Troilus and Cressida is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have

been written in 1602. It was described by Frederick S. Boas as one of

Shakespeare's problem plays. The play ends on a very bleak note with the
death of the noble Trojan Hector and destruction of the love between Troilus
and Cressida. Throughout the play, the tone lurches wildly between bawdy
comedy and tragic gloom, and readers and theatre-goers have frequently
found it difcult to understand how one is meant to respond to the characters.
However, several characteristic elements of the play (the most notable being
its constant questioning of intrinsic values such as hierarchy, honour and
love) have often been viewed as distinctly "modern," as in the following
remarks on the play by author and literary scholar Joyce Carol Oates:
Troilus and Cressida, that most vexing and ambiguous of Shakespeare's
plays, strikes the modern reader as a contemporary documentits
investigation of numerous indelities, its criticism of tragic pretensions, above
all, its implicit debate between what is essential in human life and what is only
existential are themes of the twentieth century. ... This is tragedy of a special
sortthe "tragedy" the basis of which is the impossibility of conventional
tragedy.[2]
Contents [hide]
1 1 Characters
2 2 Synopsis
3 3 Texts
4 4 Sources
5 5 Date and text
6 6 Performance history
7 7 References
8 8 External links
Characters[edit]
The Trojans
Priam, King of Troy
Priam's children Cassandra (a prophetess), Hector, Troilus, Paris,
Deiphobus, Helenus and Margareton (bastard)
Andromache, Hector's wife
Aeneas, a commander and leader
Antenor, another commander
Calchas, a Trojan priest who is taking part with the Greeks
Cressida, Calchas' daughter
Alexander, servant to Cressida
Pandarus, Cressida's uncle
The Greeks
Agamemnon, King of the Greeks and leader of the Greek invasion
Achilles, prince
Ajax, prince
Diomedes, prince
Nestor, wise and talkative prince
Odysseus, King of Ithaca
Menelaus, King of Sparta, brother to Agamemnon
Helen, wife to Menelaus, living with Paris
Thersites, a deformed and scurrilous low-class "fool"
Patroclus, friend of Achilles
Synopsis[edit]
Cressida by Edward Poynter
Troilus and Cressida is set during the later years of the Trojan War, faithfully
following the plotline of the Iliad from Achilles' refusal to participate in battle to
Hector's death.
Essentially, two plots are followed in this play. In one, Troilus, a Trojan prince
(son of Priam), woos Cressida, another Trojan. They have sex, professing
their undying love, before Cressida is exchanged for a Trojan prisoner of war.
As he attempts to visit her in the Greek camp, Troilus glimpses Diomedes
irting with his beloved Cressida, and decides to avenge her perdy.
While this plot gives the play its name, it accounts for only a small part of the
play's run time. The majority of the play revolves around the leaders of the
Greek and Trojan forces, Agamemnon and Priam respectively. Agamemnon
and his cohorts attempt to get the proud Achilles to return to battle and face
Hector, who sends the Greeks a letter telling them of his willingness to
engage in one-on-one combat with a Greek soldier. Ajax is originally chosen
as this combatant, but makes peace with Hector before they are able to ght.
Achilles is prompted to return to battle only after his friend and (according to
some of the Greeks) lover, Patroclus, is killed by Hector before the Trojan
walls. A series of skirmishes conclude the play, during which Achilles catches
Hector and has the Myrmidons kill him. The conquest of Troy is left
unnished, as the Trojans learn of the death of their beloved hero.
Texts[edit]
The Quarto edition labels it a history play with the title The Famous Historie of
Troylus and Cresseid, but the First Folio classed it with the tragedies, under
the titleThe Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida. The confusion is compounded
by the fact that in the original pressing of the First Folio, the play's pages are
unnumbered, and the title has obviously been squeezed into the Table of
Contents. Based on this evidence, scholars believe it was a very late addition
to the Folio, and therefore may have been added wherever there was room.
Sources[edit]
The story of Troilus and Cressida is a medieval tale that is not part of Greek
mythology; Shakespeare drew on a number of sources for this plotline, in
particularChaucer's version of the tale, Troilus and Criseyde, but also John
Lydgate's Troy Book and Caxton's translation of the Recuyell of the Historyes
of Troye.[3]
Chaucers' source was Il Filostrato by Boccaccio, which in turn derives from a
12th-century French text, Benot de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie [4]
The story of the persuasion of Achilles into battle is drawn from Homer's Iliad
(perhaps in the translation by George Chapman), and from various medieval
and Renaissance retellings.
The story was a popular one for dramatists in the early 17th century and
Shakespeare may have been inspired by contemporary plays. Thomas
Heywood's two-part play The Iron Age also depicts the Trojan war and the
story of Troilus and Cressida, but it is not certain whether his or
Shakespeare's play was written rst. In addition, Thomas Dekker and Henry
Chettle wrote a play called Troilus and Cressida at around the same time as
Shakespeare, but this play survives only as a fragmentary plot outline.
Date and text[edit]
Title page, 1609 quartoedition
The play is believed to have been written around 1602, shortly after the
completion of Hamlet. It was published in quarto in two separate editions,
both in 1609. It is not known whether the play was ever performed in its own
time, because the two editions contradict each other: one announces on the
title page that the play had been recently performed on stage; the other
claims in a preface that it is a new play that has never been staged. The play
was entered into the Register of the Stationers Company on 7 February
1603, by the bookseller and printer James Roberts, with a mention that the
play was acted by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, Shakespeare's company. No
publication followed, however, until 1609; the stationers Richard Bonian and
Henry Walley re-registered the play on 28 Jan. 1609, and later that year
issued the rst quarto, but in two "states". The rst says the play was "acted
by the King's Majesty's servants at the Globe;" the second version omits the
mention of the Globe Theatre, and prefaces the play with a long Epistle that
claims that Troilus and Cressida is "a new play, never stal'd with the
stage ..."[5]
Some commentators (like Georg Brandes, the Danish Shakespeare scholar
of the late 19th century) have attempted to reconcile these contradictory
claims by arguing that the play was composed originally around 160002, but
heavily revised shortly before its 1609 printing. The play is noteworthy for its
bitter and caustic nature, similar to the works that Shakespeare was writing in
the 160508 period, King Lear, Coriolanus, and Timon of Athens. In this view,
the original version of the play was a more positive romantic comedy of the
type Shakespeare wrote ca. 1600, like As You Like It and Twelfth Night, while
the later revision injected the darker material leaving the result a hybrid
jumble of tones and intents.
Performance history[edit]
The play's puzzling and intriguing nature has meant that Troilus and Cressida
has rarely been popular on stage, and neither during Shakespeare's own
lifetime nor between 1734 and 1898 is there any recorded performance of the
play. In the Restoration, it was rewritten by John Dryden, who stated that he
intended to uncover the "jewels" of Shakespeare's verse, hidden beneath a
"heap of rubbish" (not only some "ungrammatical" and indecorous
expressions, but also much of the plot). In addition to his "improvements" to
the language, Dryden streamlined the council scenes and sharpened the
rivalry between Ajax and Achilles. Dryden's largest change, though, was in
the character of Cressida, who in his play is loyal to Troilus throughout. The
play was also condemned by the Victorians for its explicit sexual references
(though the sex, while explicitly and importantly present, is portrayed
satirically and highly negatively). It was not staged in its original form until the
early 20th century, but since then, it has become increasingly popular,
especially after the First World War, owing to its cynical depiction of
immorality and disillusionment. Because certain aspects of the play, such as
the breaking of one's public oaths during a protracted wartime and the decay
of morality among Cressida and the Greeks resonated strongly with a
discontented public, the play was staged with greater frequency during and
after this period.