This is a play which leaves many questions. Is it a comedy, a tragedy, or a mash-up? Is it pro-Trojan, pro-Greek, or anti-both? Are we supposed to hate or pity the main female character? What about her beau? And why does it end with everything still in the air?
For me, it may turn on a question bleaker still: Did Shakespeare not care enough to work this into something sharper?
Troilus And Cressida is magnificent in its language, its diversity of tones and contrasts, its philosophical arguments weave and wend with Hamlet-level depth. As a play, though, it falls way short. I find it a tedious read, lacking focus as it cribs from Homer and Chaucer.
It isn’t supposed to be fun. But was it meant to be this much of a drag?
TROILUS: Frown on, you
heavens, effect your rage with speed!
Sit, gods, upon your thrones, and smite at Troy!
I say at once: let your brief plagues be mercy,
And linger not our sure destructions on! [Act V, scene xi, lines 6-9]
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| The Triumph of Achilles, by Franz Matsch. Shakespeare cuts against the classical view of Achilles and other Greek heroes by presenting them as squabbling egomaniacs. "Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength," [I, iii, 137] observes the Greek leader Ulysses. Image from https://shakespeareanstudent.com/play-of-the-month-page/play-of-the-month-troilus-and-cressida/ |
The play divides its attention between the above Trojan’s all-consuming love affair and the siege of Troy, which as explained in the Prologue, we join already in progress. While the Trojans use a lull in the battle to enjoy the happy company of their stolen prize, Helen, the Greeks squabble over tactics and morale, the latter of which is in a crisis state because of their hero Achilles’s refusal to take part in the battle.
It is here the play bogs down, dwelling on Achilles’s vanity and inaction over the course of most of three acts. This could be meant as a parody of the type of overinflated ego one encounters in classical epics. Many of the characters we meet in Troilus And Cressida are send-ups, called out so by the open mockery of the Greek servant Thersites:
THERSITES: Agamemnon is a fool to offer to command Achilles, Achilles is a fool to be commanded of Agamemnon, Thersites is a fool to serve such a fool, and this Patroclus is a fool positive.
PATROCLUS: Why am I a fool?
THERSITES: Make that demand to the creator; it suffices me thou art. [II, iii, 59-65]
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| Ajax conducts an executive review with his servant Thersites at the start of the play, before Thersites deserts him for his rival Achilles. Even amid an army of blockheaded Greeks, Ajax stands out for his cretinous, credulous behavior. Image from https://shakespeareillustration.org/2015/01/21/ajax-and-thersites-argue/ |
While the Greeks argue, the Trojans trade the release of a valued prisoner in exchange for the noble Cressida, a native Trojan whose father deserted to the enemy and wants her with him. Cressida does not crave a reunion (“I have forgot my father” [IV, ii, 97], she protests), but what women want is of no concern to anyone, and so off she goes, pledging all the while to be faithful to her broken-hearted Troilus.
Spoiler alert: She isn’t.
Themes of oppressed women and the toll of foolish war give Troilus And Cressida more currency today than it ever had before; for most of its life it remained one of Shakespeare’s more obscure plays. Only the aftermath of World War I would shed its darkness in a new light. Not that it has ever been that popular.
Reading it, you get why. In college, I was baffled by its many characters and their ever-shifting quarrels, failing to find the funny or the plot. A more careful reading of annotations cleared matters up somewhat, but the problems of this “problem play” remain for me.
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| By the 1300s, when Chaucer wrote Troilus And Criseyde, the milieu of Ancient Greece was already being transformed into the late Medieval era. Shakespeare's play is likewise rife to references of knights and tilting. Image from https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2012/10/paging-through-troilus-and-criseyde.html |
Cressida is one of Shakespeare’s most unapologetically sexual characters; when she tells Troilus in Act III to “stop my mouth” it’s a triumphantly erotic moment for both. Once she is with the Greeks, however, she immediately partners with Troilus’s hated rival Diomed.
Feminist critiques call out the fact Cressida is being passed around by uncaring men and is forced in making a bad bargain. But within the context of the play, she’s being willfully, merrily unfaithful, and Shakespeare plays it off as a fait accompli. The focus is all on Troilus’s crestfallen reaction as he watches in the shadows.
That’s another problem for me with this play: Why am I supposed to care about this classic romance if one of its participants doesn’t?
Troilus is likewise undernourished, a character of many contrasts but no through line into what makes him tick. In the beginning, he complains about the war quite reasonably. “Fools on both sides! Helen must needs be fair,/When with your blood you daily paint her thus.” [I, i, 86-87] But later he pushes back quite defiantly on the idea of giving Helen back:
TROILUS: Is she worth
keeping? Why, she is a pearl
Whose price hath launched above a thousand ships,
And turned crowned kings to merchants. [II, ii, 81-83]
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| Cressida (Amber James) reports to her uncle Pandarus (Oliver Ford Davies) on her night of lovemaking with Troilus (Gavin Fowler) in a 2018 Royal Shakespeare Company production. Pandarus seems at least as invested in the sex as the lovers themselves, wanting full reports. Image from https://partially-obstructed-view.blogspot.com/2018/10/theatre-review-troilus-and-cressida-rsc.html |
As the continuation of the war causes him to lose Cressida, the result feels not like tragedy but a just dollop of karma.
This holds true for everyone else in the play, who are presented with little of Shakespeare’s usual empathy. They are a dislikeable lot, perhaps meant to reflect the distending nature of war. I also feel it reflects a growing sense of embitterment in the playwright, if not as much as with his later Greek play, Timon Of Athens, then trending in that direction.
Pandarus, Cressida’s uncle and champion of Troilus’s desire to win her love, goes from being the source of most of the play’s fitful humor early on to another symptom of Troy’s corruption, called out by Troilus:
TROILUS: Hence,
broker-lackey! Ignominy and shame
Pursue thy life, and live aye with thy name! [V, xi, 33-34]
That being “pander,” a term for trafficking prostitutes. In one scene, Shakespeare even has Pandarus exclaim his name should go down in infamy with exactly that usage if the romance of Troilus and Cressida go south. This kind of heavy self-consciousness pops up often in the play, calling out the artificiality of the proceedings.
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| Cressida (Suzanne Burden) and Troilus (Anton Lesser) have a cute meet while Pandarus (Charles Grey) looks on, in a 1981 BBC Shakespeare production. This adaptation, by Jonathan Miller, delivers some sharp comic moments before the ennui of the second half overcomes all. The performances are all fine. Image from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/155866837080541703/ |
Troilus And Cressida is well thought out, perhaps too much so. Despite a high body count, one can’t accuse it of being Titus Andronicus, a bloodbath disguised as tragedy. Brilliant, nuanced passages offer a constant beacon of wit:
TROILUS: Nay, if we talk
of reason,
Let’s shut our gates and sleep. Manhood and honour
Should have hare hearts, would they but fat their thoughts
With this crammed reason; reason and respect
Make livers pale and lustihood deject. [II, ii, 46-50]
PANDARUS: You are such a woman! A man knows not at what ward you lie.
CRESSIDA: Upon my back, to defend my belly; upon my wit, to defend my wiles; upon my secrecy, to defend mine honesty; my mask, to defend my beauty; and you, to defend all these; and at all these wards I lie, at a thousand watches. [I, ii, 249-255]
On the other hand, it could do with some of Titus’s vigor and energy. Its deepest observations on the human condition hold little relevance for the faltering plot. What passion there is, like that of Troilus’s, seems too self-inflated and narcissistic for any shared audience catharsis.
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| In another scene from the 1981 BBC Shakespeare production, Achilles (Kenneth Haigh) looks upon the aftermath of a climatic atrocity with calm satisfaction. "My half-supped sword, that frankly would have fed,/Pleased with this dainty bait, thus goes to bed." [V, v, 19-20] Image from https://bbcshakespeare.blogspot.com/2014/11/troilus-and-cressida-series-4-episode-2.html |
Most of the time, the play just wallows in misery at its unfolding spectacle of human folly, with no hope in sight.
Did Shakespeare even want to do this play? The historical curiosity of it not apparently being staged but once in his lifetime suggests a possible authorial reluctance, him being the main creative engine of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men who staged his works. It is theorized there were political resonances that kept the play out of circulation, namely the dispute between Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex. Reading the play, it’s hard to detect the slightest parallels or echoes of this.
The mythical siege of Troy was a popular subject in Shakespeare’s time, and Chaucer’s epic poem Troilus And Criseyde was a recognized classic. Of all Shakespeare’s other non-history plays, only Julius Caesar had as its subject a matter of as great public recognition before he wrote it. But this time, Shakespeare does little to make the play feel uniquely his.
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| The First Quarto of Troilus And Cressida was published in 1609, within the lifetime of its author, and showcases the importance of Shakespeare to a reading audience. It is not clear that the play was performed at all before his death; it certainly wasn't very often, yet copies survive. Image from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Troilus_and_Cressida.JPG |
Rather, like the character Achilles we meet in it, the author seems put out about having to be there. As with some of his later comedies, the attitude seems to be here you go, take it or leave it:
PROLOGUE: To tell you, fair
beholders, that our play
Leaps o’er the vaunt and firstlings of those broils,
Beginning in the middle; starting thence away,
To what may be digested in a play.
Like or find fault; do as your pleasures are;
Now good or bad, ’tis but the chance of war. [Prologue, 26-31]
The biggest annoyance for me with Troilus And Cressida is its length. It takes a very long time and a lot of words to deliver very little in the way of character or story. The final act throws up a confused barrage of sudden death and wan observations about futility and folly; small wonder scholars can’t agree even on how it’s supposed to end.
It
is a mistake to read autobiography in Elizabethan drama; that said, I wonder if
Cressida’s story wasn’t influenced in some way by trouble at home. It isn’t
that she is a villainess but so needlessly unfaithful, and to no good dramatic
purpose. She just cheats because she can. Shakespeare leaves a lot of
questions; the biggest problem for me of this problem play is why the author
seems so uninterested in their resolutions.
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