Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida Secondary Sources | Reading Notes

Notes taken on paper: Vivian Thomas, The Moral Universe of Shakespeare's Problem Plays, has some good ideas; Piero Boitani, ed., The European Tragedy of Troilus (ETT) (NY: OUP, 1989) has several excellent papers setting out the story over time.

Charnes, Linda, Notorious Identity: Materializing the Subject in Shakespeare (Cambridge: HUP, 1993), uses all the trendy words, and deviates playfully but also unmercifully from the text, but has some very important points nevertheless: "The various divisions in the play (the "this is and is not" paradigm) symptomatize the figures' simultaneous resistance to and realization of their infamous roles" (12). "The notorious subject is produced as that which will not, yet must be made to conform to 'the program.' I wish to stress that this is not to reiterate the theoretically stalled trope of 'subversion yet containment'" (17). "And yet, it is precisely these legendary figures who are at great pains to secure their own and each other's identities as they try to lay to rest a haunting sense that they are, and are not, 'themselves.' Triolus' exclamation in the face of Cressida's 'betrayal' is paradigmatic not merely of this moment but of the play as a whole. 'This is and is not' is a phenomenon that haunts Troilus and Cressida, endlessly repeating and forming the knot to which the play again and again returns" (70-71). "In Troilus and Cressida, the figures' legendary status threatens to crush their representational viability as 'subjects.' Subjectivitity in this play is posited as the disruptive effect of simultaneous resistance, and subjection, to the determining force of famous names. The characters' names instantly convey the roles they are required to play--by Shakespeare, by the audience, and, as we shall see, by each other. Their very existence is authorized by these roles. Consequently, to attempt to avoid or subvert their 'official' functions is to deconstruct [but Charnes later says that S. created something indeconstructible] their own origins, to somehow 'undo' their own conditions of existence and of meaning. It is to engage in a politics of rebellion against a culturally mandated 'self.' If, as I claim, subjectivity is the experience of one's relationship to one's own identity, then in this play the subjectivity of the characters materializes in and through their 'neuroses': through the return, in various forms, of what they attempt to repress" (74-75). "Our sense of Cressida's 'subjectivity' is produced by the disjunction we perceive in her efforts to inhabit the present through a language that relentlessly thrusts her into the future. But this awareness of the future paradoxically casts every present moment as a past moment. Her life is not only already overt, but already written about, and repeatedly at that. Consequently, her 'subjectivity' can only be ghostly, insofar as it haunts a life felt to be 'done.' Her ghostly subjectivity is her 'neurosis': that which symptomatizes a wish to resist reification while helping to reinforce the conditions that bring it about. This leads Cressida at once to resist ... , and to

abandon any sense of control over, her fate. Of course, on one level this is the only sensible thing to do, since as a 'legend' she cannot control the outcome of her story. But on another level such an abandonment is deeply self-defeating, for it constitutes the present moment of love as the certain experience of loss. What she feels for Troilus is always contaminated by her knowledge of the future moment of betrayal. Cressida leaves Troilus not because his suspicions of her make her feel 'unknown,' but for precisely the opposite reason: they make her feel too known--they confirm what she knows must be true (hence false) about herself" (79). "What is for Troilus a 'betrayal' is for the audience not betrayal at all but rather the meeting of a textual obligation, the paying of a legendary debt. The multiplication of the 'original' scene in the repetitions of the story here intersects with the multiplication of eyes watching this scene, in what becomes an ingenious staging of the theatrical equivalent of intertextual identity" (100). "The brilliance of this play resides in the way it at once pays its legendary 'debt' and prods us to anticipate that this time, maybe, Troilus will 'stand up' for Cressida and that she will 'hold out' for him. And it takes up the audience's double expectation--at once of seeing what it expects to see and seeing something 'different'--and builds it into the experience of the figures within the world of the play. So that the process of going to the theater to see this famous story reenacted produces the same affective disjunction in the audience [universally?] that it imposes on the characters, who are subjected yet again to their notorious 'fates' (101).

Stiller, Nikki, The Figure of Cressida in British and American Literature: Transformation of a Literary Type (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990). "Troilus and Cressida is a play of disillusionment in which each character is shown to be false to his or her legendary and heroic type" (57). "Cressida is a complex type, as the characteristics which attend her consistently demonstrate" (4), though as Henryson's Cresseid "finds its way into Shakespeare . . .she loses many of the traits which distinguished her, and becomes, in essence, a second, unsuccessful Helen" (4). Her archetypal characteristics are: "physically attractive, of a fragile or delicate appearance; socially vulnerable, a lone woman in wartime, suspect in her society; erotically inclined; unwilling to betray, but betraying; and, increasingly, self-destructive" (4). S's Cressida is more aggressive than others' Cressida (7). Stiller argues that Cressida "evokes and embodies ambivalence" (16) except in Shakespeare, where he makes her "an unqualified slut" (13) [it would be uncharacteristic, though, of Shakespeare to make her so flat, so I remain unconvinced]. Cressida is torn because of the Oedipal dilemma: she wants to remain faithful to Troilus, but a deeper, more mysterious connection to her father causes her to have to leave him, says Stiller (22, e.g.)--but this does not take Diomedes into account [AK]. Also, this dilemma is much more prominent in non-Shakespearean versions.

"The foreignness of the courtly love code may have intensified the reaction of Shakespeare to its doctrines . . . Troilus and Cressida seems at times an attempt to debunk all the tropes, aims, and attitudes of courtly love at once" (52-53). "Shakespeare's use of the imagery of disguise [and, I would say, falseness etc. in T/C] points to an underlying conviction that the nature of the world is itself illusory and deceptive; for what is false-seeming if it is not a kind of cuckoldry of the senses, a transgression of the marriage between reality and perception?" (57). Stiller reads Cressida's recognition of her doubleness, on the surface, as calculated when she speaks to Troilus in III.ii.119 ff.--this is an excellent observation (61-62)--but she may also genuinely recognize doubleness in acting weak while she is strongly manipulative (this holds well with her images of power). Stiller finds her supposed faithfulness as always weak--despite her wit, in these passages she "speaks in stock ideas" (62). Stiller finds Shakespeare's Cressida rather flat, and claims that once Shakespeare had hollowed her character out, she disappeared from literature (in a society that was ready to have her disappear). So Stiller should have ended her book at page 94, instead of stretching a very vague characterization of the Cressida type to Chopin's Edna and Wharton's Lily (too obviously chosen simply because the literature itself is good). The feminist and Freudian jargon throughout is too heavy, but the first part of the book is admirably helpful even under this weight.

Sacharoff, Mark, "The Traditions of the Troy-Story Heroes and the Problem of Satire in Troilus and Cressida," Shakespeare Studies, VI, ed. J. L. Barrell (Memphis: Vanderbilt, 1970), pp. 12535. Many writers claim that Troilus and Cressida is merely a satire in which Shakespeare has burlesqued the Iliad via other interpreters of the Troy story. But the characters appear complex and not hollowed out, in other Renaissance literature--contradicting a "theory of a derogatory tradition" (125). Also the characters are more comically than satirically portrayed by Shakespeare; mere satire attacks the characters with a moralizing intent quite unlike Shakespeare, says Sacharoff. Seeing romantic comedy rather than satire, permits us to see better the nobility of, especially, the Greeks, but also Troilus and Cressida.

Garber, Marjorie, Coming of Age in Shakespeare (NY: Methuen, 1981). "The Shakespearean novice ... must be separated from a former self before he or she can be [transformed and then] integrated into a new social role" (26). By examining these processes we can understand something about the Shakespearean sense of maturity and adulthood. If the choice (assuming she has one) is between the father and the lover (cf. p. 39) in Troilus and Cressida, that Cressida literally chooses the father would be more evidence of the so-called

Oedipal situation (see Stiller) than of the separation and reintegration. Rather, Troy must symbolize the father, and Greece the lover (even though Calchas is on the Greek side) [AK]. Garber sees Cressida as a child in her "limited capacity for moral understanding and choice-weak, rather than wicked" (46). But she seems pretty self-aware to me. "The audience's familiarity with 'Troilus,' 'Cressida,' and 'Pandar' as archetypes or literary cliches gives these lines a curious doubleness in time, as if the play we are watching is or might be different from the story so often told before: against all reason we hold to the wish that for once Cressida will be faithful, and Troilus at las8t rewarded in his love. ... But ... the play's characters are locked into their names and roles. ... Neither of them [T or C], of course suspects that their destinies are fixed by history, and doubly sealed by their very names. The spectacle thus presented, of archetypes struggling blindly against their own defined identities, is--like the play itself--at once ironic and tragic" (68-69). On comparisons, remember "comparisons are odious" and esp. in Shakespeare and Troilus and Cressida.

ETT 199-217 - Agostino Lombardo, "Fragments and scraps: Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida": the general point is that Elizabethan reality is too complex (see quote below) for medieval language and classical characters and that Shakespeare shows the inadequacy of both in Troilus and Cressida. "Reality ... is as Thersites sees it, and as Shakespeare suggests it to be through the language and action of the whole play: brutal, material, and imprisoned by the present. Man must aim at the concrete and the utilitarian and can survive and exert some control over reality only by resisting emotion and the cult of ideals" (210. Cf. Grene's book). Cressida is "not the traditional symbol of 'frailty,' but a woman whose female condition of subordination and humiliation has created a robust sense of the real, and who will rip away any veil of illusion obstructing her vision. In this sense her gift to Diomedes of Troilus' love-token is not a theatrical sign of fickleness and inconstancy, but represents the painful awareness that the 'sleeve' is an illusory token of an impossible love, and that survival requires a rational and more clear-sighted acceptance of reality" (214-15. Ditto the kissing scene--AK). Ulysses and Troilus and Cressida "know, if nothing else, that survival in the new world means shedding illusions, myths, and false certainties, and trusting ... in truth, experience, and reason" (215).

Briggs, John Channing, Renaissance Troy: Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida and the Matter of Troy (University of Chicago: Ph.D. dissertation, 1977). Good treatment of the Troy-story through history, chs. 1-2. Ch. 3 is specifically on Troilus and Cressida.

Brief characterization of Cressida doesn't add much to what we already suspect, 161-62. Deeds as the test of words, 174 ff., testing virtue, 175. Mental and active parts--1.3.200--"This disjunction between mental and active parts is accompanied by their mutual deterioriation; the harmful /(182)/ predominance of 'blood' in the will of Ajax and Achilles, and the atrophy of wit in Agamemnon (V.i.51) is the theme of Thersites' outbursts. [...] how physical action is now expressible only in excess. In their 'ignorance' Ajax and Achilles can achieve nothing at Troy (2.3.7-9), while in another sense their mental incapacity leads them to unreasoning violence. [...] The divorce of the "mental" and "active" parts entails excesses of violence and paralysis among the Trojans too. Their conference opening [2.2] ... loss of control and oscillation between opposite excesses" (183). "It should be noted how much time both of Shakespeare's councils spend diagnosing /(184)/ the malaise at T

The Satire of Love and Politics in Troilus and Cressida Rachel Morgandale Class of 2013 Often classified as a problem play, Troilus and Cressida walks an uncomfortable line between being a comedy and a tragedy. Perhaps due to the genre non- specific quality of the play, there is no evidence of it ever being performed at the Globe theatre and in fact, little evidence of its performance before the twentieth century. There are many difficult situations and moments within the play regarding the meaning of love and its counterpart lust, as well as what warfare, heroism and politics mean. Possibly the best way to classify this play is as a satire, according to the Oxford English Dictionary one of the ways to define satire is as The employment, in speaking or writing, of sarcasm, irony, ridicule, etc. in exposing, denouncing, deriding, or ridiculing vice, folly, indecorum, abuses, or evils of any kind. It is very possible that Troilus and Cressida was born out of a combination of political and romantic frustrations of the time, and fueled by a war of sorts between Shakespeare and other dramatists, most notably, Ben Jonson. Tracing the satirical lineage of this play can lead to a deeper understanding of the plays puzzling problems and its lack of performance during Shakespeares lifetime. Written in 1602, Shakespeare wrote this play following an attempted rebellion in England by the Earl of Essex. Essex was a prominent favorite of Queen Elizabeth, viewed as a possible successor to her throne, but proving himself to be dishonorable and eventually he was beheaded. Perhaps some high personage advised Shakespeare that Troilus and Cressida might seem to lively a satire upon the fallen Earl of Essex, who may be the model for the plays outrageous Achilles (Bloom 327). It is very likely that in an era where stage performance was strictly censored that Troilus and Cressida may have seemed to poke at the fresh wound of Essexs attempted rebellion. Another figure of the play that may have been viewed as offensive is that of Ulysses. A scheming figure that orchestrates the conflict in devious ways, the man responsible for the Trojan Horse in Homers stories. He is manipulative and though he has very eloquent speeches

about honor, but he proves to have none. It is Ulysses that shows Troilus that Cressida is unfaithful to him- for what purpose but to disillusion and demoralize young Troilus, making him, perhaps an easier target in battle. Indeed, many of Ulysses speeches improve by being taken out of context, the fact that Ulysses says nothing that he believes and believes nothing that he says, (Bloom 340) might weaken his speeches about the danger of power and corruption when he himself is corrupt. When looking at the cruel, manipulative and childish figures presented in Achilles (who would rather sulk in his tent that lead the men in battle) and Ulysses, the heroes of The Illiad, one must note that Shakespeare is doing something very experimental. His interpretations of these characters and the Trojan war challenges what the conventional view of heroism and war is. Hector is the only character that suggests that Helen be returned in order to prevent more bloodshed. Let Helen go. Since the first sword was drawn about this question, Every tithe soul, mongst many thousand dismes, Hath been as dear as Helen; (II.ii. 17-20) Hector understands the gravity of war and what losses they have and will continue to incur for the sake of one woman and their own pride. Hectors death then, is perhaps the biggest tragedy of the play. Failing to kill him in single conflict, Achilles and his fellows ambush and slaughter him, taking his body as a trophy (V.viii). Any illusion of honor in battle is shattered by this cruel and cowardly action. The play turns a cynical and critical eye to those historical and mythical figures that are considered heroes and shows them to be cowards steeped in blood. The ironized hero, undercut and undermined, is a common phenomenon in Shakespeare's plays, but Troilus exceeds even Antony and Cleopatra in its reduction of heroic pretensions and in the immensity of the moral devastation it surveys (Milowicki 295). It is a bleak image of warfare and the warrior that leaves little for the audience to hope for in the political aspect of the play, and perhaps even less in the romantic aspect. The plays structure of conflict and its two central lovers begs a comparison with Shakespeares earlier tragedy, Romeo and Juliet, the main difference between the two is the treatment of the lovers relationship, it is possible that Shakespeare's transformation of Chaucer's tender romance into a play that is unremittingly cynical (Troilus and Cressida) might have been guided by Shakespeare's consciousness of having already stressed the importance of love in his own earlier work (Romeo and Juliet) (McInnis 35). When held up against Shakespeares story of the youthful lovers, Romeo and Juliet, the lovers in Troilus and Cressida make a very different statement about romance and commitment. While Romeo and Juliet are bent on marriage, a legitimate bond of their love as something permanent, neither Troilus nor Cressida ever express a desire to make their bond a permanent one. From the start Troilus expresses nothing but a physical desire for Cressida, one that is encouraged by Pandarus and never questioned by Cressida. The morning after their encounter sees Troilus creeping away and the most pressing question for Cressida is Are you weary of me? (IV. ii. 8). The question of honor among lovers as well as fighters is under fire in Troilus and Cressida. One must hold up Cressida against Juliet, who rails against the prospect of being with any man other than Romeo- willing even to kill herself, Cressidas outburst perhaps sounds appropriate, Crack my clear voice with sobs and break my heart/ With sounding Troilus. I will

not go from Troy (IV. ii 109-110). Actions, however, speak louder than iambic pentameter. Juliet was willing to fake her own death (and ultimately kill herself) to preserve the honor of her bond with Romeo. Cressida, whose bond with Troilus isnt as strong breaks her vows of fidelity two scenes later in the play, showing her grief to be a sort of performance ( McInnis 41) and proving her own lines, They say all lovers swear more performance than they are able, and yet reserve an ability that they never perform, vowing more than the perfection of ten and discharging less than the tenth part of one (III. ii 72-75). Love, then is reduced to a physical impulse that can be served by one man as well as another and heroes are cruel and honorless. Indeed, Shakespeare departs from many of the traditional values of both his own early love tragedies and the original myths that provide the basis for Troilus and Cressida. This departure was evidently purposeful. Perhaps to illustrate Shakespeares own distaste for the political anxieties of England and his frustration and disillusionment about romantic love such as seen in the sonnets about the poets conflicted relationship with the Dark Lady (Bloom 328). Beyond this, Shakespeare was also at this time involved in a rivalry with fellow playwright, Ben Jonson. Satirical plays were in fashion in some of the private playhouses that were intended for a more exclusive audience ( Yachnin 307). Shakespeare adopting this style for a play intended for the Globe- a theatre that catered to audiences of all classes was perhaps a risky choice. It has been suggested that the political messages of the play as well as the style of presentation were to mock those of Jonson and his fellow playwright, George Chapman (Bloom 327). Jonson was more educated than Shakespeare, having attended university and had been, it is suggested, competing with and mocking Shakespeare in his own plays, such as Poetaster (Bednarz 257). Perhaps the Globe seemed and inappropriate setting which is why the play was never performed, or enjoyed a very limited performance. Shakespeare's drama resonates with the idea of the scandal of cultural traffic. Such a high degree of self-criticism surely has something to do with the general social lowness of the institution ( Yachnin 317). Troilus and Cressida achieves through its satire, a blending of the high with its mythological basis and satiric form as well as the low with its lack of morality and overall cynicism. If nothing else, the biting satire of Shakespeares Troilus and Cressida illustrates that as Theresites says, All argument is a whore and a cuckold (II. iii. 71-72). Whether it be in love or in war, all are reduced and cheapened through out the play. Perhaps even the war between poets that Shakespeare and Jonson engaged in was realized to be just as cheap. It was a rivalry that at the time had no clear winner, but Troilus and Cressida seemed to mark the end of the Poets War and Jonson wrote and apology for Poetaster shortly thereafter (Bednarz 264). Troilus and Cressida produces a bitter and cynical look at idyllic images of war and heroes as well as romantic love. If its goal was to show Shakespeares own disillusionment with such institutions it was certainly successful. If his goal was to get revenge upon Jonson for his Poetaster, then there he was successful also. Still Troilus and Cressida has no great history of performance such as that of his other plays. Perhaps the especially harsh satire of the play didnt sit well with audiences, the Globe may have been the wrong setting for it. Or perhaps after the battle of words it was produced in had been concluded Shakespeare saw the vanity of his own war and shelved the play himself.

Works Cited Bednarz, James P. Shakespeare & the Poets War. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead Books, 1998. McInnis, David. Repetition and Revision in Shakespeares Tragic Love Plays . Parergon 25.2 (2008): 36-56. Milowicki, Edward J, and Robert Rawdon Wilson. A Measure for Menippean Discourse: The Example of Shakespeare . Poetics Today 23.2 (2002): 291-322. Yachnin, Paul. The Perfection of Ten: Populuxe Art and Artisanal Value in Troilus and Cressida . Shakespeare Quarterly 56.3 (2005): 306-327.

Troilus and Cressida

For further information on the critical and stage history of Troilus and Cressida, see SC, Volumes 3, 18, 27, 43, 59, and 71.

INTRODUCTION
Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602), considered by many to be Shakespeare's most pessimistic work, has been classified as one of Shakespeare's problem plays. This story of the Trojan War and the doomed lovers Troilus and Cressida is one that has been told and retold numerous times before Shakespeare adapted it into a play, most notably by Shakespeare's two principal sources: Homer's Iliad (George Chapman's 1598 translation) and Geoffrey Chaucer's poem Troilus and Criseyde (c. 1385). The play, which presents a love won and lost during the interminable and morally corrosive battles of the Trojan War, ends the same way it begins: in chaos and disillusion. The difficulty in properly categorizing the play's genre has plagued critics of Troilus and Cressida throughout its publication historyearly publications of the play labeled it first as a history, then as a comedy, and later as a tragedyand modern critics continue to debate the proper generic designation of the play. The ambiguous nature of the play is also reflected in Shakespeare's characterization, especially Cressida, who has been viewed as either unfaithful and promiscuous or as a victim of the war and of male dominance. Troilus and Cressida has not been always been popular on the stage; however, modern directors have found the play's profound examination of love and war particularly compelling for twenty-first century audiences. In his discussion of women in Shakespeare's problem plays, Nicholas Marsh (2003) focuses on a single passage from Troilus and Cressida (I.ii.249-86) which, he contends, shows Cressida to be both a tease and a sincere lover. Marsh explains that this apparent contradiction in fact

reveals, on one hand, the stereotypical male view of women as temptresses, and on the other, Cressida's genuine feelings for Troilus. According to the critic, Cressida's vacillation in her feelings for Troilus are seen by her lover as proof that she has transformed herself from an angel into a whore. Marsh concludes that Troilus's either/or attitude toward women is stereotypical, and that Troilus and Cressida maintains its position as a problem play precisely because Cressida never falls neatly into either category. Laurie E. Maguire (2002) explains Cressida's submission to Diomedes, contending that she is a victim of Diomedes' abuse and manipulation and that Cressida consequently behaves as do most abused women: she submits. In his discussion of the theme of ethics in the play, Michael G. Bielmeier (2001) uses the philosophical works of Kierkegaard to demonstrate that Cressida and the bastard Thersites are the most ethical characters in the war-torn world of Troilus and Cressida. The critic argues that unlike the hopelessly idealistic Troilus, Cressida and Thersites behave according to the ethical norms that their society has set for them; they accept the facts that the universe is neither noble nor just, that ease of survival comes to those who abide by society's ethics, however repugnant, and that wisdom resides in expecting little more from life than lechery and war. Troilus and Cressida's often crude satire of war has held enormous appeal for modern audiences and directors. Matt Wolf (1999) praises Trevor Nunn's 1999 National Theatre production of the play, contending that Nunn yanks us right inside this play's singularly hellish heart. In his review of Michael Bogdanov's 2000 Bell Shakespeare Company production of Troilus + Cressida, Douglas McQueen-Thomson (2000) notes that this rendition tapped into humanity's base appetites by using television screens as part of the scenery, turning the warrior Achilles and his companion Patroclus into rap artists in drag, and portraying Pandarus as a dirty-minded game-show host. McQueen-Thomson contends that the staging successfully combined audacious, challenging production with intelligent, coherent interpretation, proving the strengths of theatre as a political medium. Martin F. Kohn (2003) remarks that the timeless and interlocking themes of lust and violence in Richard Monette's 2003 Stratford Festival staging of Troilus and Cressida effectively demonstrated the madness of war. Kohn also praises Bernard Hopkins's bawdy, bisexual performance as Pandarus as vital to this rendition of the play. Lyn Gardner (2003) reviews Andrew Hilton's 2003 stage production of Troilus and Cressida and remarks on the relevancy of the play for the twenty-first century. According to the critic, the production offered not just a sharp reminder that war involves, as the clown Thersites puts it, too much blood and too little brain but also that war corrupts even those who begin it with honourable intent and what they perceive as just cause. Many critics have commented on the link between Renaissance England and the world of Troilus and Cressida. Matthew A. Greenfield (2000) traces the development of English nationalism in the play. Greenfield notes that England attempted to build national pride by connecting its ancestry as a nation to the heroic and ancient city of Troy; however, Shakespeare's depiction of Troy as decadent and corrupt undercut these efforts. Mario Domenichelli (2000) alleges that in his cynical portrayal of the duel between Hector and Achilles in Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare documented the end of the chivalric code in Renaissance England. In addition, Domenichelli states that by transforming the heroic Hector's death into a pointless and ignoble one, Shakespeare also overturned the traditional rules of tragedy. Gary Spear (1993) examines the themes of masculinity and effeminacy in Troilus and Cressida in order to explore the cultural fictions of male power. Spear asserts that the soldiers in this overlong war feel that their

masculinity is threatened because of their failure to win the war, and that their solution to this effeminization is to diminish the women in the play by treating them as commodities. Similarly, C. C. Barfoot (1988) examines the human relationships in Troilus and Cressida in relation to the mercantile metaphor that runs throughout the play. This metaphor, the critic contends, suggests that we are all traders in our relationships, and, as victims and perpetrators, susceptible to the inevitable treachery that trade brings in its wake. Source: Shakespearean Criticism, 2004 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.