Throughout much of the recent scholarly commentary on Troilus and Cressida1 runs an effort to explain the complicated themes and the strange tensions of the play through the imposition of a theory or structure external and sometimes even alien to the play itself. James O’Rourke employs “the Hegelian master-slave dialectic” in an effort to explain “the negation of the woman in traditional heterosexuality.” Linda Charnes looks to Freud for a starting point and Daniel Juan Gil uses theories of “homosociality” to clarify the behavior of the play’s warriors.2 While these interpreters offer insights of interest, the results of their theorizing often serve either to over-complicate or over-simplify the meaning of the play. More importantly, most neglect the very guidance that Shakespeare’s text explicitly offers us towards providing a theoretical framework for understanding Troilus and Cressida. To understand the true relationship between eros, honor and political rule, Shakespeare provides an Aristotelian framework for his play.3
Shakespeare’s use of Aristotle’s discussion of the subjects of honor, youth and reason focuses our attention on the nature of political rule in Troilus and Cressida. The play is chiefly the story of how political rule is disordered when private motives drive public ends. War is a profoundly public endeavor that requires a collective effort to achieve the common end of victory but individuals often fight for private reasons, sometimes incompatible with the good of the city. On the public level, the Trojan fight to retain possession of Helen, queen of Sparta, is a fight for the collective glory of Troy. Yet, how the city as a whole benefits from possessing Helen is unclear; in fact, only the harm Helen’s presence inflicts is palpable. The military threat to Troy is directly connected to Helen’s presence within its walls and without her, Troy would sit unmolested by the Greeks. But the Trojan leadership continues to argue that the glory with which Helen endows Troy is worth the fight. The public fight for glory does not, however, explain the private motives for continued war with Greece. It is the private passions of the Trojan nobles, the reckless pursuit of honor, and the private satisfaction of sexual desires, all unrestrained by reason or prudence that dominates the decision for war. The private benefit to Paris, Helen’s lover, in carrying on with the war is obvious, but private ends drive other Trojan War participants too. Shakespeare’s Hector fights the war contrary to his own reason and judgment about what is just and good for Troy, for the sake of individual honor. King Priam embraces the youthful passions of his younger sons as a ruling principle. Troilus, the younger brother of Paris and Hector, pursues the war for the dual purposes of winning personal approbation and immortal glory for Troy, but he is often distracted from fighting the war by his private desire for Cressida. The tension we see in Troilus’ dueling passions reflects the divisions within the city of Troy.
My argument is that Shakespeare employs the love story of Troilus and Cressida to examine the passions that explain the genesis and nature of the Trojan War. This use of the two young lovers, and not a mere adherence to the Chaucerian tradition, explains Shakespeare’s choice to dedicate the title of his play about the Trojan War and its great heroes to Troilus and Cressida, despite the fact that they appear in the play together as lovers only on the evening of their consummation and the morning of their parting (III.ii and IV.ii).4 Through his portrayal of Troilus and Cressida individually, Shakespeare explores the weaknesses of human nature: the false allure of honor, the destructive power of the passions and the necessity of calculation. Troilus has the emotional and moral character of the young man Aristotle describes in his Rhetoric, whose youth inclines him to impulsive actions for the sake of sexual gratification and the honor of his society, vacillating between the one and the other, according to his current desires and circumstances. Cressida also succumbs to her desires but her behavior is governed more by calculation. She tells us frankly about her experience of the inconstancy of men, with the result that, like Aristotle’s older man who has seen many things go wrong, she is less hopeful for the future and more suspicious.5 Because it is the Trojan and not the Greek side that is destroyed by the decision to fight for Helen, this chapter considers Shakespeare’s discussion of the Trojan court in particular as emblematic of the difficulties encountered by political regimes in which passion and pride, not reasonable laws and wise leadership, prevail. The argument of this chapter proceeds by examining first Shakespeare’s presentation of Troilus’s youthful eros and love of honor, and how they mirror the ethos of the Trojan regime and its leaders, Paris, Hector and Priam. Then, the chapter will consider the character of Cressida. She is reviled for her infidelity but perhaps she is no more fickle than Troilus. Cressida trades her heart for security, but Troilus risks the good of his state for an empty glory and a kiss. In the end, Shakespeare shows us through the characters of Troilus and Cressida how the privileging of the passions over reason, and private motives over the public good lead inevitably to the destruction of Troy.
Shakespeare’s Prologue enters the scene armed for battle, to explain the causes of the Trojan war, speaking in a mighty Homeric manner of the Greek “princes orgulous … their high blood chafed,” gathered in a great and serious cause to pursue “cruel war” against the strong walls of Troy (Prologue.1–8).6 And yet we learn that the cause of the war is no great affair of state, not a territorial dispute, nor a clash of political principles, but the refusal of the Trojans to return “the ravished Helen, Menelaus’ queen,” who was abducted from Sparta and who now “with wanton Paris sleeps” (Prologue.9–10). The Prologue suggests that Helen has been abducted against her will from Sparta. The Greek princes, banded together in a moment of unity, have traveled to Troy to take Helen back by force. The Prologue, thus, informs us that the causes of the Trojan War are rooted in the human passions, in Paris’ unbridled erotic desire, and in the desire for honor on both sides, the Trojan desire to defend the treasure they have taken, and the Greek desire to restore to King Menelaus what is his and defend Greek honor.7 As a result, we are left to doubt from the start that, despite the high spirits with which the conflict began, its cause is indeed worth “the chance of war” (Prologue.31).
Our impression from the Prologue that the war’s worth is questionable is immediately reinforced by our introduction to Troilus. Homer mentions Troilus once and only briefly, as one of the noblest of Priam’s sons, “whose delight was in horses.”8 Shakespeare makes more of Troilus as a passionate and spirited young man who represents the two sides of Troy: he is a lover like his “wanton” brother Paris, but, like Hector, also a lover of honor. Later in the play, Ulysses, who proves to be a wise judge of character, comments on Troilus’ nature to Agamemnon. He is
… a true knight,
Not yet mature, yet matchless firm of word,
Speaking in deeds and deedless in his tongue;
Not soon provoked, nor being provoked soon calmed;
His heart and hand both open and both free.
For what he has he gives; what thinks, he shows;
Yet gives he not till judgement guide his bounty,
Nor dignifies an impair thought with breath;
Manly as Hector, but more dangerous … (IV.v.96–105)
Ulysses observes that Troilus possesses the noble and bold qualities of youth that make him both an admirable and dangerous opponent. Like the noble young man in Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Troilus is open and trusting because he has not yet been cheated. He is a lover of honor because he desires distinction and even superiority. But when slighted or betrayed, as Troilus is by Cressida, he is driven to great indignation at the injustice that he suffers. In fact, Troilus’ one experience with betrayal is enough to undermine his innocence. Ulysses judges that Troilus has great potential for valor and even careful judgment but he also sees the force of Troilus’ youthful passions, which drive him to pursue his decisions, once taken, with fierce determination.9 He evaluates Troilus as more dangerous than Hector because once provoked, he is not soon calmed. Aristotle explains that the combination of hot temper and a sanguine view of the future make the young more courageous for: “the hot temper prevents fear, and the hopeful disposition creates confidence.”10 Shakespeare illustrates this point through the contrast between Hector and Troilus on the battlefield: whereas the gentlemanly Hector will pause to allow his fallen opponents to fight another day, prolonging the sport of war, Troilus will fight to the end. Ulysses, who has a reputation for deception and scheming, has clearly judged that Troilus’ youthful valor could be of use to him in his plan to bring the Trojan War to a speedier conclusion.11
Troilus is the first character we meet in Troilus and Cressida. We learn from Troilus from the start that he is not “master of his heart” (I.i.5). He is so much in love that he can do little but think of “fair Cressida” (I.i.32), the woman of his desires, who is “stubborn-chaste against all suit” (I.i.93). Shakespeare uses his portrait of Troilus as a young man unable to govern his desires as emblematic of the Trojan War, a war instigated by the abduction of a woman by an ardent young prince. It is, furthermore, significant that Troilus’ declaration of love for Cressida focuses on her physical beauty (I.i.50). When Troilus describes his frustrated sexual longing for Cressida to her uncle Pandarus, he imagines her in the most exotic of settings: “Her bed is India; there she lies, a pearl. / Between our Ilium and where she resides./ Let it be called the wild and wand’ring flood” (I.i.94–98). Allan Bloom argues that Troilus has the examples before him of durable marriages, those of Priam to Hecuba and Hector to Andromache, but it is the example of Paris and Helen that looms large for him.12 Young men, Aristotle explains, are particularly swayed by their sexual desires, concerning which they exhibit no self-control. Aristotle explains these desires as “changeable and fickle,” violent while they last, but quickly over.13 Troilus’ youthful inclinations are reinforced by the standard set by Paris and Helen, and supported by the entire city of Troy, which celebrates the indulgence of the passions (II.i.173–90).
The immoderate nature of Trojan leadership is reflected further in Troilus’ behavior. We learn from Troilus that he is so distracted by his unrequited love that he has remained within the walls of Troy that day, feeling unable to fulfill his responsibilities on the battlefield against the Greeks. While Troilus is under the soft influence of love, he elevates the private above the public; the war against the Greeks seems of no great importance to him. He asks: “Why should I war without the walls of Troy that find such cruel battle here within” (I.i.2). For him, the alarum and sounds of the war are “ungracious clamors” and “rude sounds” (I.i.93). “[M]ad in Cressida’s love” (I.i.53), it appears to him, there are “fools on both sides” and that it is madness to paint Helen with their blood each day. Troilus insists he cannot fight for Helen who, he complains, “is too starved a subject for my sword” (I.i.94). Here, we meet the amorous Troilus, who resembles more the erotic Paris and less the honor loving Hector. Hector too has private doubts about the war but he is a man who values his honor above all else, even above truth, a fact he concedes in the Trojan War council, and apparently above his love for his wife, who is unable to persuade him to remain home from battle on the day of his death (II.ii.189). By contrast, Paris eschews honor for eros. He thinks little of abdicating his responsibility on the battlefield, to idle away the hours with Helen (III.i.130). The fact that their lusty deed is the immediate cause of the war seems not to weigh heavily upon Paris or Helen, whose participation in the affair seems more voluntary than the Prologue suggests. Paris tells Helen that he loves her “above thought,” a love in no way subordinated to or moderated by reason, or even honor (III.ii.158). Shakespeare fashions the erotic side of Troilus in Paris’ image to demonstrate how seductive and destructive the example set by Paris is of the common good. For while Paris’ slavery to his passion has led Troy to war, his passion keeps him from defending it. If Troilus and others follow Paris’s erotic example, the battlefield will be empty and Troy undefended. It may be due to some awareness that Hector fights to defend his eros that Paris entreats “Sweet Helen … To help unarm our Hector,” with her “white enchanting fingers” (III.ii.143–45). Perhaps it is his hope that Helen will persuade even Hector of her worth to Troy.
Shakespeare indicates, however, that the doubt Troilus expresses concerning the worthiness of the war’s cause, the defense of Helen, raises pressing questions. Why should Troilus risk his life on the battlefield for Helen when it is only Paris who benefits intimately from Troy’s possession of her? Why should Troilus not devote his attention to the pursuit of his own love for Cressida? In fact, why should the men of Troy generally risk their lives, and indeed the very existence of the city of Troy, just to keep Helen for Paris? Even if the city perceives Helen not just as a lover of Paris, but as a beautiful ornament adorning the whole city, should this suffice to justify the risks and sacrifices involved in her defense?
Despite the serious questions raised by the opening scenes, it is noteworthy that the tone is rather light and even comic at times. It stands in sharp contrast to the solemn epic character of the prologue, not to mention Homer’s Iliad. Shakespeare’s immediate purpose is, no doubt, to expose the youthful self-dramatization of Troilus’ young passion but what accounts for the continuation of this comic air deep into the play, especially on the Trojan side? In fact, it is not clear from Shakespeare’s account that any of the war’s participants take the fighting and winning of the war very seriously. Agamemnon informs us that the war has endured for seven years and yet the Greeks have so far fallen short in their purpose (I.iii.12).14 The result is an army disgruntled to the point that they are willing to participate in the deceptions of Ulysses to provoke Achilles’ reentry into battle.
On the Trojan side, we have observed in Troilus a certain insouciance about the course of the war perhaps because while the Greeks have shed some blood, they have not yet done lasting harm to Troy. When Aeneas encounters Troilus within the city’s walls, he encourages him to take to the battlefield where “good sport is out of town today!” Troilus, in response, surprises us by his instant willingness to abandon his romantic brooding to pursue “sport abroad” with Aeneas (I.i.112). Shakespeare mocks the determination of the knightly Trojan and Greek aristocrats to fight a serious war over a woman, however beautiful, for sport and honor, while apparently putting all other reasonable political considerations aside. The political realm in Troy is dominated by the private goods of eros and honor and not the public good. Troilus’ character and actions reflect these priorities.
Shakespeare brings the nature of political rule in Troy directly under scrutiny with his presentation of the Trojan War council. King Priam opens the session with the most recent proposal from the Greek camp. If the Trojans agree to return Helen,
… all damage else,
As Honor, loss of time, travail, expense,
Wounds, friends, and what else dear that is consumed
In hot digestion of the cormorant war,
Shall be struck off … (II.ii.3)
In return for Helen, the Greeks will end their rapacious war and forget all offense. It seems reasonable that without offering an opinion of his own, old Priam should first solicit counsel from Hector, the first soldier among the Trojans.15 Hector prefaces his advice with the disclaimer that “no man lesser fears the Greeks” than he does, so concerned is he with the preservation of his reputation for fearless courage in battle. Nevertheless, Hector presents himself initially as the voice of prudence on the Trojan council when he explains that “modest doubt is called / The beacon of the wise” (II.ii.15–16). Hector very reasonably advocates the return of Helen, arguing that she is neither worth the sacrifice of the lives she costs to keep, nor the great risk of destruction to Troy. And so, it is still more puzzling that, despite his sound and prudent counsel, Hector concludes with a question that opens the matter up for debate, with the invitation to Troilus and Paris to persuade him that Troy should not return Helen: “What merit’s in the reason which denies/ The yielding of her up” (II.ii.24)?
Troilus had complained to Pandarus that at “Priam’s royal table” he struggled to conceal his love for Cressida from the judgment of Hector and Priam (I.i.27). His behavior at the war table echoes Aristotle’s description in the Rhetoric of the young man’s moral and emotional qualities: the young “are shy, accepting the rules of society in which they have been trained, and not yet believing in any other standard of honor.” In addition, Troilus displays the “exalted notions” about noble deeds that Aristotle attributes to youth, who “have not yet been humbled by life or learnt its necessary limitations.”16 The result is that under the influence of his immediate social circumstances and in the absence of his lover, Troilus no longer appears pacified by Cressida’s love but instead, in response to Hector’s challenge, argues vigorously in favor of continuing the war against the Greeks. At court, Troilus endeavors to reconcile the private good of Paris with the public good of Troy. He argues that it is not merely the possession of Helen, but the honor of Priam and Troy which are at stake in this war. When Hector reasserts that Helen “is not worth what she doth cost / The holding,” Troilus responds “What’s aught but as ’tis valued” (II.ii.51–53)? Men assign value in response to their desires and attachments, according to Troilus. The passions are the source of human loyalty and nobility. Reason is the stuff of ignoble calculation and base self-preserving interest. Because the Trojans as a whole have decided that Helen is of value to them, a value confirmed by the Greek determination to launch “above a thousand ships” for her recapture (II.ii.82), they must continue the fight for her no matter what the cost. In response, Hector argues that worth is not relative to the “particular will” of the “prizer,” the individual who places value, but that the nature of each person or thing determines its value objectively. To proceed as Troilus suggests, is “mad idolatry.” Hector’s argument is that Troy can rationally calculate Helen’s value and decide whether her worth is equal to the dangers Troy endures to possess her. The difficulty is that the argument over Helen’s worth is ultimately beside the point: neither Troilus nor Hector truly values Helen but only the honor the possession of her represents.
We see, then, that the Trojan warriors fight for the Greek Helen as “a theme of honor and renown / A spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds” (II. ii.201–2). Troilus has, as Aristotle would say, “exalted” ambitions for Troy. If the Trojans beat down their Greek foes, Troilus believes “fame in time to come will canonize” the Trojans and Troy will win eternal glory by defeating Greece (II.ii.202).17 Troilus argues that the defense of Helen provides a means to achieving this great fame and glory for Troy. Richards argues that Troilus here becomes “the reflective apologist of Honor, a theme and cause … in which he easily triumphs over Helenus … and even over Hector himself.”18 But why does Troilus link honor and immortal fame? Are the valiant and magnanimous deeds done to keep Helen and win honor truly noble, especially if the possession of her is itself unjustified? And do honor and immortal fame ensure the happiness of the individual or the good of the state?
The answer to this last question is elucidated by Achilles’ reflections in Homer’s Odyssey on his premature death. Achilles casts doubt on the value of immortal fame when Odysseus (Shakespeare’s Ulysses) later encounters him in Hades. Odysseus praises Achilles’ godlike honor among the Greeks and his power over the realm of the dead. But Achilles tells him that he “would rather follow the plow as a thrall to another man, one with no land allotted him and not much to live on, than be a king over all the perished dead.” Languishing among “the senseless dead men,” Achilles is apparently less enthusiastic about immortal glory than he was in life.19 Homer’s Achilles concludes that the imagined good immortal glory brings is illusory; perhaps a life well-lived consists in private happiness, if not obscurity. For his part, Aristotle argues that honor is not worthless when it is the goal of truly courageous deeds; truly courageous men act as the circumstances and courage demand in order to achieve a noble end regardless of the honor they receive, while it is those who care about reputation and the avoidance of shame who value honor most of all.20
Like Homer, Shakespeare exposes the irrational basis of the argument for honor when he has Troilus himself dismiss “fears and reasons” in favor of “Manhood and honour” (II.ii.32). As Aristotle makes clear, the heroic young, like Troilus, are dazzled by the idea of the magnificent at a time when death seems far away. They are unwilling to consider the possibility that eternal glory may be illusory for all but perhaps the great Achilles, who despite his after-death misgivings, certainly achieved immortal fame. Troilus’ argument is empty of compelling “reasons,” as his brother Helenus points out, and does not answer, but merely dismisses as unmanly, Helenus’ most vital question: “Should not our father bear the great sway of his affairs with reason” (II.ii.34–35)? Troilus’ response to Helenus shares something with the Aristotelian gentleman’s argument for virtue: he asserts simply without further explanation that the Trojans fight for honor for its own sake and that it is noble to do so.21 Like Aristotle’s young man from the Rhetoric, Troilus “would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones.”22 But a courageous man who performs a truly noble deed always acts in the right way and as reason directs him, according to Aristotle.23 As Bloom points out, however, reason does not fare well in the Trojan court where what is perceived as noble and beautiful, rather than what is rational and good for the city, receive the highest regard. Bloom argues that Troilus “stands foresquare for the noble and the splendid and seems certain that they cannot defend themselves against reason, if reason is credited. Reason cannot prove that the sacrifice of life in defense of a woman’s honor is preferable to safety and comfort.”24 But does the rejection of what Troilus considers base expedience and utilitarianism leave noble, irrational self-aggrandizement or even self-sacrifice as the only political alternative? In an inchoate way, we may respond to Troilus’ passion and determination as admirable but when we consider further that it leads not to the public good at all but directly to the utter destruction of Troy, our admiration diminishes. Reason can defend necessary military action and perhaps even self-sacrifice in a truly noble and good cause but not irrational self-destruction.
Troilus’ passionate and public support for the cause of the war and the pursuit of glory should perhaps surprise us. Earlier we saw that Troilus and Paris, lost in love, neglected the war, but now, we see Troilus seem to forget his desire for Cressida while in pursuit of honor. We had earlier a strong indication of Troilus’ impulsiveness when he abandoned his pining for Cressida for the sport of battle. Here, Hector diagnoses Troilus’ impetuosity as a symptom of his youth. He explains that the superficiality of Troilus’ and Paris’ arguments in favor of the war reveal that they are “not much / Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought / Unfit to hear moral philosophy” (II.ii.165). Because they are informed more by “hot passion of distempered blood” than by a “free determination / Twixt right and wrong” (II.ii.166-171). In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle explains that “a young man is not equipped to be a student of politics; for he has no experience in the actions which life demands of him.” Since a young man is apt to pursue “all his interests under the influence of his emotions, his study will be pointless and unprofitable, for the end of this kind of study is not knowledge but action.” Only a man who has received an all-round education, and who regulates his desires and actions “by a rational principle,” is a good judge of the things he knows.25 Aristotle’s argument is that the inclinations of a young man should not guide the political affairs of the city.
As Hector contends, Aristotle’s accounts in the Ethics and the Rhetoric of the young man’s limitations describe Troilus accurately. Troilus is governed by his emotions. One moment he is wholly ruled by his private desire for Cressida: under the influence of love, the war against Greece pales in importance. The next moment, Cressida is forgotten in his spirited longing for individual honor and “a promised glory” for all of Troy (II.ii.204). Hector’s “discourse of reason” can do nothing to “qualify” or moderate the “madly hot” blood of the “youthful Troilus” (II.ii.113). Troilus is interested not in knowledge, but in arguments that support his call for action. Only as a result of living and experience, as Aristotle suggests, could Troilus learn to govern his emotions and to act with prudence and moderation. Richards argues that Troilus achieves self-government by the end of the play, when he witnesses Cressida’s betrayal of their love vows. Ulysses, following a plan to provoke Troilus’ youthful ire, leads him to the place where, hidden, he watches Cressida choose the attentions and protection of the Greek Diomedes over her love for Troilus (V.ii). Richards points out that when Ulysses suggests Troilus depart from the scene of Cressida’s infidelity, “lest your pleasure should enlarge itself to wrathful terms” (V.ii.38),26 Troilus in due course responds: “Fear me not, sweet lord. / I will not be myself, nor have cognition / Of what I feel. I am all patience” (V.ii.64). Richards’ Troilus is “true” to Cressida and self-controlled in his anguish, but is he self-controlled in his ultimate response to the tragedies that befall him?27
The end of the play signals the end of Troilus’ youthful trust and hopefulness: with Cressida, he suffers his first devastating disappointment: Cressida’s betrayal undermines Troilus’ romantic reveries, and Hector’s death compels him to accept that his great hopes for Trojan glory are illusory. Instead, Troy will be remembered ignominiously for its misjudgment and defeat at the hands of Greece. But Troilus engages in no real reflection in his moment of despair. His quite natural reaction to these first experiences of disillusionment is to seek comfort in personal vengeance against Cressida’s Greek lover, Diomedes, and against the “great-sized coward” Achilles, on Hector’s behalf (V.ii.165; V.x.30). Aristotle tells us that the young overdo everything: “they love too much and hate too much.”28 Similarly, Troilus is not tempered by his experiences but, like Achilles avenging Patroclus’ death, aroused by passionate rage. After observing Cressida with Diomedes, Troilus returns to the battlefield to reinvigorate the action of the war. He chides Hector for his “vice of mercy” for the gentle chivalry with which he permits Greeks felled by his “fair sword” to “rise and live.” When Hector responds nobly that “tis fair play,” Troilus reminds his brother all too ominously that the battle is real:
Let’s leave the hermit Pity with our mothers
And when we have our armours buckled on,
The venomed vengeance ride upon our swords,
Spur them to ruthful work, rein them from ruth. (V.iii.45–49)
Observing Troilus on the battlefield, Ulysses describes his actions:
Mad and fantastic execution,
Engaging and redeeming of himself
With such a careless force and forceless care
As if that luck, in very spite of cunning,
Bade him win all. (V.v.38–42)
When Troilus is on the battlefield, he forgets all pity and prudence in pursuit of victory. It is Ulysses, who has manipulated both the Greek camp and Troilus towards reengagement in the war with the ultimate objective of bringing it to a swift conclusion. Bloom helpfully suggests that Ulysses intentionally demystifies Troilus’ “romantic ideals” by revealing to him the truth of Cressida’s betrayal. Ulysses cruelly compels Troilus to see clearly through the illusion that fighting for love is a wise endeavor. Troilus sees clearly something of which Hector remains unaware to his mortal detriment: wars are not sport but violence undertaken for the sake of victory in a worthwhile cause. It is blindness to this knowledge that leaves the noble Hector susceptible to Achilles’ devious tactics. Shakespeare shows us that Achilles kills Hector in a way that Troilus thinks ignoble and cowardly. We don’t know if Shakespeare concurs with Troilus’ judgment of Achilles’ baseness but he does ask us to consider whether this really matters for, in the end, Hector is dead, Troy is lost and Achilles receives immortal glory for his deeds. Ulysses dangerously calculates that the disillusioning of Troilus will save more Greek lives by ending the war sooner than his jealous wrath will cost.29 Certainly, Troilus’ rage is a predictable response from a young man betrayed by love and distraught by loss but is it the appropriate response of a prince who bears responsibility for soldiers and a city, a duty of which the trusted and wise Aeneas reminds him but to little avail (V.xi.10)? In the end, with Aristotle’s guidance, Shakespeare shows us that the young Troilus is not to blame for Troy’s predicament. Instead, it is the imprudent judgment of Troy’s mature leaders, Priam and Hector, who behave like Aristotle’s young men, which allows the individual pursuit of pleasure and honor to trump the very survival of the city. Troy’s own leaders are thus responsible for Troy’s destruction.
Hector is chief among Troilus’ role models and yet it is Hector who lets Troilus and Troy down most of all. Hector does not follow his own reasonable advice to return Helen to the Greeks and thereby end the war. He argues against Troilus and Paris that Troy’s determination to pursue the war is not only unreasonable, but also unjust. For natural justice demands that all men be given what is owed to them, and a wife belongs legally and morally to her husband. Paris’ abduction of Helen is an erotic indulgence, which offends and corrupts this law of nature, the law that binds together a wife and her husband. As a result, Hector concludes that,
If Helen, then, be wife to Sparta’s king,
As it is known she is, these moral laws
Of nature and of nation speak aloud
To have her back returned. Thus to persist
In doing wrong extenuates not wrong
But makes it more heavy. (II.ii.174–188)
Hector believes that justice and morality are on the side of the Greeks and that it is unjust to keep Helen according to the dual standard of the fixed moral laws of nature and the varying laws of nations. Nevertheless, despite the overwhelming weight of his own argument, Hector unexpectedly agrees to keep Helen and continue the war. Like the young Troilus, he puts truth, reason and the public good aside and places honor, the glory of the battle and the shame of returning Helen, their “joint and several dignities,” above all else (II.ii.188–93). In fact, Hector has a plan predating the war council to achieve the two objectives he craves most of all: a reinvigoration of the action of the war and the consequent opportunity to win individual distinction. So, he has:
… a roisting challenge sent amongst
The dull and factious nobles of the Greeks
Will strike amazement to their drowsy spirits.
I was advertised their great general slept,
Whilst emulation in the army crept.
This, I presume, will wake him. (II.ii.208–13)
Hector’s challenge to awake Achilles is a good idea only if war is for the sake of sport and honor, but not if the objective is justice or victory. It brings us back to Aristotle’s Ethics. Aristotle says that knowledge and reasonable discussions about how to act are useful neither for the impulsive young man, such as Troilus, nor for those who lack self-restraint.30 Hector is capable of exercising sound reason, but his actions are not guided by his reason. Hector’s challenge to the Greeks for an individual duel with their best man, Achilles, reveals his impatience with the truce and an insatiable desire for action and honor. Honor can be a force for moral beauty, and an incentive to noble achievement when sought or awarded in the service of a worthy end. Hector does not believe in the justice of the war or that it brings any good to Troy, which means that he pursues the war for trivial ends, for action and for the accumulation of individual honor.
Aristotle does not describe Homer’s Hector as, strictly speaking, a courageous man; instead, he possesses a characteristic that is most like courage. The truly courageous endure fear and pain and confront the possibility of death for the correct reasons and in the appropriate circumstances. Hector does not have the actual virtue of courage, Aristotle suggests, because he exercises courage for the sake of honor and to avoid shame and dishonor. He adds that men such as Hector are considered courageous most among those where “cowards are held in dishonor and courageous men in honor.”31 Such honor-induced courage is often useful in defense of the city, but is this true in the case of Hector and Troy? Or, does Hector, decent and chivalrous as he is, pursue individual honor to the detriment of the city? Shakespeare’s Troy is clearly a city that rewards military might and displays of valor while reasonable men are, at best, disregarded, if not disdained. Hector displays the courage required of a good citizen but not the virtue of courage required of him as a military leader and a truly noble and good man. Instead, he behaves more like a follower in need of approbation. The result is that the entire city lives and dies under the tyranny of his passions and never receives the prudent guidance it needs.
During the debate over whether to continue the war, we noted that Troilus denounces the “reasons and fears” expressed by Hector about the war as small and petty things which should not weigh more heavily than “the worth and honor of a king” (II.ii.26). When Helenus argues that the king should guide the affairs of state “with reason” (II.ii.35), Troilus contends that “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 crammed reason” (II.ii.46–49). According to Troilus, reasoning is the pastime of unmanly dreamers, of fearful and inactive men. As such, reason is Troilus’ adversary in his argument for continuing the war. The weakness of reason in Troy is indicated by Troilus’ easy victory: his assault quickly silences Helenus, and easily overcomes Hector’s initially rational opposition. King Priam contributes little to the discussion and says nothing at the conclusion of the war council. He thus allows that Troy be governed by private eros, youthful impetuosity and the excessive love of honor, rather than by wise planning and level-headed political leadership. Reason cannot rule when eros and the desire for action and distinction reign supreme. It is noteworthy that when Aristotle explains that the virtuous gentleman will endure his misfortunes gracefully, he identifies Priam as the example of a man whose misfortunes would be difficult to bear.32 Perhaps Aristotle and Shakespeare draw our attention to Priam and Hector to indicate that sometimes we elevate the wrong qualities and invite our own misfortune.
Shakespeare makes clear that the problems confronting wisdom in politics are universal when he introduces us to the circumstances in the Greek camp. Ulysses’ speech at the council of Greek leaders reveals that the Greeks too suffer from unwise and incompetent leadership. The contrast is striking. Hector provides reasonable counsel initially but his ultimate recommendation to continue the war is indicative of Trojan folly rather than a solution to its difficulties. In contrast to Hector, Ulysses provides a careful diagnosis of the malady afflicting the Greek camp which points towards a real solution, the restoration of “reason” as the guide for strength. Victory over the lackluster Trojans has eluded the Greeks only because “The specialty of rule hath been neglected” (I.iii.78). Wise leadership must be cultivated. Ulysses suggests that the natural order of leadership among human beings reflects the natural order of the universe that by necessity observes “degree, priority and place.” When the sun rules the heavens, order is observed in nature. When the planets evade the sun’s rule, evil mayhem prevails, producing plagues, earthquakes and the like (I.iii.85–99). Ulysses contends that like the disobedient heavens, the Greek camp has fallen into disarray by the “neglection of degree” (I.iii.127). The great Achilles lies lazy in bed with Patroclus maligning the leadership of Agamemnon and Nestor and neglecting his own battlefield responsibilities. Their disdain infects the camp as a whole, Ulysses contends, because they mock the Greek war policy as armchair strategy: “bed-work, mapp’ry, closet war.” The real problem that Ulysses perceives is that they value only acts “of hand” but place no worth in “prescience,” counting “wisdom as no member of the war” (I.iii.197–205). They dismiss wise leadership as cowardice and praise manly strength as the only means to success. Of course, in addition to wise leadership, the Greeks are still in need of Achilles’ strength in battle. Ulysses, thus, recommends a plan to shame him into retaking the battlefield. The restoration of “degree, priority and place” in Greek rule requires the surreptitious assertion of Ulysses’ wisdom over both Agamemnon’s poor judgment and Achilles’ irresponsible revolt. Whereas the order of the universe is impersonal and rational, order among human beings calls for the exercise of reason over impetuosity and passion. Ulysses does not speak to the audience in soliloquy, but his manipulative, covert tactics among men suggest that he is not awaiting the intervention of the gods to settle what he considers a frivolous dispute over a wanton creature like Helen. His speech and action reflect his understanding that it is human wisdom which creates order among human beings, according to the standards for degree that nature provides.
The Trojan court and the Greek camp have much in common. The military heroes on both sides, Achilles and Hector, pose a threat to the well-being of their own armies. Neither is dedicated to victory. Achilles is proud and ungovernable. He is concerned not with the Greek cause itself but with the promotion of his own reputation. It is the defense of his rank against Agamemnon’s insults that keep him on the sidelines of the battlefield. Hector, while capable of reason, is also motivated and indeed governed by his desire for honor. Hector is a decent man while Shakespeare’s Achilles is not, but both serve ultimately their own ends over those of the city. The only significant advantage in the politics of the Greek camp over the Trojan court is the cunning and wisdom of Ulysses.
In Troy, the examples of Hector’s personal pursuit of honor and Paris’ reckless eros, unchecked by Priam, set the standard for conduct. We observe the result through the divided behavior of Troilus. Troilus is either hopelessly in love and unwilling to fight on the Trojan battlefield, or he is zealously ambitious for honor. His love of honor might surpass Hector’s in public spiritedness in that he explains it wholly in terms of the glory of Troy and King Priam, but it nevertheless has the effect of leading Troy in the direction of self-destructive tragedy instead of happiness.
Troilus and Cressida’s love story parallels Shakespeare’s account of the Trojan War. Individually, each displays the characteristics of the leading Trojan players in the war. Like Paris and Hector, the younger Troilus is reckless in his love of Cressida and his desire for honor. Cressida, like Helen, the object of a Trojan prince’s affections, becomes a political subject, to be negotiated away. Like Helen, she has only her feminine wiles and beauty at her disposal to assert her power. While in Troy, Cressida seeks to secure Troilus’ love beyond one night’s fulfilled passion through the manipulative strategy of withholding her affection. Troilus pursues Cressida in Troy and in the Greek camp as an exotic and forbidden love but his unwillingness to challenge her exchange for a Trojan knight, when the whole world fights for Helen, raises doubts in Cressida’s mind about how true Troilus is. In the end, Shakespeare shows us that just as Troilus subjected himself partly to political necessity, but even more so to his desire for personal and national glory, in allowing the transfer, Cressida follows a similar necessity and not her heart when she chooses a new Greek lover over Troilus. But Cressida more than Troilus understands and explains to us the sacrifice she is making. The youthful Troilus believes until the end that he can have it all: forbidden love and eternal glory. Shakespeare’s realist about romance here is Cressida. She calculates what is good for her on the basis of reason rather than pursuing passions that aim at potentially destructive illusions of love and honor.
W. W. Lawrence argues that Shakespeare could not make Cressida “pure and noble” with the tradition of Chaucers’ false Cressida so firmly entrenched in the minds of his audience.33 Yet, while Shakespeare may not present an entirely sympathetic Cressida, he ensures that we understand her motivation. Cressida offers explanations for her actions, which are mostly the result of reason and sometimes the result of desire overwhelming reason. Her position in Troy and then in the Greek camp is difficult: her father is a Trojan traitor and he has left her in Troy to fend for herself, with only her lascivious uncle Pandarus to speak for her. Instead of defending her virtue, Pandarus seeks actively to corrupt it by persuading her to satisfy the longings of the amorous Troilus. Even prior to our first encounter with Cressida, we know from the exchange between Pandarus and Troilus that she has resisted Pandarus’ efforts to arrange a meeting for Troilus with her. We soon discover from Cressida that she has purposely concealed her desire for Troilus. In her soliloquy, in which she acquaints the audience with her theory of men and love, Cressida exhibits a certain jaded, worldly wisdom. She has learned that men are not trustworthy in matters of love. “Men prize the thing ungained more than it is,” she explains. Men love women sweetly as long as they are pursued, but not yet caught. Perhaps Cressida’s theory explains the causes of the war: honor is in possession. The Greeks value “the merry Greek” Helen so highly because she is no longer theirs, while the Trojans fight because her possession is insecure (I.ii.105). Once won, Cressida continues, women are no longer prized or sweetly loved. Because “Achievement is command,” Cressida teaches all women who would be loved to hold off revealing the contents of their hearts to lovers (I.ii.280–84). From this, Bloom concludes that Cressida’s speech “is a parody of a serious woman’s reflections on her vulnerability” and “an exercise in sexual economics,” that the “disguising of her desires is only the better to satisfy them.”34 But perhaps Cressida’s reflections on sexual politics are more serious than Bloom allows. Certainly, Cressida is no innocent in matters of love and desire but her speech reveals that she has observed and reflected upon the mores regarding love that prevail in Troy. Her conclusion is that men’s professions of love and fidelity are unreliable and her conduct in the play conforms to the principle implied in that rational observation. It might be accurate to say that Cressida exercises a calculative eros. In a world bereft of real chivalry, she must defend herself through careful speech and calculation.
Nevertheless, the next time we see Cressida, we find that she has succumbed to her “heart’s contents” and agreed to meet with Troilus. Earlier Cressida had acted and spoken with a convincing degree of determination to conceal her affection for Troilus but the force of Cressida’s reason and self-control turn out to be weaker than the power of her youthful passions. Indeed, she tells Troilus candidly, contrary to her own policy regarding men, that she had loved him “night and day for many weary months” but feared that if she were won too easily, he would “play the tyrant” (III.ii.110–11, 115). Despite her fears, however, her thoughts became “like unbridled children, grown too headstrong for their mother” (III.ii.118–19). Cressida recognizes her open confession of love for Troilus as a sign of her imprudence but she admits that her bold actions are born of frustration (III.ii.110, 124–29, 133). She confesses “though she loved” Troilus, she did not woo him because she could not: “I wished myself a man, / Or that we women had men’s privilege / Of speaking first.”35
Cressida longs for the independence that she believes her merit should permit and that men possess. Instead, she finds herself at the mercy of men’s passions and in need of their protection. Cressida rebels against the idea of belonging to another and becoming his dupe or his fool. She confesses her dilemma to Troilus: she is with Troilus but she also seems to predict her departure: “I have a kind of self resides with you, / But an unkind self that itself will leave / To be another’s fool” (III.ii.143). Cressida has clearly understood the conventions of courtly love. It is possible that she is trying to break free of them to establish a rational relationship through an honest assertion of love to Troilus. Nevertheless, she treads with trepidation towards consummation, which she fears will be the death knoll of Troilus’ desire and perhaps also her own. One could say she gives Troilus fair warning.
It may be the anxiety in both Troilus and Cressida that leads them at this point to exchange their vows to be faithful and yet their vows ring of distrust.36 He swears to be true, “As true as Troilus” (III.ii.177). Cressida, for her part, prophesizes accurately that if she is ever false, all false maids will take her name and be called “As false as Cressid” (III.ii.177, 191). But why are they so distrustful? Bloom argues that Troilus trusts Cressida because he is “a very moral man,” but Troilus himself is not entirely innocent in matters of love: as Benedict reminds us in Much Ado About Nothing, Troilus was “the first employer of panders.”37 Troilus has pursued Cressida through a lascivious, obsequious, go-between. Furthermore, he expresses his own theories of love which amount to doubt that women are capable of constancy and yet he hopes that Cressida will match his love with equal “integrity and truth” (III.ii.156–60).38 Cressida, too, has her doubts, we know, for she has also admitted her belief that “to be wise and love exceeds man’s might” (III.ii.152). Cressida suspects that love and reason are incompatible and that men are more often crafty than they are true lovers. What is clear, in the end, is that both doubt the possibility of fidelity in love, perhaps a result of the example set by Paris and Helen, and perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy.
No sooner is the lovers’ first night together over than the news arrives from Aeneas that Priam and the Greeks have agreed on an exchange: the Trojan soldier Antenor for Cressida. Cressida is truly distraught to find that she is to be traded like a pawn to the Greeks and she swears “she will not go from Troy” (IV.ii.91). Again, we sense her frustration with the paucity of tools available to her as a woman. When she looks to Troilus to speak on her behalf, however, she is clearly disappointed. All of Troy fights for the Greek Helen, but Troilus will not speak for the Trojan Cressida. Cressida repeatedly asks Troilus whether she must leave Troy, as if repetition of the question rephrased will bring a new response: “is it true that I must go from Troy?” “What, and from Troilus too?” “Is it possible?” “I must, then, to the Grecians?” (IV.iv.28–54). Troilus’ responses must leave her cold; he too is pained but resigned to the political rules of Troy.39
The question is why Troilus is so compliant with the edict from Priam to exchange Cressida? There are at least two possible reasons. First, the conflict between Troilus’ public silence and what he says to Cressida in private conversation parallels the conflict between public and private goods in the play as a whole. O’Rourke argues that Troilus’ compliance results from “his belief that the political system in which he lives is beyond question.”40 O’Rourke’s point is supported by Aristotle’s argument that the young are unwilling to challenge the rules of the society in which they have been educated.41 Troilus is willing to speak out fiercely at court on behalf of Trojan glory but he is ashamed to defend his private love before Priam and Hector. Instead, he endeavors to hide the liaison from view and promises to meet with Cressida clandestinely in the Greek camp.42
A second possible reason presents itself for Troilus’ silence: with Troilus’ promise to Cressida to “grow friend with danger,” we are reminded of his earlier tendency to imagine Cressida as exotic and unattainable (IV.iv.69). His youthful spiritedness may be attracted to the romantic possibility of an illicit and dangerous erotic pursuit that Cressida’s exile to the Greek camp makes necessary. Troilus perceives love as an incentive for sport and fails to perceive the tension between his pursuit of personal pleasure in the Greek camp and his desire for glory against it. Moreover, none of this is comforting to Cressida and only serves to support her earlier observation that “men prize the thing ungained.” Worse still, Troilus leads her to doubt the quality of his own love with his persistent demands that she be true of heart (IV.iv.53).
With each insistence on her fidelity, Cressida responds with greater concern: “I true? How now, what wicked deem is this?” and “O heavens! ‘Be true’ again?” and finally, “O heavens, you love me not!” (IV.iv.58–82). Troilus reiterates that he will be true but confesses that his own fidelity is like a “vice” or a “fault;” he is incapable of cunning and hence compelled to be “plain and true” (IV.iv.101). One might argue that Troilus’ insistence on this difficult loyalty is admirable in contrast to Cressida’s confessed wandering eye or Achilles’ unprincipled slaying of Hector, but is the only alternative to infidelity and deceit willful noble failure? Troilus’ vows are clearly insufficient to alleviate Cressida’s own insecurity and misery. He has promised to be true but he is the first to fail the love test, it must seem to Cressida. Her obvious pain evokes our sympathy at the time of their parting, though perhaps insufficiently to soften the blow of her later betrayal.
It is paradoxical that although Troilus and Cressida part with desperate promises of fidelity, Troilus’ silence in response to her implicit pleas that he speak up for her serves only to remind Cressida, as Gil argues, “that her entire social viability depends on appealing to powerful male protectors.”43 This scene offers the serious sentiments that Bloom found lacking in Cressida’s earlier reflections but, despite her promise to be true to Troilus, Cressida quickly commits herself to Diomedes, one of the Grecian youths who, Troilus’ fears, will seduce Cressida because they “Are full of quality; / Their loving well composed with gifts of nature, / And flowing o’er with arts and exercise” (IV.iv.75–77). Troilus’ insecurity about how he matches up against the Greeks, who reveal no greater refinement with arts and exercise than do the Trojans in Shakespeare’s play, reflects the shallow rivalry between the two sides that culminates in the war over Helen.
Cressida immediately becomes aware of her precarious position in the Greek camp when upon her arrival Ulysses proposes that Cressida be welcomed and “kissed in general” by all the Greek leaders. The generals line up to take their kisses until she insists that Ulysses beg for his. Perhaps it is in part for this reason that she earns Ulysses’ scorn. He dismisses her as a woman of “wanton spirits” and later comments to Troilus that she “will sing any man at first sight,” a remark made to provoke Troilus’ jealous rage, but perhaps proven untrue by her unwillingness to kiss Ulysses (IV.v.57). Ulysses clearly classifies Cressida as he does Helen, “sluttish spoils of opportunity / And daughters of the game,” the pointless fight for whom keeps him so far away from home from his own virtuous wife, Penelope (IV.v.63–64). In light of such a reception from the Greeks, it may then be rational that Cressida accepts the protection of Diomedes, a “sweet guardian,” who rescues her from the kissing generals (V.ii.9; V.v.53).44 Gil argues that it is surprising to see Cressida struggle so profoundly with her betrayal and that she comes dangerously “close to holding out,” which he believes “would surely be something of a suicidal gesture.”45 Strangely, Cressida seems to agree more with Ulysses: she attributes her betrayal not to fear but to her own weakness and to the weakness of the female sex generally: “Ah, poor our sex! This fault in us I find, / The error of our eyes directs our mind. / What error leads us err. O, then conclude, / Minds swayed by eyes are full of turpitude” (V.ii.106).
Cressida blames her eyes for her betrayal. She argues with herself that her heart is ultimately led by her eyes and her desires, and not by her mind. Should we discount Cressida’s self-assessment? Perhaps she comforts herself with the explanation that her infidelity results from a weakness in the nature of women. Yet, we have observed that in principle she does not expect fidelity from others and that, for the same reason, she may not expect it from herself, despite her heartfelt pledges (V.ii.88). Troilus judges Cressida’s behavior false by the standards of love but perhaps she demonstrates judgment about her own good, given her circumstances in the Greek camp that Hector and the other Trojan leaders lack. It is also true that Troilus, led by Ulysses, secretly watches Cressida’s exchange with Diomedes without acting or speaking to her. Instead, he takes the part of the Greeks: Ulysses, and the scurrilous Thersites who, aside, judges Cressida a “whore” (V.ii.116). Troilus is betrayed by Cressida but in his youthful naiveté also manipulated by the cunning Ulysses who engineers Cressida’s betrayal and, then, deliberately leads Troilus to witness it, apparently to ignite his passion for the battle with the hope of bringing the war more swiftly to an end (V.i.86). Ulysses alone perceives the distortion in Trojan rule and exploits it to conclude the war successfully for the Greeks.
Through Shakespeare’s portrayal of Troilus and Cressida individually we see how the greatest passions may come to rule the souls of human beings. Through their love affair we witness the effects desire may have upon reason and virtue. It is important to note, however, that Shakespeare is not a moral-ist but a philosophic poet. In Troilus and Cressida his philosophic guide is Aristotle. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle explains that pleasure generally accompanies virtue but that the gentleman must conduct himself with regard to pleasure with moderation. The pleasure to which the gentleman may be drawn most of all is that which accompanies honor. For Hector and for Troilus, the attractions of honor are blinding and their reason is weak. This defect in Hector’s reason in particular contributes to the defect of reason in the rule of Troy. Shakespeare’s Troy falls by its own sword; it trivializes the ends of the city and thus sacrifices its true good, its very existence in fact, for light causes. Reason and moderation have no place in the highest towers of Trojan rule. Instead, unrestrained desire, the love of honor and the shame of dishonor hold sway in a manner that distorts political priorities. The priority of defending Helen aims at the glory of Troy but flies in the face of reason. Instead of reason, it is the tyranny of the passions that prevails. It is, thus, the absence of reasonable, prudent, political leadership that leads to the fall of Troy. Hector’s death comes as a tragic shock to the Trojans who had frolicked and dueled their way through the stalemated war. Shakespeare’s point is not to denigrate truly honorable action in a necessary and noble cause, but he judges that there is nothing noble about the Trojan pursuit of war as heroic sport. For this reason, the play is anti-heroic. Hector and Troy are undone by imprudence: gentlemanly chivalry, as Troilus in his darker mood points out, is no match for the desire to win once a war begins.
Troilus and Cressida ends on a still darker note. While the Trojans, led by Troilus, are lamenting the death of Hector, Shakespeare has Pandarus conclude the play with a bawdy little song. Pandarus is a base character who exists solely for the sake of pleasure. In fact, Pandarus seems practically oblivious to the tragic events occurring all around him. In his song, he exhibits only self-concern and the belief that the fall of Troy may be permanent but not the self-indulgence Pandarus represents. Before long, Pandarus will be able once again to practice his trade. The existence of a character like Pandarus, whose purpose is to serve the passions, is a symbol of Troy’s decadence and perhaps the resilience of the passions in general. The fact that Shakespeare has Pandarus conclude the play as he does suggests that he is realistic about the difficulty of subjecting the passions to the rule of reason. Through Ulysses, the chief voice of reason and successful political calculation in the play, however, Shakespeare points to the solution he may have in mind. The Greeks have allowed the love of honor and power to rule without the guidance of wisdom. Thus, they have neglected the proper hierarchy of rule. To restore this, reason must guide and control the mighty and the passionate. Ulysses controls the Greek camp throughout the play, but he must use deception and persuasion to influence the minds of the warriors who pursue their own ends at the expense of a swift resolution to the war. Ulysses, too, has a private end—his desire to return home—but he never sacrifices the Greek objectives to his own desire. He finds a way to make them compatible.
1. All references to the text of Troilus and Cressida, ed. David Bevington (Arden, 1998).
2. James O’Rourke, “Rule in Unity” and Otherwise: Love and Sex in Troilus and Cressida,” Shakespeare Quarterly 43 (1992) 141; Linda Charnes, “So Unsecret to Ourselves’: Notorious Identity and the Material Subject in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida,” Shakespeare Quarterly 40/4 (1989) 423; Daniel Juan Gil, “At the Limits of the Social World: Fear and Pride in Troilus and Cressida,” Shakespeare Quarterly 52/3 (2001) 349.
3. W. Elton does argue that there is “a particular pattern of parallels with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics regarding ethical-legal questions”: “Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida,” Journal of the History of Ideas 58/2 (1997) 331. Elton (331n2) also establishes firmly that Shakespeare had access to Latin and an abridged English version of the Nicomachean Ethics. See also Christopher Crosbie for an explanation of the influence of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in early modern England: “Fixing Moderation: Titus Andronicus and the Aristotelian Determination of Value,” Shakespeare Quarterly 58/2 (2007).
4. Shakespeare relies on the traditional story of Troilus and Cressida, derived from Homers’ Iliad and the contemporary accounts and translations available to him, for example: George Chapman’s translation Seven Books of the Iliad of Homer, Prince of Poets (1598) and William Caxton’s Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, expanded by Benoit de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie, followed by Boccaccio’s Filostrato, which gives us the first full account of the Troilus and Cressida love story, and finally Chaucer’s poem Troilus and Criesyde. On Shakespeare’s sources for Troilus and Cressida, see Bevington 1998, 375.
5. Aristotle, Rhetoric 1390a 4–5.
6. Phebe Jensen, “The Textual Politics of Troilus and Cressida,” Shakespeare Quarterly 46 (1995) 422.
7. James O’Rourke contends that “In a sexual economy the names of master-slave are ‘men’ and ‘women,’ and the greatest prestige accrues to the ‘men’ who can keep possession of the most, or the most valued, ‘women’”: “Rule in Unity” and Otherwise: Love and Sex in Troilus and Cressida,” Shakespeare Quarterly 43 (1992) 143.
8. Homer, Iliad, tr. Richard Lattimore (University of Chicago Press, 1951) XXIV.257.
9. Richards argues that Shakespeare’s Ulysses serves “as head of an Intelligence Service” in the play. As a result, Richards designates him as “the supremely well qualified man to describe Troilus to Agamemnon.” See I. A. Richards, “Troilus and Cressida and Plato,” in Troilus and Cressida, ed. Daniel Seltzer (Signet Classic, 1963) 241–42.
10. Aristotle, Rhet. 1389a25.
11. See Cathy Callaway, “Three Unsworn Oaths,” American Journal of Philology 119/2 (1998) 167.
12. Allan Bloom, “Troilus and Cressida,” Love and Friendship (Simon and Schuster, 1993) 362. O’Rourke notes: “ It has often been noticed that there is no mention of marriage between Troilus and Cressida, but this omission should not be referred to a realistic economy of representation, where it can serve as a source of suspicion about the character of Troilus … the text does not support such a suspicion.” In fact, the “absence of a public contract suggests rather the romantic wager that the couple could sustain itself without the support of the symbolic order that is in fact hostile to it” (1992, 146). It is true that the adolescent sincerity of his love is not in doubt, but Troilus’ language suggests a romantic escapade rather than a lifelong commitment.
13. Aristotle, Rhet. 1389a4–9.
14. The reasons for this are speculative but chiefly the scarcity of money reduced the force size, and compelled the Greeks to pursue piracy and farming as means of support rather than prosecute the war in full force. See Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War I.11.
15. Bloom argues that Priam seems anxious to take the Greek offer to cease hostilities in return for Helen, but the playful tone of his censure of Paris (II.ii.160) calls this into question. Nor does Priam make any effort to influence the outcome of the discussion.
16. Aristotle, Rhet. 1389a29–32.
17. See Pericles’ Funeral Oration for the connection between battlefield honor and immortal glory (Thucydides II.43). See also Plato’s Symposium (208c–d) for Diotima’s lessons to Socrates about the relationship among honor, eros and immortality.
18. Richards 1963, 242.
19. Homer, Odyssey XI.467–540.
20. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1116a25
21. Troilus’ argument seems to undermine the assertion by Gil (2001, 345) that “competition for Helen is merely a vehicle for desire between men,” unless what Gil suggests is that the eros in men culminates in the desire for honor.
22. Aristotle, Rhet. 1389a33.
23. Aristotle, Nic. Eth. 1116b10–15.
24. Bloom 1993, 358.
25. Aristotle, Nic. Eth. 1095a.
26. Ulysses, having judged Troilus’ young and potentially vindictive nature (IV.v.97–113), ascertains his love for Cressida through slyly posed questions (IV.v.278–94) and has Troilus follow his rival, Diomedes to Cressida’s father Calchas’ tent (V.ii.8).
27. Richards 1963, 248–50.
28. Aristotle, Rhet. 1389b1–3.
29. Bloom offers a compelling explanation of the exchange between Achilles and Odysseus in 3.3 in which Odysseus persuades Achilles that the reputation for honor is what counts, through whatever means necessary (1993, 364–65).
30. Aristotle, Nic. Eth. 1095a.
31. Aristotle, Nic. Eth. 1115b, 1116a.
32. Aristotle, Nic. Eth. 1101a.
33. W. W. Lawrence, “Shakespeare’s Problem Comedies,” in Seltzer 1963, 197.
34. Bloom 1993, 352.
35. Cressida is like Beatrice in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, who longs to be “a man” so that she might avenge the villainy against her cousin Hero (IV.i.300–20).
36. Troilus tells the audience he is “giddy” with expectation of the pleasures he anticipates from his night with Cressida but also fearful “that I shall lose distinction in my joys” (III.ii.14–25).
37. Much Ado About Nothing V.ii.31.
38. Bloom 1993, 359.
39. Linda Charnes argues (1989, 423) that Troilus “hurries away from Cressida after their love making” and “immediately accepts the verdict that she must go to the Greeks,” because he knows how the story ends: Cressida will betray him; hence, he is enervated by this self-conscious knowledge. But while Shakespeare is working within a tradition, he is a critic of that tradition.
40. O’Rourke 1992, 152.
41. Aristotle, Rhet. 1389a27–28.
42. Gil argues (2001, 349) that “Like Troilus, Cressida experiences desire as dangerous to her social standing and dignity.”
43. Gil 2001, 349.
44. Note that Thersites, “a deformed and scurrilous Greek,” who plays the wise fool in the Greek camp, observes that “Diomed’s a false-hearted rogue, a most unjust knave,” who will not keep his word to anyone. Thersites concludes his remarks with the observation that in the Greek camp, much like in Troy, there is “Nothing but lechery! All incontinent varlets!” (V.i.86–96)
45. It is also worth noting that in contrast to Shakespeare’s Lucrece’s choice to avenge her rapist politically and defend her honor and virtue personally through suicide, Cressida makes the private choice for survival (V.i.250).