Troilus and Cressida
Shakespeare’s tragicomedy of an aimless love in the midst of a futile war may be the last play he wrote before the death of Queen Elizabeth. It was entered in the *Stationers’ Register in February 1603, and must have been written after 1598, when one of its sources, George *Chapman’s Seven Books of the Iliads of Homer, was published: its armed Prologue is probably an allusion to Ben *Jonson’s Poetaster, acted in 1601, and since metrical tests place it after Hamlet and Twelfth Night but before Measure for Measure and Othello its likeliest date of composition is 1602.
Text: This ambiguous play has a thoroughly ambiguous textual history. Despite its 1603 entry in the Stationers’ Register, the play appeared in *quarto only in 1609, in an edition (set from Shakespeare’s *foul papers) which exists in two contradictory states: one promises on its title page that it prints Troilus and Cressida ‘As it was acted by the King’s Majesty’s servants at the Globe’, while the other not only omits this claim but adds an epistle to the reader which instead states that the play has never been acted at all (‘you have here a new play, never staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar’). This circumstance has led to a profusion of hypotheses about the play’s early history, including the theory that it was written for private performance, perhaps at one of the Inns of Court, and a conjecture that performance was forbidden because Shakespeare’s portrait of Achilles was perceived as a reflection on the Earl of *Essex. It is always possible, however, that whoever wrote the 1609 epistle to the reader had merely been misinformed about a play acted seven years earlier, or was deliberately lying in the hopes of selling a play which had been acted at the Globe but had not been popular. The circumstances in which the play reappeared in the *Folio are no less striking: the play was to be reprinted from the quarto, but was apparently withdrawn due to difficulties in securing the copyright (and its intended place in the volume was filled by Timon of Athens). However, at the last minute (too late for it to be listed on the Folio’s contents page) clearance was obtained for Troilus and Cressida, and so was a theatrical manuscript of the play, and it was squeezed into the volume, its text set from a copy of the quarto annotated by reference to this promptbook. The very existence of such a manuscript shows that the play had been acted, by 1623 at least, though the more than 500 substantive changes between quarto and Folio texts suggest that at some time Shakespeare had a number of second thoughts, including the addition of a prologue and the deletion of Pandarus’ epilogue (reproduced from the quarto, though apparently marked for omission). Although the quarto calls it the ‘History’ or ‘Famous History’ of Troilus and Cressida, and its prefatory epistle describes it as a witty comedy, the Folio prints it among the tragedies: commentators have been puzzling over how to understand the play’s tone and genre ever since.
Sources: Shakespeare’s chief source for the love plot was *Chaucer’s masterpiece Troilus and Criseyde, his reading of it perhaps coloured by Robert Henryson’s sequel The Testament of Cresseid, in which Cressida, deserted by Diomedes, becomes a leprous beggar (mistakenly attributed to Chaucer in Thynne’s 1532 edition of his collected works). The play’s depiction of the Trojan War freely blends and modifies elements from a number of different accounts: George Chapman’s translation Seven Books of the Iliads of *Homer (from which Shakespeare drew the character of Thersites, though not his actions); William Caxton’s Recuyell of the Histories of Troy (1475) and John Lydgate’s Troy Book (c. 1412–20), both derived from a common Italian original (these supplied material for most of the play’s battle scenes and the debate in Troy, among much else); and *Ovid’s Metamorphoses (from which Shakespeare derived his opposition between the intelligent Ulysses and the ‘blockish’ Ajax, adding this dimension of Ajax’s character to what is already a compound of two quite different figures in Lydgate, the ill-spoken Oyleus Ajax and the pride-hating Thelamonyous Ajax). Beyond these major sources, Ulysses’ speech on degree (1.3.74–137) draws on Sir Thomas *Elyot’s The Governor (1531), and details of Shakespeare’s depiction of the truce (and Hector’s view of his fellow Trojan princes as unfit for moral philosophy, 2.2.162–6) show the influence of Robert *Greene’s Euphues his Censure to Philautus (1587).
Synopsis: An armed prologue explains that the play begins in the middle of the Trojan War, briefly recounting its cause, Paris’s theft of Menelaus’ wife Helen.
1.1 In Troy, Troilus is impatient with the slow progress of the dilatory and petulant Pandarus, who is supposed to be wooing his niece Cressida on Troilus’ behalf: at first languishing in love-sickness, Troilus eventually goes with Aeneas to join the fighting outside the city walls.
Dorothy Tutin as Cressida, with Max Adrian as Pandarus, in the John Barton–Peter Hall Troilus and Cressida, RSC, 1960: one reviewer described her as a ‘rippling wisp of carnality that is almost unbearably alluring’.
1.2 Pandarus speaks at length of Troilus’ virtues to Cressida, though she feigns indifference: together they watch the Trojan warriors filing back into the city, Pandarus eagerly pointing out Troilus. After Pandarus leaves, Cressida admits in soliloquy that she already loves Troilus but is holding off to increase his sense of her value.
1.3 In the Greek camp Agamemnon, Nestor, Ulysses, Diomedes, and Menelaus discuss the failure of morale which has prevented them from achieving victory despite seven years besieging Troy: Ulysses diagnoses that the Greek army has lost its sense of hierarchy, imitating Achilles, who remains in his tent with Patroclus making sarcastic jokes at the leadership’s expense. Aeneas brings a message from Troy: Hector challenges any Grecian willing to vouch for his mistress’s worth to single combat, a challenge clearly intended for their pre-eminent warrior Achilles. Ulysses convinces Nestor they should rig a lottery to ensure that Ajax fights Hector rather than Achilles, partly so that morale may not be further damaged by the possible defeat of their best fighter, but partly to humble Achilles’ pride.
2.1 The illiterate Ajax beats Thersites for refusing to read him a proclamation about Hector’s challenge: Achilles and Patroclus intervene, enjoying Thersites’ satirical ranting against Ajax until he turns on them. Achilles affects indifference about Hector’s challenge.
2.2 In Troy King Priam and his sons Hector, Troilus, Paris, and Helenus debate the ethics of keeping Helen: Hector argues that she is not worth the casualties the war has already caused, but Troilus insists that they should remain constant to their original purpose. Their sister Cassandra arrives, prophesying the destruction of Troy unless Helen is restored to the Greeks. Troilus, however, is unmoved, and Paris wishes to keep his abducted partner. Hector, though unpersuaded by their arguments, concedes that he too means to maintain the quarrel for the sake of Troy’s prestige, and tells them of the challenge he has sent the Greeks.
2.3 Thersites, still furious at his beating from Ajax, amuses Achilles and Patroclus with his railing. When the other Greek commanders arrive, with Ajax, Achilles withdraws into his tent and refuses to speak with them: meanwhile the commanders flatter Ajax, who grows increasingly proud, to their concealed amusement.
3.1 Pandarus calls privately on Paris, at home at Helen’s insistence, to ask him to excuse Troilus’ impending absence from supper: Paris guesses Troilus has an assignation with Cressida. Helen insists that Pandarus should sing a song, and he does, ‘Love, love, nothing but love’. Helen and Paris go to help unarm Hector after his day’s combat.
3.2 Troilus waits in the orchard while Pandarus fetches Cressida, giddy with anticipation: Pandarus embarrassingly brings the couple together, encouraging their kisses. Before Pandarus takes them indoors to a bedchamber, each of the three makes a promise: Troilus that faithful lovers shall in future be called ‘as true as Troilus’, Cressida that if she be false to him faithless women shall be called ‘as false as Cressid’, and Pandarus that all goers-between shall be called ‘panders’ after him.
3.3 In the Greek camp Cressida’s father, the defector Calchas, requests that Cressida should be brought from Troy in exchange for a Trojan prisoner, Antenor: Agamemnon agrees. The Greek lords process past Achilles’ tent, pretending not to be interested in him: after their departure Ulysses lectures Achilles about humanity’s disregard for past achievements compared to its enthusiasm for present deeds, however trifling by comparison, and reveals that the commanders know that the reason he has been refusing to fight is a liaison with one of Priam’s daughters, Polyxena. After Ulysses leaves his arguments are seconded by Patroclus: a troubled Achilles sends Thersites to request that Hector should be invited to visit his tent after his combat with Ajax.
4.1 Early in the morning Diomedes arrives in Troy to fetch Cressida and is conducted towards her lodging by Aeneas and Paris.
4.2 Troilus and Cressida, tenderly parting, are interrupted first by a coyly mocking Pandarus and then by the arrival of Aeneas, who privately tells Troilus that Cressida must go to the Greeks.
4.3 Pandarus tells a distraught Cressida the news.
4.4 Troilus is sent to fetch Cressida.
4.5 Troilus and Cressida say their private farewells in haste and distress, Troilus upsetting Cressida further by telling her to be true; they exchange tokens, a glove and a sleeve, before Diomedes arrives with Paris and Aeneas. Diomedes offends Troilus by offering to be Cressida’s protector as the party sets out for the city gate.
4.6 The Greek lords await Hector’s arrival to fight with Ajax: when Diomedes brings Cressida, they each try to kiss her in turn, though she refuses Menelaus and also Ulysses, who after her departure accuses her of sluttishness. The Trojan party, including Troilus, arrives.
4.7 Hector breaks off his combat with Ajax on the grounds that they are cousins. He is formally introduced to each of the Greek leaders: Achilles insolently says he is considering where he will mortally wound Hector, and promises to fight with him the following day. Agreeing that their truce will last until then, all leave for Agamemnon’s tent except Troilus and Ulysses: Troilus asks Ulysses to take him later to Calchas’ tent.
5.1 Achilles reads a letter from Polyxena forbidding him to fight the following day while Thersites accuses Patroclus of being Achilles’ catamite. After supper Hector is brought to Achilles’ tent by the Grecian lords: Ulysses and Troilus follow Diomedes towards Calchas’ tent, and Thersites in turn, anticipating mischief, follows them.
5.2 Concealed with Ulysses, Troilus watches in horror as Cressida flirts uneasily with an insistent Diomedes, to whom she eventually gives the sleeve Troilus gave her: after Diomedes leaves she speaks in dismay at her own inconstancy. Unseen, Thersites comments cynically on the whole interview. After Cressida departs, Troilus rages, unable at first to accept the truth of what he has seen, and vows to kill Diomedes in the next day’s battle.
5.3 The following morning Andromache, joined by Cassandra and later Priam, begs her husband Hector not to fight, convinced he will be killed: he himself tries to persuade Troilus to stay in Troy, but both men leave for the battle, Troilus after tearing up a love letter from Cressida delivered by the ailing Pandarus.
5.4–9 In the battle, punctuated by Thersites’ commentary, Troilus fights Diomedes: Nestor sends the body of the slain Patroclus to Achilles: and Achilles at last rejoins the fighting, determined to kill Hector. After Troilus drives back both Ajax and Diomedes at once, Achilles and Hector duel: Hector bests Achilles, who leaves. Hector pursues and kills a splendidly armed Greek while Achilles instructs his Myrmidon troops to surround and kill Hector. Thersites’ enjoyment of a duel between Paris and Menelaus is interrupted by Margareton, a bastard son of Priam, whom he flees. As it grows dark, Hector unarms, alone: Achilles has his Myrmidons kill him, and they leave to tie Hector’s body behind Achilles’ horse and drag it around the battlefield.
5.10 The Greeks, learning Achilles has killed Hector, are convinced their ultimate victory is inevitable.
5.11 Troilus brings Paris, Aeneas, and others the news of Hector’s death, consoled only by thoughts of vengeance. (In the quarto he is then accosted by Pandarus, whom he shuns, and Pandarus speaks an epilogue, lamenting how bawds are reviled by their post-coital customers: he anticipates his own imminent death from venereal diseases, which he proposes to bequeath to the audience.)
Artistic features: Troilus and Cressida has an unusually arcane and learned vocabulary (some of it legal), and a penchant for set-piece displays of rhetoric, which have sometimes been adduced in support of the theory that it was written for the Inns of Court. The play’s scepticism about all forms of chivalric idealism, most obviously expressed by the cynical Thersites (who reduces the epic of Troy and the love of Troilus and Cressida to ‘wars and lechery’), has led some to see it as merely a satirical, anti-heroic burlesque, but Shakespeare’s compassion for his characters—most obviously the lovers, who for all their failings are given one of the most moving valediction scenes in the canon—remains as evident as always.
Critical history: Although Ulysses’ speeches on degree, and on the need for perseverance (‘Time hath, my lord, | A wallet at his back…’, 3.3.139–84), were often anthologized among Shakespeare’s beauties (and are still sometimes quoted, misleadingly, as unmediated expressions of Shakespeare’s own views), the play as a whole was generally regarded with baffled dislike until the middle of the 20th century. *Dryden, prefacing his 1679 adaptation, laments that Shakespeare’s style is ‘so pestered with figurative expressions that it is as affected as it is obscure’, and his equal objections to the play’s characterization and plotting are made clear by his alterations to them: his Troilus resists Cressida’s removal to the Greek camp, and his misunderstood Cressida (though she humours Diomedes) is faithful to him throughout, eventually killing herself to prove it. Dr *Johnson had little sympathy for either Cressida or Pandarus, whom he thought ‘detested and contemned’ by all readers, and his views were echoed by 19th-century commentators horrified by the play’s cynicism and sexual indelicacy: as late as 1924 Agnes Mure Mackenzie (in The Women in Shakespeare’s Plays) could describe Troilus and Cressida as ‘the work of a man whose soul is poisoned with filth’. Mackenzie is one of several early 20th-century critics (among them *Chambers and Frank *Harris) who attempted to explain the play, like Timon of Athens and the other *‘problem plays’, as the morbid symptom of a personal crisis, while others tried to excuse it as Shakespeare’s contribution to the ill-natured *‘War of the Theatres’. By the 1930s, however, these approaches were already giving place to a very different estimate of the play’s artistic success. In the era of high *modernism the play’s difficulty, intellectuality, and frank, Donne-like concern with sexuality made it a favourite with academic critics, among them George Wilson *Knight and Una Ellis-Fermor, and its depiction of a pointless but apparently unstoppable war helped preserve its position in the academic canon through the era of Vietnam. Its reflections on time and the mutability of personal identity have been much studied, while *feminist criticism has been particularly interested in Cressida, a heroine who seems to transact her own personal life outside the normative categories of ‘maid, widow, or wife’.
Stage history: No records survive of pre-Restoration performances, and though Shakespeare’s original may have been revived at *Smock Alley in Dublin in the 1670s, in England the play would only be seen in Dryden’s tidy version (performed with reasonable frequency between 1679 and 1734) before the 20th century. Even Dryden’s version was most praised for its new scenes, notably a quarrel and reconciliation between Troilus and Hector and a rhetorical confrontation between Troilus and Diomedes. The original was first revived in Munich in 1898 (played, by an all-male cast, as a blackly comic skit on Homer) and other German productions followed. The play was at last revived semi-professionally, to an unconvinced London audience, in 1907, and a similar venture by William *Poel in 1912–13 is remembered only for the young Edith *Evans’s coquettish Cressida. The *Marlowe Society produced the play in Cambridge in 1922, where its perspective on war was received sympathetically by the First World War veterans in its audience, but the first fully professional English production, at the *Old Vic the following year, was a critical failure. More successful, however, was a modern-dress revival at the Westminster theatre in 1938, and since the Second World War the play has been revived frequently, becoming something of a directors’ favourite. Tyrone *Guthrie’s 1956 Old Vic production was the first of many to costume the play on the eve of the First World War, with cavalry sabres about to give place to machine guns: a notable successor in this respect was the 1985 RSC production, with Juliet Stevenson as a sympathetic Cressida more betrayed by Anton Lesser’s Troilus than vice versa. Dorothy *Tutin had played the role far more flirtatiously in Peter *Hall and John *Barton’s legendary 1960 version at Stratford, with Max Adrian as Pandarus and Denholm Elliott as Troilus: other important revivals include Sam Mendes’s RSC production of 1991, with Amanda Root as Cressida, Ralph Fiennes as a neurotically insecure Troilus, and Simon Russell Beale as the most wonderfully repulsive Thersites in living memory.
Michael Dobson
On the screen: It is a sign of the play’s return to favour since the Second World War that three television adaptations have been made, the first in 1954, a National Youth Theatre production (1966), and Jonathan Miller’s classically dressed BBC TV production (1981).
Anthony Davies