable tradition of epic rhetoric; the play's high tones are consistently brought down-to-earth by the ugliness of the events being depicted. Likewise, Troilus' sincere protestations of love cannot stand up to the political maneuverings that rend Cressida from him and cast her into the society of the Greeks; their love language takes on wartime reality, and ultimately fails. That each character seems to speak in his or her own genre - and that each of these genres, except perhaps Thersites', is undermined by the events - makes this a play about plays. It is a drama about genres - and specifically, about how genre can be problematic. Homoeroticism, Performance, and Privacy Patroclus and Achilles are more than good friends, more than fellow actors with a shared sense of humor about their blustery leaders: they are quite unquestionably lovers. Our modern conception of homosexuality - that some are born biologically predisposed to be sexually attracted to their own gender to the exclusion of the other - did not exist in Shakespeare's time.

And as we see from Achilles' oath of marriage to a Trojan princess and Thersites' remark about Patroclus that he loves a "commodious" prostitute, neither Achilles nor Patroclus is exclusively attracted to men. Still, Thersites' vitriolic comment that Patroclus is Achilles' "masculine whore," combined with their own sweet and romantic exchanges, leaves little doubt as to the nature of their relationship. Though in ancient Greco-Roman societies physical relationships between older and younger men were to some extent acceptable, Achilles' relationship with Patroclus is a source of great anxiety in the play. His decision to spend his days in his tent with Patroclus is seen by Ulysses and many other Greeks as the chief reason for their lack of success at Troy. Homoeroticism, privacy, and the cynical performances that the lovers put on together are conflated in the Greek leader's anxiety about Troy. They see Achilles' tent - and the dalliances and masques that go on within it - as their foremost threat. However, it is worth questioning the accuracy of this interpretation of Achilles' defiance. The Trojan War, as Troilus reminds us again and again, is a horribly confusing event.

The whole enterprise is full of cynical performances, with Ulysses standing as the reigning cynic. The Greeks displace their misgivings about the venture as a whole onto the threat emanating from Achilles' tent; however, what Achilles and Patroclus know - that the Trojan War is to a great extent a farce - is no less true because of this displacement. At the end of the play, although Achilles is restored to marriage and battle and Patroclus is dead, the tent - that bulwark against the absurdities of war - still looks like a most welcoming alternative to the battlefield. Opinion Oftentimes Shakespeare's plays contain a "keyword" of sorts - a word that is repeated again and again, almost obsessively, that gives a unique vantage into the imagination of the playwright at the time he was writing. Macbeth's might be "time," Hamlet obsesses about "action," Timon of Athens returns again and again to "dogs," and Titus Andronicus focuses on "hands." In this vein, the scholar Frank Kermode offers "opinion" as the keyword to Troilus and Cressida.

He notes that the word is spoken ten times over the course of the play - more than in any other Shakespearean play - and that it uniquely captures the play's particular obsession with the contingency of values. The words that Troilus is so careless in throwing around - honor, glory, love, worth - all depend upon opinion. These concepts aren't valuable in and of themselves - they aren't even real in and of themselves; rather, they depend on being situated in a particular point of view. Consider how many times in the play the question of whether the Trojan War is worth fighting is raised. The conversation always turns to Helen's value: is any woman, however beautiful she might be, worth so much bloodshed? Is there a way to quantify beauty in terms of other people's lives? When the Trojan princes debate about whether or not to give Helen up, they ultimately decide that Helen's actual value is not important - what is important is how much she is desired. As long as Troy holds onto such a woman, Troilus suggests, Troy will hold onto its honor. But honor, like anything, is a matter of opinion; if the Greeks ceased to want Helen, no doubt Troy would cease to want her too.

Where does that leave the city's honor? Opinion, then, is like a vortex without a bottom. It is constructed out of many voices, many minds, all of which can and do change constantly. Achilles' worth is a matter of opinion (a fact that Ulysses realizes and manipulates in his Ajax -Achilles scheme); the validity of Cassandra 's prophecies is a matter of opinion; even constancy is a matter of opinion. Just think: if Troilus had never seen Cressida kissing Diomedes, her subsequent letter would have been the truth to him; his opinion of her would have been different. Whether she truly remained constant or not, she would have remained so to him. Even when he sees her cheating on him, he tells himself that his Cressida - the Cressida of his opinion - is more important than "Diomed's Cressid" - the false Cressida of public opinion. Troilus and Cressida confronts us with a basic problem of human life: the problem of subjectivity. We can see things only as ourselves. Nothing is valuable in and of itself - because nothing exists in a vacuum.

Everything must pass through the rigors of opinion, and opinion is anything but constant. Words and Deeds Some readers might feel that, for a war play, Troilus and Cressida has too many words. Indeed, until the Fourth and Fifth Acts the play is nothing but words - promises, speeches, debates, flirtations. Only at the end of the play is the audience rewarded with violence, and even then viewers may be left dissatisfied. Ajax's big fight with Hector , built up over many scenes, is little more than a skirmish, and Achilles' massacre of Hector when he is unarmed is simply murder. The play's deeds, then, belie the play's highbrow words. The connection between words and deeds is one that Shakespeare explores in almost all of his mature plays. However, in Troilus more than in any other this very exploration provides the chief action of the play. Troilus and Cressida behave more like philosophers or scholars of romantic language than young lovers. They ask searching questions about the nature of words - of imagined desire, of love's promises, of oaths and vows - and fail to consider the import of acts.

Troilus wonders how actually being with Cressida could ever compare to imagining her; Cressida delves into her own language constantly, wondering whether she should defer the act with Troilus forever so as to hold on to the promise of their words of love. In Troilus, the relationship between words and deeds falls apart. The more highbrow the language, the more sodden and depressing the actions attached to it. Consider Troilus and Cressida's promise to be true to each other, Agamemnon and Nestor's pompous discourses, and Troilus and Paris' protestations that keeping Helen is somehow honorable, though an audience member would be loath to discover how. Mere language dissipates before the grim realities of an unjust war.

Question: Who dies at the end of Shakespeare's tragedy "Troilus and Cressida"?
Answer: Hector