THE MAIN SOURCE of Troilus and Cressida, as we might expect, was Chaucer’s great poem, Troilus and Criseyde.1 But, like all Elizabethans, Shakespeare was also acquainted with Henryson’s bitter sequel, The Testament of Cresseid, in which the heroine suffers as a leper for her unfaithfulness. For the other incidents of the play, those relating to the siege of Troy, Shakespeare consulted the first instalment of Chapman’s translation of the Iliad, published in 1598, and he may have looked at Hall’s translation as well. He also knew part, at least, of Virgil’s Aeneid. He had read Caxton’s Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, translated from the French, and Lydgate’s Troy Book. Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, moreover, deals with some incidents of the Tale of Troy.
The main outlines of the love-plot are to be found in Chaucer’s poem. In Book I, Troilus falls in love with Criseyde and enlists Pandarus’ help to woo her; in Book II Pandarus carries out this plan; in Act I of the play, Troilus is already in love with Cressida, and Pandarus is already engaged in furthering his suit. In Book III the lovers meet at the house of Deiphebus and their love is consummated in Pandarus’ house; in Act III the lovers are united at the house of Pandarus. In Book IV of the poem the Trojans agree to exchange Criseyde for Antenor, Pandarus contrives another meeting, and the lovers part; in Act IV of the play news is brought that Cressida is to be exchanged, and on the morning after the lovers have been united, Diomed arrives to conduct Cressida to the Greek camp. In Book v Criseyde is wooed by Diomed and eventually she yields, she writes to Troilus, and he seeks to drown his grief in fighting and revenge on Diomed; In the last act of the play, Troilus is a witness of Cressida’s unfaithfulness, Cressida writes to him, and he fights desperately, seeking to avenge himself on Diomed, and also to avenge the murder of Hector by Achilles.
The action of the poem, as becomes a narrative, is leisurely. Shakespeare makes it more dramatic by beginning his play just before Cressida yields to Troilus. He ends it only three days later after Cressida has yielded to Diomed. This telescoping has the effect of intensifying Cressida’s unfaithfulness. Chaucer treats his heroine with gentleness and sympathy; she is a young widow, charming, pliable, and timid. Chaucer evades any direct explanation of her unfaithfulness and excuses her as much as he can. We are led to understand that she turns to Diomed, not out of sexual desire, but because she is lonely and isolated in the Greek camp and because she is always tempted to take the line of least resistance. Shakespeare’s Cressida has not been married and she is a coquette by temperament, sharpening the appetite of both men by her tactics. Chaucer’s poem is written in the tradition of courtly love which laid down an elaborate code of behaviour for the lover, especially secrecy and fidelity. The code had nothing to do with the love of husband and wife, and the aim of the man was not marriage but faithful service and, if the lady consented, a love-affair which was frowned upon only if it became public. The basis of courtly love was adultery, because marriages were all of convenience; and there was often a complete separation of love and marital duties.2 Shakespeare wrote his play more than two centuries later, by which time the code of society had changed radically. The Elizabethan writer, whether aristocratic or bourgeois, usually assumed that the proper end of love was marriage. Astrophel felt guilty about his pursuit of Stella and Donne’s persona’s adulteries were meant to shock. The dramatists all frowned on adultery, except occasionally in farcical comedy. Shakespeare was placed in something of a difficulty in dramatizing the story of Troilus and Cressida. On the one hand, Troilus was the pattern of a faithful lover; on the other hand, he did not in any of the sources marry Cressida. Shakespeare clearly retains the secrecy demanded by the code of courtly love, and he never raises the question of marriage at all. One critic has argued that the meeting of the lovers before a witness constituted a common-law marriage, but this appears to contradict the impression one gets not only from this scene but from the whole play. An honest and devoted lover, as Troilus undoubtedly is – he is not the Italianate roué described by Oscar Campbell – one who gives and demands eternal faithfulness, might be expected to marry the object of his love. Shakespeare made the affair clandestine, but nowhere suggests that a prince would be forbidden to marry the daughter of a traitor. He is deliberately vague about Trojan marriage customs: they are different from those implied by Chaucer, but they also differ from the customs current in Elizabethan drama.
Editions of Chaucer in the sixteenth century included Henryson’s sequel, in which Cresseide, after she has been abandoned by Diomed and become the mistress of a succession of Greek warriors, is smitten with leprosy and reduced to beggary. Under the influence of this poem, ‘Cressid’ had become a synonym not merely for an unfaithful woman, but for a harlot. Pistol, with his usual flamboyance, calls Doll Tearsheet ‘the lazar kite of Cressid’s kind’ and Feste mentions that Cressida was a beggar.3 There is one slight indication that Shakespeare had read Henryson’s poem. There Cynthia speaks of Cresseide’s ‘voice sa cleir’; and Cresseide herself speaks of her ‘cleir voice’.4 So in Shakespeare’s play, when Cressida is told that she must go to the Greek camp, she says:
I’ll go in and weep …
Tear my bright hair, and scratch my praised cheeks,
Crack my clear voice with sobs.
(IV. ii. 104 ff.)
The character of Troilus in Chaucer’s poem is very similar to that of Shakespeare’s hero. His prowess as a warrior, second only to Hector’s, is mentioned by both poets, and so too are his faithfulness in love, and his attempt to forget his love in battle. Both hope to be killed. Chaucer’s Troilus cries:
Myn owen deth in armes wol I seche,
I recche nat how soone be the day!
(v. 1718–19)
Shakespeare echoes these words in the line:
I reck not though I end my life today.
(v. vi. 26)
Chaucer’s Pandarus is younger and pleasanter than Shakespeare’s. He is the chief vehicle for Chaucer’s irony and humour, and he brings the lovers together because he is fond of them and wants them to be happy. Shakespeare’s Pandarus also acts without hope of reward, but he gets a vicarious pleasure from the affair, he is sentimental and silly, and he indulges continually in leers and innuendoes. He serves as a bawdy chorus to the love-scenes of the play, and his earthy conception of sex is contrasted with the idealism of the hero. The coarsening of Pandarus was necessary to Shakespeare’s purpose. He is depicted in such a way as to fit the word derived from his name, and also with the less sympathetic portrayal of Cressida. In the scene where Pandarus brings the lovers together, the three characters are presented for a moment as types of faithful lover, wanton, and pander. The primitive morality technique is used by Shakespeare with extreme sophistication to exhibit, as it were, the birth of a legend.5 It should, perhaps, be mentioned that the syphilitic Pandarus of the epilogue is also outside the framework of the play, even though he casts a retrospective light on the character we have seen inside the framework.
Shakespeare’s Diomed is also a coarsened version of Chaucer’s. Whereas in Chaucer’s poem he is a noble warrior who wins Criseyde by his long and eloquent wooing, in Shakespeare’s play he hardly bothers to woo Cressida. He never pretends to love her and obviously despises her. This degrading of Diomed’s character is a corollary to the alteration in Cressida’s. She has to fall to the first man who bothers to seduce her – and the cruder his advances the more violent the contrast between her vows and her actions. One can understand why the New Shakespeare Society was shocked when Bernard Shaw declared that she was Shakespeare’s first real woman.
The general outline of the love-plot is therefore to be found in Chaucer’s poem, but of the four main characters only Troilus is left more or less unchanged, and the atmosphere of the play, as everyone recognizes, is totally different from that of the poem. This is partly due to the accretions of legend, partly to the change of customs and idea in the intervening centuries, partly perhaps to the Inns of Court audience for which the play was probably written, partly to the tone of the plays being written by Jonson and Marston about the same time, and partly, perhaps, to the influence of the War of the Theatres.
For his other plot Shakespeare used at least three sources – Lydgate’s Troy Book, Caxton’s Recuyell, and Chapman’s translation of some books of the Iliad. Lydgate’s poem is very long and somewhat tedious; but Shakespeare would have found in it character-sketches of all his chief personages. Hector, for example, was not merely an outstanding warrior, but also wise and temperate –
Sadde and discret and prudent neuer-the-les.
(II. 4804)
He was magnanimous in battle and wise in counsel:
For he was aye so iuste and so prudent,
So wel avysed and so pacyent,
And so demened in his gouernaunce,
That hym was lothe for to do vengeaunce,
Where as he myght in easy wyse treate,
For to reforme thynges smale and greate;
For lothe he was, this noble worthy knyght,
For any haste to execute ryght,
Or causeles by rygour to condempne.
(II. 1129–37)
Shakespeare mentions that Hector spares his fallen enemies; he refers to his patience ‘as a virtue, fix’d’, and in the council-scene he makes him advise the surrender of Helen because the Trojan case was morally bad. Caxton does not mention these characteristics, though he states that ‘ther yssued neuer oute of his mouthe a vyllaynous worde’ and that ‘ther was neuer knyght better belouyd of his peple than he was’. He also mentions that Hector lisped – a peculiarity Shakespeare had used in his portrayal of Hector.
Caxton says that Helenus was ‘a man of grete scyence [252v] and knewe all the Artes lyberall’. Lydgate adds that he ‘in clergie and science’ was expert, and
toke but litel hede
Of alle the werre, knyghthod, nor manhede.
(II. 4859–60)
Shakespeare also mentions that Helenus is a priest with a dislike of war.
Lydgate and Caxton both refer to Troilus as a second Hector:
And called was Hector the secounde…
Excepte Ector, ther was nat swiche another…
(II. 288, 4895)
In force and gladnesse hee resamblid much to Hector, And was
the second after hym in prowesse.
Lydgate also emphasizes that Troilus
was alwey feithful, iust, and stable,
Perseueraunt, and of wil immutable….
In his dedis he was so hool and pleyn;
(II. 4879 ff.)
and that in battle –
He was so fers thei myght him nat withstonde
Whan that he hilde his bloody swerde on hond.
[bloodly 1513]
So Ulysses, in his portrait of Troilus, mentions that he was ‘firm of word’ and more dangerous than Hector in battle; and Troilus himself remonstrates with his brother for his ‘vice of mercy’, urging his fellow Trojans to ‘leave the hermit Pity with our mother’ (v. iii. 37, 45).
Both Lydgate and Caxton mention two characters of the name of Ajax. Ajax Telamonius has no resemblance to Shakespeare’s character, though in the Iliad he is compared to a mill-ass.6 Lydgate’s Oileus Ajax is large in size,
And of his speche rude and rekkeles:
Ful many worde in ydel hym asterte,
And but a cowarde was he of his herte.
(II. 4578–80)
Shakespeare’s Ajax is not cowardly, but he is described as a brainless, blockish, scurvy-valiant ass, sodden-witted, and slow as the elephant. Lydgate and Caxton both refer to Ulysses’ cunning and eloquence, and Lydgate also mentions his discretion and prudence; but his subtlety and wisdom were proverbial. Both Lydgate and Caxton, unlike Chaucer, speak of Diomed’s lecherous disposition,
lecherous of complexioun,
And had in loue ofte sythes his part,
Brennynge at hert with Cupides darte…
(II. 4618–20)
There are a number of similarities7 between the incidents in Shakespeare’s play and those in the Troy Book. Lydgate mentions an encounter between Hector and Ajax which Hector breaks off when he discovers that he is fighting his cousin, and in the play Hector has only one bout with Ajax for the same reason. Caxton has the same incident (Bullough, VI. 198), and like Shakespeare uses the term ‘cousin-german’. Both Lydgate and Caxton mention Andromache’s dream in which she has a premonition of Hector’s death, and the fruitless attempt of Priam, Cassandra, Hecuba, and Helen to dissuade him from the battle. Both Lydgate and Caxton describe the incidents leading up to Hector’s death – the fight between Hector and Achilles, in which Achilles is worsted, the fight between Hector and the Greek in sumptuous armour – in Lydgate Hector kills him, in Caxton he takes him prisoner – and the killing of Hector, while he is unprepared, by Achilles. Lydgate inserts some moralizing on the sin of covetousness which led to Hector’s death. Shakespeare increases Achilles’ guilt and the horror of Hector’s murder by having Hector disarm Achilles at the first encounter, and by making Achilles and his myrmidons murder Hector, an incident borrowed from the death of Troilus as described by Lydgate and Caxton:8
And afore that Achilles entryd in to the bataylle he assemblid his myrondones And prayd hem that they wolde entende to none other thynge but to enclose troyllus and to holde hym wyth oute fleynge tyll he cam And that he wolde not be fer fro hem. And they promysid hym that they so do wolde. And he smote in to the bataylle…. Than the myrondones … threstid in amonge the troians and recouerid the felde … and sought no man but troyllus, they fonde hym that he foughte strongly and was enclosid on all parties, but he slewe and wounded many. And as he was all allone amonge hem and had no man to socoure hym they slewe his horse And hurte hym in many places And araced of his heed his helme And his coyffe of yron And he deffended hym the beste wyse he cowde. Than cam on Achilles when he sawe troyllus alle naked And ran upon hym in a rage and smote of his heed And caste hit vnder the feet of the horse And toke the body and bonde hit to the taylle of his horse And so drewe hit after hym thurgh oute the ooste.
Lydgate and Caxton both describe Hector’s visit to the Greek camp, and ‘Achilles behelde him gladly, forasmuch as hee had neuer seen him vnarmed’. So in the play Achilles wishes ‘to see the great Hector unarmed’. Lydgate mentions the wounding of Paris by Menelaus, and in the play the incident is referred to by Aeneas. Caxton describes how Diomed fought with Troilus and took his horse, and sent it as a present to Cressida. This incident also appears in the play. Caxton, but not Lydgate, mentions that Achilles had refused to go to battle one day because he was in love with Polyxena and he had promised Priam and Hecuba ‘that he sholde helpe no more the Grekes’. Achilles, in the play, mentions his love of Polyxena and his vow, but it is apparently not his main motive for keeping to his tent.
The debate in Troy about the restoration of Helen is to be found in Caxton, and the arguments used by Hector, Paris, Helenus, and Troilus correspond to those used in the play. But in Caxton the debate takes place before the outbreak of the war. Its position in the play is determined by the position of a similar debate in Book VII of the Iliad.9
E. M. W. Tillyard added a few more parallels with Caxton and Lydgate.10 He suggested that the speech on time seems to be based on Ulysses’ appeal to Achilles in Lydgate’s poem:
By youre manhod, that is spoke of so ferre
That your renoun to the worldis ende
Reported be, wher-so that men wende,
Perpetuelly, by freshnes of hewe
That the triumphe of this highe victorie
Be put in story and eke in memorie,
And so enprented that foryetilnes
No power haue by malis to oppresse
Youre fame in knyghthod, dirken or difface,
That shyneth yit so clere in many place
With-oute eclipsynge, sothly, this no les;
Which to conserve ye be now rekeles
Of wilfulnes to cloude so the lyght
Of youre renoun that whilom shon so bright
(IV. 1770–83)
Tillyard likewise pointed out that Lydgate condemns the Trojan war because of its trivial cause:
We trewly may aduerten in oure thought
That for the valu of a thing of nought
Mortal causes and werris first by-gonne;
Strif and debate, here vnder the sonne,
Wer meved first of smal occasioun,
That caused after gret confusioun,
That no man can the harmys half endite.
(II. 123–9)
Caxton blames Hector for yielding to a request to call off the day’s battle when victory was in his power:
There is no mercy in battaill. A man ought not to take misericorde, But take the victorye who may gete hit.
So Troilus in the play blames his brother for his mistaken chivalry.
These parallels are sufficient proof that Shakespeare made use both of Lydgate and of Caxton. But for many of the incidents and characters Shakespeare must have gone to Chapman’s translation of Homer. Thersites is to be found in Homer, but not in Chaucer, Lydgate, or Caxton. He is thus described in the 1598 edition – there are considerable differences in later editions:
A man of tongue, whose rauenlike voice, a tuneles iarring kept,
Who in his ranke minde coppy had of vnregarded wordes,
That rashly and beyond al rule, vsde to oppugne the Lords,
But what soeuer came from him, was laught at mightilie:
The filthiest Greeke that came to Troy: he had a goggle eye;
Starcke-lame he was of eyther foote: his shoulders were contract Into his brest and crookt withall: his head was sharpe compact, And here and there it had a hayre.
(II. 206–13)
He is not only a filthy deformed railer, but also a coward who weeps when he is chid by Ulysses. Shakespeare keeps these characteristics and even uses the same epithet ‘rank’. Later Thersites says he will croak like a raven, suggested by the opening lines of the above quotation.
The account of the dissension in the Greek army is based on the Homeric account. Shakespeare follows Homer in making Achilles withdraw from the battle through excessive pride, though he omits the reason for his resentment of Agamemnon, and adds the motive of love of Patroclus (derived partially from Homer) and love of Polyxena (derived from Caxton). Shakespeare can be vague about the cause of the quarrel since, as he declares in the prologue, he begins in the middle of the story. But in the first act he shows us the results of the feud, and then passes on to the matter of Book VII, the challenge of Hector to Ajax and the debate in Troy about the restoration of Helen. In Book VII Shakespeare would have found the device of the lottery, though this is Nestor’s suggestion. Shakespeare invents the idea of the manipulation of the lottery by Ulysses and his use of the challenge to arouse Achilles. In all the sources the embassy to Achilles is merely a suit: in the play it is part of Ulysses’ plot, and it is linked with Hector’s challenge. Shakespeare treated the combat between Hector and Ajax differently from any of his predecessors, though the incident itself is a combination of elements derived from his sources. In Book XI Ulysses and Phoenix give advice to Achilles; Shakespeare again strengthens the importance of Ulysses’ part by omitting Phoenix. The death of Patroclus was derived from Achilles Shield (Iliad, XVIII): in Caxton the killing of Patroclus by Hector takes place much earlier and is not related to the slaying of Hector by Achilles in revenge for the death of his friend. Here Shakespeare is indebted to Homer alone.
In depicting Nestor Shakespeare relied on Chapman rather than on Caxton. In his portrait of Menelaus Shakespeare follows Homer’s conception. In his complete translation (though not in 1598) Chapman describes Menelaus as ‘short-spoken after his countrie the Laconicall manner, yet speaking thicke and fast’ (Bk II, Commentarius). Shakespeare’s Menelaus is also laconical. He utters only two words on his first appearance and six on his second.
Certain Homeric details Shakespeare took from parts of the Iliad not yet translated. He might have read the poem in a French or Latin translation, but the treatment of Hector’s dead body by Achilles he could have found in the Aeneid or in a classical dictionary. Achilles surveys Hector in order to find the best place to kill him, very much as Achilles chooses the death stroke in the Iliad (Bk XXII).
Hector’s visit to the Greek camp is derived from Caxton, but it seems to have been amplified from Greene’s collection of stories and debates entitled Euphues his Censure to Philautus (1587).11 In a description of a similar visit to the Greek camp during a truce Greene mentions that Hector walked with Achilles and Troilus with Ulysses, as in the play. The same book contains a discussion on which qualities are most necessary for a soldier – wisdom, fortitude, or liberality. Helenus, in arguing for the necessity of wisdom in a soldier, uses language similar to Ulysses’, when he speaks of the way the Greeks scorn the work of the staff officer:
For suppose the captaine hath courage enough to braue the enemy in the face, yet if hee knew not by a wise and deepe insight into his enemies thoughts, how with aduantage to preuent such ambushes as may be layed to preiudice his army, had hee as great courage as the stowtest champion in the worlde, yet might the defect of wisedome in the preuention of such perills, ruinate both him selfe, his honour, and his Souldiers.
There is another discussion on the question of whether Helen should be restored, in the course of which she is referred to as a gem, a pearl, and as a piece. In Shakespeare’s play Troilus speaks of her as a pearl, and Diomed speaks of her as a piece. Hector’s argument that ‘Nature … hath taught vs … to mayntayne my Brothers deede with the Swoorde, not to allow such a fact honorable, but as holding it princely, with death to requite an iniury’ is not unlike Hector’s attitude in the play. He condemns the rape of Helen, but agrees to continuing the war because it ‘hath no mean dependence upon [their] joint and several dignities’.
Greene mentions Hecuba’s dream that she has given birth to a firebrand; one of his characters criticizes the Trojans for being ignorant of moral philosophy; as Hector accuses his brothers of being unfit to hear it; he mentions the definition of virtue as a mean between two extremes (which is usually thought to be the point of the line ‘Between whose endless jar justice recides’ (I. iii. 119)); he refers to the palace of Ilium (though this is also in Caxton); and he makes Ulysses critical of women: ‘An ounce of giue in a Ladies ballaunce, weygheth downe a pound of loue mee.’ Finally it may be mentioned that one character speaks of beauty as metaphysical, much as Troilus claimed that beauty was an absolute value; Cressida is described as ‘tickled a little with a selfe conceipt of hir owne wit’; and a lustful woman in one of the illustrative tales mislikes ‘hir oldechoyce, through the tickling desire of a new chaunge’. Ulysses, speaking of Cressida, uses the epithet ‘tickling’12 or ‘ticklish’. It may be argued that Shakespeare took a good deal of atmospheric detail from Greene’s book.
In Ulysses’ famous speech on degree Shakespeare appears to have combined13 a number of different sources. From Homer he took the general idea of the speech:
wretch keepe thy place and heare
Others besides thy Generall that place aboue thee beare:
Thou art vnfit to rule and base without a name in war
Or state of counsaile: nor must Greekes be so irregular
To liue as euery man may take the scepter from the king:
The rule of many is absurd, one Lord must leade the ring.
(II. 193–8)
Agamemnon says that the Greeks would have conquered Troy if they had not quarrelled amongst themselves, and Homer also uses the image of bees. The Greeks hastening to the council are compared to tribes of thronging bees.14 So Ulysses in the play asks
When that the general is not like the hive,
To whom the foragers shall all repair,
What honey is expected?
(I. iii. 81–3)
Virgil15 also uses the image of the bees repairing to their hive, and Shakespeare had used it before in Henry V. He was also acquainted with Elyot’s The Governour in which the bee image is explicitly related to the question of order16 and to Ulysses’ speech on the need for order:
A publike weale is a body lyuyng, compacte or made of sondry astates and degrees of men, whiche is disposed by the ordre of equite and gouerned by the rule and moderation of reason…. For as moche as Plebs in latin, and comminers in englisshe, be wordes only made for the discrepance of degrees, wherof procedeth ordre: whiche in thinges as wel naturall as supernaturall hath euer had such a preeminence, that therby the incomprehensible maiestie of god, as it were by a bright leme of a torche or candel, is declared to the blynde inhabitantes of this worlde. More ouer take away ordre from all thynges what shulde then remayne? Certes nothynge finally, except some man wolde imagine eftsones Chaos: whiche of some is expounde a confuse mixture. Also where there is any lacke of ordre nedes must be perpetuall conflicte: and in thynges subiecte to Nature nothynge of hym selfe onely may be norisshed; but whan he hath distroyed that where with he dothe participate by the ordre of his creation, he hym selfe of necessitie muste than perisshe, wherof ensuethe uniuersall dissolution. But nowe to proue, by example of those thynges that be within the compasse of mannes knowledge, of what estimation ordre is, nat onely amonge men but also with god, all be it his wisedome, bounte, and magnificence can be with no tonge or penne sufficiently expressed. Hath nat he set degrees and astates in all his glorious warkes? …
Beholde also the ordre that god hath put generally in al his creatures, begynnyng at the most inferiour or base, and assendynge upwarde: he made not only herbes to garnisshe the erthe, but also trees of a more eminent stature than herbes, and yet in the one and the other be degrees of qualitees; some pleasant to beholde, some delicate or good in taste, other holsome and medicinable, some commodious and necessary… So that in euery thyng is ordre, and without ordre may be nothing stable or permanent; and it may nat be called ordre, excepte it do contayne in it degrees, high and base, accordynge to the merits or estimation of the thyng that is ordred. Nowe to retourne to the astate of man kynde…. It is therfore congruent, and accordynge that as one excelleth an other in that influence, as therby beinge next to the similitude of his maker, so shulde the astate of his persone be aduanced in degree or place where understandynge may profite: which is also distributed in to sondry uses, faculties, and offices, necessary for the lying and gouernance of mankynde….
The populare astate, if it any thing do varie from equalitie of substance or estimation, or that the multitude of people haue ouer moche liberte, of necessite one of these inconueniences muste happen: either tiranny, where he that is to moche in fauour wolde be eleuate and suffre none equalite, orels in to the rage of a communaltie, whiche of all rules is moste to be feared. For lyke as the communes, if they fele some seueritie, they do humbly serue and obaye, so where they imbracinge a licence refuse to be brydled, they flynge and plunge: and if they ones throwe downe theyr gouernour, they ordre euery thynge without iustice, only with vengeance and crueltie: and with incomparable difficultie and unneth by any wysedome be pacified and brought agayne in to ordre. Wherfore undoubtedly the best and most sure gouernaunce is by one kynge or prince… For who can denie but that all thynge in heuen and erthe is gouerned by one god, by one perpetuall ordre, by one prouidence? One Sonne ruleth ouer the day, and one Moone ouer the nyghte; and to descende downe to the erthe, in a litell beest, whiche of all other is moste to be maruayled at, I meane the Bee, is lefte to man by nature, as it seemeth, a perpetuall figure of a iuste gouernaunce or rule: who hath amonge them one principall Bee for theyr gouernour, who excelleth all other in greatnes, yet hath he no pricke or stinge, but in hym is more knowledge than in the residue… The capitayne hym selfe laboureth nat for his sustinance, but all the other for hym; he onely seeth that if any drane or other unprofitable bee entreth in to the hyue, and consume the the hony, gathered by other, that he be immediately expelled from that company…
The Grekes, which were assembled to reuenge the reproche of Menelaus … dyd nat they by one assent electe Agamemnon to be their emperour or capitain: obeinge him as theyr soueraine durying the siege of Troy? … They rather were contented to be under one mannes obedience, than seuerally to use theyr authorities or to ioyne in one power and dignite; wherby at the last shulde haue sourded discention amonge the people, they beinge seperately enclined towarde theyr naturall souerayne lorde, as it appered in the particuler contention that was betwene Achilles and Agamemnon for theyr concubines, where Achilles, renouncynge the obedience that he with all other princes had before promised, at the bataile fyrst enterprised agaynst the Troians. For at that tyme no litell murmur and sedition was meued in the hoste of the grekes, whiche nat withstandyng was wonderfully pacified, and the armie unscatered by the maiestie of Agamemnon, ioynynge to hym counsailours Nestor and the witty Ulisses.
The importance of order is stressed by many authors Shakespeare is known to have read. In Troilus and Criseyde, for example, Chaucer celebrates the power of Love to hold all things together, even to restrain the greedy sea from overflowing – 17
To drenchen erthe and al for evere-mo.
In the Homily on obedience, Shakespeare would have heard order in the state connected with order in the universe, and the dangers resulting from the destruction of order are similar to those stressed in Ulysses’ speech:18
Almighty God hath created and appointed all thinges in heauen, earth and waters, in a most excellent and perfect order. In heauen, hee hath apponted distinct and seuerall orders and states of Archaungels and Aungels. In earth hee hath assigned and appointed Kinges, Princes, with other gouernoures vnder them, in all good and necessary order. The water aboue is kept, and rayneth downe in due time and season, The Sunne, Moone, Starres, Rainebow, Thunder, Lightning, Cloudes, and all Birdes of the aire, doe keepe their order. The Earth, Trees, seeds, plants, herbs, corne, grasse, and all manner of beasts, keep themselues in order, al the partes of the whole yeare, as Winter, Summer, Monethes, nights and dayes, continue in their order: all kindes of Fishes in the Sea, Riuers, and Waters, with all Fountaines, Springes, yea, the Seas themselues keep their comely course and order: and man himselfe also hath all his parts both within and without, as soule, heart, minde, memory, vnderstanding, reason, speech, with all singular corperall members of his bodye, in a profitable, necessary, and pleasaunt order: euery degree of people in their vocation, calling and office, hath appointed to them their duety and order: some are in high degree, some in low, some Kings and Princes, some inferiors and subiects, Priests, and lay-men, Maisters and Seruauntes, Fathers and Children, Husbandes and Wiues, riche and poore, and everyone haue neede of other, so that in all things is to be lauded and praised the goodly order of God, without the which, no house, no Citye, no commonwealth can continue and endure or last. For where there is no right order, there raigneth all abuse, carnal libertie, enormitie, sin, and Babilonicall confusion. Take away Kings, Princes, Rulers, Magistrats, iudges, and such estates of Gods order, no man shall ride or goe by the high way vnrobbed, no man shal sleep in his own house or bed vnkilled, no man shal keep his wife, children, and possessions in quietnes, all things shall be common, and there must needs follow all mischiefe, and vtter distruction both of soules, bodies, goods, commonweales.
Shakespeare had also read Hooker’s treatise Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie (1593), for in the first book, in a context which uses the image of the untuned string and the phrase ‘degrees in schools’ (both used by Shakespeare), Hooker has a famous and eloquent passage on the necessity of Order:
His [God’s] commanding those things to be which are, and to be in such sort as they are, to keepe that tenure and course which they doe, importeth the establishment of Natures Law… And as it commeth to passe in a kingdome rightly ordered, that after a Law is once published, it presently takes effect far and wide, all States framing themselues thereunto; euen so let vs thinke it fareth in the naturall course of the World: since the time that God did first proclaime the Edicts of his Law vpon it, Heauen and earth haue harkned vnto his voyce, and their labour hath bin to do his will: He made a Law for the Raine, He gaue his Decree vnto the Sea, that the Waters should not passe his commandment. Now, if nature should intermit her course, and leaue altogether, though it were but for a while, the obseruation of her own Lawes; if those principall and Mother Elements of the World wherof al things in this lower World are made, should lose the qualities which now they haue; if the frame of that Heauenly Arch erected ouer our heads should loosen and dissolue it selfe; if Celestiall Spheres should forget their wonted Motions and by irregular volubilitie turne themselues any way as it might happen; if the Prince of the Lights of Heauen, which now as a Gyant doth run his vnwearied course, should as it were through a languishing faintnesse begin to stand and to rest himselfe; if the Moone should wander from her beaten way, the times and seasons of the yeere blend themselues by disordered and confused mixture, the Winds breathe out their last gaspe, the Clouds yeeld no Raine, the Earth be defeated of Heauenly Influence, the Fruits of the Earth pine away as Children at the withered brests of their Mother, no longer able to yeeld them reliefe; what would become of Man himselfe, whom these things now doe all serue? See wee not plainly that obedience of Creatures vnto the Law of Nature is the stay of the whole World?
(I. 3)
Many other sources have been suggested for Ulysses’ speech, naturally enough since the ideas expressed in it were widely diffused. Florio, in his translation of Montaigne, uses the word ‘imbecility’19 (as Shakespeare does) and refers to cannibalism in a passage about the necessity of obedience; but it is by no means certain that Florio’s translation was published before the first performance of Troilus and Cressida. One critic suggested that Shakespeare may have remembered the introductory stanzas to Book v of The Faerie Queene on the subject of justice;20 but there is only one, not very striking, verbal parallel. Hanford argued21 that Shakespeare was influenced, directly or indirectly by Plato’s analysis of the evils of democracy in the eighth book of The Republic. T. W. Baldwin claimed22 that Shakespeare was influenced by Cicero’s Tusculans which discusses the origin and foundation of society and uses the analogy of the planets. Shakespeare may have read it in the original since he uses here, and only here, the word ‘insisture’, apparently derived from a note on ‘institiones’, ‘cum insistere videntur’. ‘Course’, the next word in the line, translates ‘cursus’, but neither word is used in Dolman’s translation. Green thought that Shakespeare remembered one of Whitney’s Emblems,23 representing Chaos, with the winds, waters, and stars mingling in confusion. Henderson24 pointed out that Lydgate uses the word ‘degree’ three or four times, and that his Agamemnon delivers a long speech against the indiscipline of the Greek army. Lydgate comments on the mischief of
varyaunce
Among lordes, whan thei nat accorde…
Envie is cause of suche dyvysyoun,
And covetyse of domynacyon …
That everyche wolde surmounte his felawe.
(III. 2342 ff.)
So Shakespeare speaks of the envious fever of Emulation.
It is not necessary to believe that Shakespeare deliberately, or even unconsciously, combined material from all the books I have mentioned. He was writing within a tradition, and the speech was a collection of common-places. Elsewhere he follows Chaucer in claiming that it is love that prevents chaos. But the nature of the situation in Troilus and Cressida, as well as the example of Lydgate and Elyot, would make him stress degree as a concomitant of order. Few would accept Baldwin’s curious arguments that the speech is un-Shakespearian. The conclusion of it, with disorder leading to cannibalism, can be paralleled in Coriolanus, King Lear, and the scenes in Sir Thomas More generally accepted as Shakespeare’s.
Our examination of the sources, not only of this speech but of the play as a whole, suggests that Shakespeare followed his usual custom in reading all the accessible material on his theme and using one book to amplify another. Chaucer, Henryson, Homer, Lydgate, and Caxton all contributed to themes and incidents in the play; and one critic, Miss Theleman,25 even argues that Shakespeare must have consulted De la Lande’s translation of Dictys, since his play has certain similarities of treatment with this work which are not to be found in Lydgate or Caxton.
It should be added, however, that there was at least one play on the same theme before Shakespeare’s, and some of the apparent similarities with De la Lande may have been derived from this play. But Shakespeare, as a general rule, took more pains than his contemporaries in the collection of source-material, and he is more likely than Chettle and Dekker to have gone to Caxton’s source.
Shakespeare organized his material in the form of a tragical satire, at the time when Jonson and Marston were writing comical satires.26 The play is complete in itself and there is no evidence to support the view that the poet intended it as the first part of a trilogy, the second part dealing with the death of Troilus, and the third with the fall of Troy.27 Both the Greeks and Trojans are depicted less heroically than they are by Caxton and Homer, but, as befits a play with a Trojan hero, his countrymen are presented more sympathetically. This was in accordance with the medieval tradition, stemming ultimately from Virgil, and with the legend that survivors from the siege of Troy landed in Britain.28