Troilus and Cressida

By William Shakespeare and Paul Werstine

The authoritative edition of Troilus and Cressida from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers.

For Troilus and Cressida, set during the Trojan War, Shakespeare turned to the Greek poet Homer, whose epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey treat the war and its aftermath, and to Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales, and the great romance of the war, Troilus and Criseyde.

This edition includes:
-Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play
-Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play
-Scene-by-scene plot summaries
-A key to the play’s famous lines and phrases
-An introduction to reading Shakespeare’s language
-An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play
-Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books
-An annotated guide to further reading

Essay by Jonathan Gil Harris

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Release date: Nov 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781501149979

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was born in April 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, on England’s Avon River. When he was eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway. The couple had three children—an older daughter Susanna and twins, Judith and Hamnet. Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, died in childhood. The bulk of Shakespeare’s working life was spent in the theater world of London, where he established himself professionally by the early 1590s. He enjoyed success not only as a playwright and poet, but also as an actor and shareholder in an acting company. Although some think that sometime between 1610 and 1613 Shakespeare retired from the theater and returned home to Stratford, where he died in 1616, others believe that he may have continued to work in London until close to his death.

Book preview

About this eBook

This eBook contains special symbols that are important for reading and understanding the text. In order to view them correctly, please activate your device’s Publisher Font or Original font setting; use of optional fonts on your device may result in missing, or incorrect, special symbols.

Also, please keep in mind that Shakespeare wrote his plays and poems over four hundred years ago, during a time when the English language was in many ways different than it is today. Because the built-in dictionary on many devices is designed for modern English, be advised that the definitions it provides may not apply to the words as Shakespeare uses them. Whenever available, always check the glosses linked to the text for a proper definition before consulting the built-in dictionary.

THE NEW FOLGER LIBRARY

SHAKESPEARE

Designed to make Shakespeare’s great plays available to all readers, the New Folger Library edition of Shakespeare’s plays provides accurate texts in modern spelling and punctuation, as well as scene-by-scene action summaries, full explanatory notes, many pictures clarifying Shakespeare’s language, and notes recording all significant departures from the early printed versions. Each play is prefaced by a brief introduction, by a guide to reading Shakespeare’s language, and by accounts of his life and theater. Each play is followed by an annotated list of further readings and by a Modern Perspective written by an expert on that particular play.

Barbara A. Mowat is Director of Research emerita at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Consulting Editor of Shakespeare Quarterly, and author of The Dramaturgy of Shakespeare’s Romances and of essays on Shakespeare’s plays and their editing.

Paul Werstine is Professor of English at the Graduate School and at King’s University College at Western University. He is a general editor of the New Variorum Shakespeare and author of Early Modern Playhouse Manuscripts and the Editing of Shakespeare and of many papers and articles on the printing and editing of Shakespeare’s plays.

Folger Shakespeare Library

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is a privately funded research library dedicated to Shakespeare and the civilization of early modern Europe. It was founded in 1932 by Henry Clay and Emily Jordan Folger, and incorporated as part of Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, one of the nation’s oldest liberal arts colleges, from which Henry Folger had graduated in 1879. In addition to its role as the world’s preeminent Shakespeare collection and its emergence as a leading center for Renaissance studies, the Folger Shakespeare Library offers a wide array of cultural and educational programs and services for the general public.

EDITORS

BARBARA A. MOWAT

Director of Research emerita

Folger Shakespeare Library

PAUL WERSTINE

Professor of English

King’s University College at Western University, Canada

From the Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library

It is hard to imagine a world without Shakespeare. Since their composition more than four hundred years ago, Shakespeare’s plays and poems have traveled the globe, inviting those who see and read his works to make them their own.

Readers of the New Folger Editions are part of this ongoing process of taking up Shakespeare, finding our own thoughts and feelings in language that strikes us as old or unusual and, for that very reason, new. We still struggle to keep up with a writer who could think a mile a minute, whose words paint pictures that shift like clouds. These expertly edited texts are presented as a resource for study, artistic exploration, and enjoyment. As a new generation of readers engages Shakespeare in eBook form, they will encounter the classic texts of the New Folger Editions, with trusted notes and up-to-date critical essays available at their fingertips. Now readers can enjoy expertly edited, modern editions of Shakespeare anywhere they bring their e-reading devices, allowing readers not simply to keep up, but to engage deeply with a writer whose works invite us to think, and think again.

The New Folger Editions of Shakespeare’s plays, which are the basis for the texts realized here in digital form, are special because of their origin. The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is the single greatest documentary source of Shakespeare’s works. An unparalleled collection of early modern books, manuscripts, and artwork connected to Shakespeare, the Folger’s holdings have been consulted extensively in the preparation of these texts. The Editions also reflect the expertise gained through the regular performance of Shakespeare’s works in the Folger’s Elizabethan Theater.

I want to express my deep thanks to editors Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine for creating these indispensable editions of Shakespeare’s works, which incorporate the best of textual scholarship with a richness of commentary that is both inspired and engaging. Readers who want to know more about Shakespeare and his plays can follow the paths these distinguished scholars have tread by visiting the Folger either in person or online, where a range of physical and digital resources exists to supplement the material in these texts. I commend to you these words, and hope that they inspire.

Michael Witmore

Director, Folger Shakespeare Library

Contents

Editors’ Preface

Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida

Reading Shakespeare’s Language: Troilus and Cressida

Shakespeare’s Life

Shakespeare’s Theater

The Publication of Shakespeare’s Plays

An Introduction to This Text

A never writer to an ever reader: news.

Characters in the Play

Prologue

Troilus and Cressida

Text of the Play with Commentary

Act 1

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Act 2

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Act 3

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Act 4

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

Act 5

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

Scene 6

Scene 7

Scene 8

Scene 9

Scene 10

Scene 11

Longer Notes

Textual Notes

Appendix on the Characters in the Play

Troilus and Cressida: A Modern Perspective

by Jonathan Gil Harris

Further Reading

Key to Famous Lines and Phrases

Commentary

Act 1

Prologue

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Act 2

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Act 3

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Act 4

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

Act 5

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

Scene 6

Scene 7

Scene 8

Scene 9

Scene 10

Scene 11

Editors’ Preface

In recent years, ways of dealing with Shakespeare’s texts and with the interpretation of his plays have been undergoing significant change. This edition, while retaining many of the features that have always made the Folger Shakespeare so attractive to the general reader, at the same time reflects these current ways of thinking about Shakespeare. For example, modern readers, actors, and teachers have become interested in the differences between, on the one hand, the early forms in which Shakespeare’s plays were first published and, on the other hand, the forms in which editors through the centuries have presented them. In response to this interest, we have based our edition on what we consider the best early printed version of a particular play (explaining our rationale in a section called An Introduction to This Text) and have marked our changes in the text—unobtrusively, we hope, but in such a way that the curious reader can be aware that a change has been made and can consult the Textual Notes to discover what appeared in the early printed version.

Current ways of looking at the plays are reflected in our brief introductions, in many of the commentary notes, in the annotated lists of Further Reading, and especially in each play’s Modern Perspective, an essay written by an outstanding scholar who brings to the reader his or her fresh assessment of the play in the light of today’s interests and concerns.

As in the Folger Library General Reader’s Shakespeare, which the New Folger Library Shakespeare replaces, we include explanatory notes designed to help make Shakespeare’s language clearer to a modern reader, and we hyperlink the notes to the lines that they explain. We also follow the earlier edition in including illustrations—of objects, of clothing, of mythological figures—from books and manuscripts in the Folger Shakespeare Library collection. We provide fresh accounts of the life of Shakespeare, of the publishing of his plays, and of the theaters in which his plays were performed, as well as an introduction to the text itself. We also include a section called Reading Shakespeare’s Language, in which we try to help readers learn to break the code of Elizabethan poetic language.

For each section of each volume, we are indebted to a host of generous experts and fellow scholars. The Reading Shakespeare’s Language sections, for example, could not have been written had not Arthur King, of Brigham Young University, and Randal Robinson, author of Unlocking Shakespeare’s Language, led the way in untangling Shakespearean language puzzles and shared their insights and methodologies generously with us. Shakespeare’s Life profited by the careful reading given it by the late S. Schoenbaum; Shakespeare’s Theater was read and strengthened by Andrew Gurr, John Astington, and William Ingram; and The Publication of Shakespeare’s Plays is indebted to the comments of Peter W. M. Blayney. We, as editors, take sole responsibility for any errors in our editions.

We are grateful to the authors of the Modern Perspectives; to the Huntington and Newberry Libraries for fellowship support; to King’s University College for the grants it has provided to Paul Werstine; to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which provided him with a Research Time Stipend for 1990–91; to R. J. Shroyer of the University of Western Ontario for essential computer support; to the Folger Institutes Center for Shakespeare Studies for its sponsorship of a workshop on Shakespeare’s Texts for Students and Teachers (funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and led by Richard Knowles of the University of Wisconsin), a workshop from which we learned an enormous amount about what is wanted by college and high-school teachers of Shakespeare today; to Karen Bjelland for helpful conversations; to Alice Falk for her expert copyediting; and especially to Stephen Llano, our production editor at Washington Square Press. Among the texts we consulted, we found David Bevington’s Arden Troilus and Cressida (1998) and Anthony B. Dawson’s New Cambridge Troilus and Cressida (2003) particularly helpful.

Our biggest debt is to the Folger Shakespeare Library: to Michael Witmore, Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, who brings to our work a gratifying enthusiasm and vision; to Gail Kern Paster, Director of the Library from 2002 until July 2011, whose interest and support have been unfailing and whose scholarly expertise continues to be an invaluable resource; and to Werner Gundersheimer, the Library’s Director from 1984 to 2002, who made possible our edition; to Deborah Curren-Aquino, who provides extensive editorial and production support; to Jean Miller, the Library’s former Art Curator, who combs the Library holdings for illustrations, and to Julie Ainsworth, Head of the Photography Department, who carefully photographs them; to Peggy O’Brien, former Director of Education at the Folger and now Director of Education Programs at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, who gave us expert advice about the needs being expressed by Shakespeare teachers and students (and to Martha Christian and other master teachers who used our texts in manuscript in their classrooms); to Allan Shnerson and Mary Bloodworth for their expert computer support; to the staff of the Research Division, especially Karen Rogers (whose help is crucial), Mimi Godfrey (with special thanks for research assistance), Kathleen Lynch, Carol Brobeck, Liz Pohland, Owen Williams, and Caryn Lazzuri; and, finally, to the generously supportive staff of the Library’s Reading Room.

Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine

Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida

For the dramatic speech and action of Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare turned to two of the most prominent authors in his culture. The first was Homer, who had inspired much of Greek and Latin literature as author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the epic poems treating the Trojan War and its aftermath. The second was Geoffrey Chaucer, who, as author of The Canterbury Tales and the great romance of the Trojan War Troilus and Criseyde, was the only English writer granted status comparable to the titans of classical literature. Homer’s heroes, especially Achilles and Hector, are so magnificent that they attract the interest and intervention of the gods of the classical world. These gods contend with each other over the fates of their favorites, and sometimes even join the fight with them on the battlefield between the walls of Troy and the ships of the Greek invaders. The Greeks and the Trojans battle over Helen, the queen of Sparta and wife of Menelaus; she was taken from him by Paris, a son of Priam, king of Troy, and now is held within the city’s impenetrable gates and walls. Helen, every bit as magnificent as her male counterparts, is, in Homer, innocent of inconstancy because she is the victim of a divine spell.

Chaucer’s young Trojan prince Troilus and the widow Criseyde, with whom he falls in love, are fitting company for the Homeric heroes among whom Chaucer places them. However immature Troilus is at the beginning of the romance, his love for Criseyde matures him and ennobles his character, so that by the time they consummate their love, she can imagine him providing her the protection of a wall of steel. During their long affair, he loves her with great constancy. And he continues to love her after she is sent away by the Trojan council to the Greeks, to whom her father has already fled, and even after her betrayal of him when the Greek Diomedes prevails on her to accept him as her lover. While Criseyde turns out finally to be false, Chaucer and the rather clumsy and inexperienced narrator he creates both seem highly sympathetic to her in her vulnerable state. Up to the moment of her inconstancy, the poem is lavish in providing readers with details of her domestic situation and of her states of mind and feeling in a way that draws us close to her. Only Chaucer’s Pandarus and Diomedes seem to anticipate their Shakespearean counterparts, both men ruthless in exploiting Criseyde’s fears.

None of Shakespeare’s characters are the exemplars of heroism, constancy, or greatness found in Homer’s and Chaucer’s creations. In part, their diminishment in Shakespeare’s play may result from his transformation of them from epic and romance to drama. By convention in epic, the characters associate with the gods and thereby share the glory of these divinities; by convention in drama, the gods do not appear, and the characters therefore cannot exceed the limits of their humanity. By convention too in both romance and epic, the characters are presented to us by admiring narrators; by convention in drama, the characters must speak for themselves. But the shift in genre from epic and romance to drama cannot in itself account for the shrinking of the Homeric and Chaucerian characters to their Shakespearean size.

Instead, Shakespeare shapes the action of his play and the speeches of his characters so as to diminish the characters. The leaders of the Greek army, General Agamemnon and his councillors Nestor and Ulysses, talk endlessly as they scheme to get their chief warrior Achilles again to fight. Their schemes involve deception and cheap theatricality, and Greek officers and warriors alike are presented as fitting subjects for the cynical Thersites to lash mercilessly with his tongue. On the Trojan side, when the leaders meet to discuss whether to keep Helen, Hector provides powerfully reasonable arguments for delivering her up to the Greeks and then, on a seeming whim, sides with the others in continuing the war to keep her. In Shakespeare’s version, all the Greeks and Trojans, Paris excepted, doubt that Helen is worth the lives lost in their war for her. Just as Paris dotes on Helen, so Troilus on Cressida. Yet in contrast to Chaucer’s Troilus, Shakespeare’s fails to mature in response to his love and remains in adolescent self-absorption, almost indifferent to Cressida’s plight when she is forced out of Troy and made to go to her father in the Greek camp. For her part, Shakespeare’s Cressida shows nothing of the thoughtful reflection of her Chaucerian predecessor; it is replaced in her by calculation and manipulation of her suitors. Apparently, Shakespeare chose to part ways with Homer and Chaucer by throwing onto their characters a relentlessly satirical light, one that makes his play a savage attack on the ideals that serve as cover for greed, violence, and lust.

After you have read Troilus and Cressida, we invite you to read the essay "Troilus and Cressida: A Modern Perspective," written by Professor Jonathan Gil Harris of George Washington University, contained within this eBook.

Title page of Homers Iliad, translated by George Chapman (1592).

(From the Folger Library collection.)

Reading Shakespeare’s Language: Troilus and Cressida

For many people today, reading Shakespeare’s language can be a problem—but it is a problem that can be solved. Those who have studied Latin (or even French or German or Spanish), and those who are used to reading poetry, will have little difficulty understanding the language of poetic drama. Others, though, need to develop the skills of untangling unusual sentence structures and of recognizing and understanding poetic compressions, omissions, and wordplay. And even those skilled in reading unusual sentence structures may have occasional trouble with Shakespeare’s words. More than four hundred years of static—caused by changes in language and in life—intervene between his speaking and our hearing. Most of his immense vocabulary is still in use, but a few of his words are no longer used and many of his words now have meanings quite different from those they had in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the theater, most of these difficulties are solved for us by actors who study the language and articulate it for us so that the essential meaning is heard—or, when combined with stage action, is at least felt. When reading on one’s own, one must do what each actor does: go over the lines (often with a dictionary close at hand) until the puzzles are solved and the lines yield up their poetry and the characters speak in words and phrases that are, suddenly, rewarding and wonderfully memorable.

Shakespeare’s Words

As you begin to read the opening scenes of a Shakespeare play, you may notice occasional unfamiliar words. Some are unfamiliar simply because we no longer use them. In the opening act of Troilus and Cressida, for example, one finds the words indrenched (i.e., drowned), tortive (i.e., twisted), importless (i.e., trivial), and oppugnancy (i.e., opposition). Words of this kind, more frequent in Troilus and Cressida than in most of Shakespeare’s plays, are explained in notes to the text.

In Troilus and Cressida, as in all of Shakespeare’s writing, more problematic are words that are still in use but that now have different meanings. In the opening scenes of Troilus and Cressida, for example, the word porridge is used where we would say soup, fair where we would say beautiful, morrow where we would say morning, and ward where we would say defend. Again, such words will be explained in the notes to the text, but they will become familiar the more of Shakespeare’s plays you read.

Some words are strange not because of the static introduced by changes in language over the past centuries but because these are words that Shakespeare is using to build a dramatic world that has its own space, time, and history. In the Prologue to Troilus and Cressida, for example, Shakespeare quickly constructs the recent background to the Trojan War, some episodes of which are the subject of his play. He gives an account of Greek princes orgulous, wearing crownets regal, sailing for Phrygia in order to ransack Troy because it is the city whose strong immures secure Helen, Menelaus’ queen, ravished by wanton Paris. Shakespeare then describes the Dardan plains, where the Greeks have pitched their brave pavilions within sight of Priam’s six-gated city. These words and names and the world they create will become increasingly familiar as you get further into the play.

Shakespeare’s Sentences

In an English sentence, meaning is quite dependent on the place given each word. The dog bit the boy and The boy bit the dog mean very different things, even though the individual words are the same. Because English places such importance on the positions of words in sentences, on the way words are arranged, unusual arrangements can puzzle a reader. Shakespeare frequently shifts his sentences away from normal English arrangements—often in order to create the rhythm he seeks, sometimes to use a line’s poetic rhythm to emphasize a particular word, sometimes to give a character his or her own speech patterns or to allow the character to speak in a special way. When we attend a good performance of the play, the actors will have worked out the sentence structures and will articulate the sentences so that the meaning is clear. When reading the play, we need to do as the actor does: that is, when puzzled by a character’s speech, check to see if words are being presented in an unusual sequence.

Often Shakespeare rearranges subjects and verbs (e.g., instead of He says we find Says he). In Troilus and Cressida, when Cressida’s servant Alexander, speaking of Hector, tells her that to the field goes he (1.2.11), Alexander is using such a construction. So is the Greek councillor Nestor when he says In the reproof of chance / Lies the true proof of men (1.3.33–34). The normal order would be he goes and the true proof of men lies in the reproof of chance. Shakespeare also frequently places the object before the subject and verb (e.g., instead of I hit him, we might find Him I hit). Cressida provides an example of this inversion when she says this maxim out of love I teach (1.2.299); she offers another more elaborate example by saying Words, vows, gifts, tears, and love’s full sacrifice / He offers (1.2.289–90). The normal order would be I teach this maxim and He offers words, vows, gifts, tears, and love’s full sacrifice.

Inversions are not the only unusual sentence structures in Shakespeare’s language. Often in his sentences, words that would normally appear together are separated from each other. Again, this is frequently done to create a particular rhythm or to stress a particular word, or else to draw attention to a needed piece of information. Take, for example, the Greek general Agamemnon’s Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan, / Puffing at all, winnows the light away (1.3.27–28). Here the subject (Distinction) is separated from its verb (winnows) by the phrases with a broad and powerful fan and Puffing at all. Or take the Greek warrior-king Ulysses’ accusation against Achilles:

The great Achilles, whom opinion crowns

The sinew and the forehand of our host,

Having his ear full of his airy fame,

Grows dainty of his worth[.]

(1.3.146–49)

In this case the subject of the sentence (Achilles) is separated from the verb (grows) by a clause (whom opinion crowns / The sinew and the forehand of our host) and then by a phrase (Having his ear full of his airy fame). Both the clause and the phrase deserve the emphasis they receive because they indicate how Achilles has grown so full of self-regard. In order to create sentences that seem more like the English of everyday speech, one can rearrange the words, putting together the word clusters (Distinction winnows, Achilles grows dainty). The result will usually be an increase in clarity but a loss of rhythm or a shift in emphasis.

Often in Troilus and Cressida, rather than separating basic sentence elements, Shakespeare simply holds them back, delaying them until other material to which he wants to give greater emphasis has been presented. Shakespeare puts this kind of construction in the mouth of Ulysses when he begins to address his general, Agamemnon:

Thou great commander, nerves and bone of Greece,

Heart of our numbers, soul and only sprite,

In whom the tempers and the minds of all

Should be shut up, hear what Ulysses speaks.

(1.3.57–60)

The basic sentence elements (the verb and its object hear what Ulysses speaks) are here delayed while Ulysses shows elaborate deference to Agamemnon. This attitude could hardly be more appropriate to the occasion, because Ulysses is preparing to deliver a speech on the theme of the importance of respect for authority.

Sometimes Shakespeare fashions speeches that combine both the delay and the separation of basic sentence elements. One such example marks a speech by Troilus:

                                            . . . when my heart,

As wedgèd with a sigh, would rive in twain,

Lest Hector or my father should perceive me,

I have, as when the sun doth light a-scorn,

Buried this sigh in wrinkle of a smile[.]

(1.1.35–39)

This time the subject and verb (I have buried) must wait for Troilus’s detailed presentation of his emotional state in a subordinate clause (when my heart, / As wedgèd with a sigh, would rive in twain) that then incorporates a second clause (Lest Hector or my father should perceive me). When at last subject and verb do appear, the two parts of the verb (have buried) are separated from each other by yet another clause that is used by Troilus to characterize his facial expression (as when the sun doth light a-scorn).

Finally, in many of Shakespeare’s plays, sentences are sometimes complicated not because of unusual structures or interruptions but because Shakespeare omits words and parts of words that English sentences normally require. (In conversation, we, too, often omit words. We say Heard from him yet? and our hearer supplies the missing Have you.) Frequent reading of Shakespeare—and of other poets—trains us to supply such missing words.

Reviews for Troilus and Cressida

[dgrachel · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I just didn't get this one. I tried print and audio and ended up going back to print to read the whole thing, but I still couldn't tell you much of anything that I read. I know my eyes moved across the page, but for some reason the words just refused to sink in. Possibly part of the problem is that I detest Ancient Greek history. I've never enjoyed it. However, I really liked Margaret George's novel Helen of Troy, so I thought I'd be okay here. I wasn't. I know it was a cultural norm both in Shakespeare's time and it seems to still be a norm today, but women being treated as property is a theme that angers me. The way Cressida was treated makes my blood boil, and I didn't see anything in her behavior that justified the label of "whore". Again, I obviously missed the message of the play. I didn't like any of the characters. I found no humor in the story. But, I finished, so I can check another of Shakespeare's plays off my to-read list.

[therebelprince · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Blissful scholarly edition of this play. For new readers, I'd recommend the Penguin or the Oxford, but the Arden really is number one for professionals and scholars.

[pnorman4345 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a cynical version of incidents in the Trojan war. An over-romantic Troilus thinks he is in love with Cressida. (She has the part of a life time.) She is young, sexy, flirtatious and aware of her need to make our for herself while the time is ripe. She is traded to the Greeks for a warrior and immediately starts flirting. Troilus is devasted by this when he sees her behavior. The other incident is Achilles' murder of Hector. It is ugly.

[coach_of_alva · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Shakespeare's brutal and brilliant deconstruction of the Iliad is one of the most enjoyable surprises I've had in reading. Achilles is a brute and a fraud. Ajax is a chivalrous dunce. Agamemnon is a cipher. Menelaus is just a cuckold. Ulysses and Nestor are puppeteers whose main military virtue is their ability to manipulate the two strongmen. Thersites isn't a troublemaker but the most bitter of Shakespeare's jesters, tolerated by the powerful Grecians instead of beaten. Hector on the other hand is even nobler than he was in the Iliad and is murdered in the most cowardly way imaginable.Nothing is more surprising that the characters of the star crossed lovers, whose story ends with the woman changing her heart with her fortune and her enraged former lover consigning her to blazes and becoming a cruel killing machine. The play thus ends not with the tragic deaths of the lovers but with Cressida's pandering uncle complaining about the physical ailments his career has caused him.Did I say that Shakespeare was deconstructing Homer? On second thought, Shakespeare was deconstructing Shakespeare.

[anthonywillard · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

** spoiler alert **This is a pretty good play. It doesn't fit the usual categories, being filled with comic scenes and speeches but following with an abrupt bleak ending. I found the dialogue throughout to be entertaining and clever, and the spoof of the Iliad very funny. The eponymous love affair is satirical. Troilus is a narcissistic and wordy brat, and Cressida a rather winning girl who can't say no. The love affair is at best a subplot to the Iliad satire, and it's most entertaining character the go-between Pandarus, who remarks that his name will be inherited by all panders to follow. Most of the main Iliad characters are presented satirically. All ends in a lengthy battle with many short scenes of individual combat, ending with the death of Hector in a rather unheroic attack by Achilles and his Myrmidons. Then a final comic soliloquy by Pandarus. If you like bawdy Shakespeare there is a lot of it here, including a large stock of gay humor in the Greek camp.

[saturnloft · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is one of Shakespeare's problem plays, meaning it doesn't fit neatly into the category of tragedy or comedy, but occupies its own hybrid niche. "Black comedy" or "scathing satire" would probably be a fairly apt description for this outing. It's actually a lot of fun to read, especially if you like humor flavored with a heavy dose of cynicism.The "romantic" leads of the play's title, Troilus and Cressida, are no Romeo and Juliet. Not even by a long shot. Troilus is a superficial lad, concerned only with glory and momentary pleasures, and his love for Cressida lasts only about as long as her maidenhood. Cressida is just as fickle as her lover, swiftly shifting her physical affections to the enemy camp when she gets traded for ransom. This play is very anachronistic. It's not the sort of tale that resides in the ancient dusty battles of Greek times; it's very much a product of Shakespeare's era. This is what makes it such an interesting read for me. It reflects the rapidly changing world of a burgeoning global market, a place where chaos, hypocrisy, and corruption were rife. There are numerous references in the play to venereal disease, especially the notorious pox (syphilis), which was just beginning its lengthy reign in Europe.I do love it when Shakespeare gets gross, and he obliges his disgusting side with unapologetic alacrity here. "Thou crusty botch of nature", "thou sarsenet flap for a sore eye", and so on.. Shakespeare is a demigod when it comes to heinous insults, and Troilus and Cressida is brimful of humdingers.I also love Shakespeare plays for the treasure-trove of words, some of which should still be in use instead of being consigned to obscurity.Two words from this play that caught my fancy:Oppugnancy - meaning opposition. I like its bouncy character, like a rubber ball on the tongue.Gloze - a verb meaning to comment, make excuses for, or to use ingratiating language.

[jhudsui_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

You know what I just don't get this play. Apparently a lot of people don't get it and it's labeled one of the "problem plays", but you know what, Timon of Athens was one of those too and that play made perfect sense to me. But this one.. just seems like a bunch of random shit that happens. Looking at the wikipedia writeup (which is not really the best source for this kind of information) I see it suggested that the joke is that a variety of conventionally epic tragedies are set up, and then subverted by either not resolving themselves or resolving themselves in the sort of petty venal way they'd happen in real life. In retrospect I can kind of sort of see that but it's not funny to me. Also the structure/pacing is really bizarre. Practically nothing happens in the first four acts and then the fifth act has like a dozen scenes and takes up a third of the page count.

[barbaranyc · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is one of my favorites of Shakespeare's work. It's been a LONG time since I've read it, so I plan to reread it at some point.

[joririchardson · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I didn't think that Shakespeare, one of my favorite authors, was even capable of writing a bad play. However, this one is far from perfect, especially when compared to his other works."Troilus and Cressida" is about a young man, Troilus, and his lover, Cressida. It is set during the Trojan War, and among other characters are the recognizable Achilles, Hector, Helen, and others.However, the main character's love story never seems very convincing. Troilus is constantly praising his beloved highly, while another character does his best to convince him of her low morals. And, the characters are never together all that often. Most of their supposed "romance" is via them talking or thinking about each other in separate scenes. The character of Cressida is not very built up at all. It takes a few scenes for her to enter the story, and once she does, virtually nothing about her is revealed. One catches fleeting glimpses of a feisty nature, but other than this, all we seem to really know of Cressida is that she is beautiful (as proclaimed by Troilus over and over). Shakespeare even goes so far as to say that her beauty rivals that of Helen's. I kept waiting for Shakespeare to focus a bit more on his female character, yet he never did. As a result, the love story here is not a very convincing one.Another thing that I disliked about this play was how much dialogue there was. About half the book was simply talking - and not about anything interesting, unless you love hearing about endless politics, battle strategies, and so on. These things can be interesting, but in this Renaissance play, they seemed oddly out of place. I couldn't resist skimming over them slightly, wondering where Troilus has gone to. These endless talks are not involved with the book's plot in any major way, save that the Trojan War is its setting, of course. They also seem to lead nowhere, and are simply dry and dull. I had never before seen Shakespeare write such dreadfully tedious scenes.And besides the endless talking, I disliked the ending, in which Cressida is caught being unfaithful by Troilus. After that, she simply disappears altogether! She is not brought back into the story again for the entire book, besides when a letter arrives from her. All in all, I disliked this one - something I was sure I would never say about a Shakespeare play.

[amerynth · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I've read all of Shakespeare's tragedies and "Troilus and Cressida" is definitely my least favorite by far. Set during the seventh year of the Trojan War, the play sprinkles a little bit of everything from romance to battle, but mostly focuses on people taunting each other. Much of action happens off-stage in the fifth act, as the actors dash on stage to mutter a few taunts and then leap off to fight with their swords. (As written anyway... I've never seen it performed.)Overall, I felt that Shakespeare took a story told so well in "The Iliad" (with the addition of a couple of star-crossed lovers) and made it boring. It didn't help that there seemed to be no motivation for Cressida's quick betrayal. Anyway, there are loads of Shakespeare's plays that feature similar set ups that are much better than this.

[meandmybooks-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A landmark for me. In this “Year of Reading All the Shakespeare,” this play, the twenty-first in the list, is the first one that I'd never read before and really enjoyed. To me, Titus Andronicus was a pointless gorefest, Two Gentlemen of Verona was just dumb, and King Edward III was simply incoherent, but this – well, it's not great – not a Hamlet or Macbeth or Richard II – but it's very good. While I'm quite familiar with the Iliad, the story of Troilus and Cressida was new to me. Aside from knowing that they were famous “sundered lovers,” I came to their story pretty much cold. So now I'm curious about Chaucer's take on their tale. Shakespeare keeps to tradition with some characters – Hector is noble, Ulysses is crafty, Nestor is … verbose – but several “regulars” lose the sheen they generally have and are merely (if fairly plausibly) thugs (or, in Helen's case, a “floozy”). Achilles in particular, comes off dreadfully. Thersites, though, who I didn't even remember from the Iliad, is transformed from “nonentity” in Homer to a vividly realized dynamo of evil in Shakespeare's play. His equal opportunity hatred for everyone and everything – Greek or Trojan, male or female – is almost overwhelming in its intensity. Pandarus, another character from the Iliad I'd completely forgotten about, is also memorable in Shakespeare's telling, though in his case it is his sheer creepiness that makes him stand out. Marjorie Garber, in her brilliant Shakespeare After All, points out Pandarus's similarities to Juliet's nurse (in Romeo and Juliet), but, while the nurse is certainly foolish and shows an unwholesome enthusiasm for her young charge's deflowering, her prurience is nothing next to that of Cressida's uncle. Pandarus's eagerness to put his niece and the Trojan prince in bed together and his salacious comments in regard to their activities there are impressively icky. Cressida, unattractive though she is (except physically, I suppose) is at least interesting. A practical girl, with no illusions about her status as an object to be sold. The frequent comparisons between Helen and Cressida, so similar in appearance that the only difference is said to be that Cressida's hair is a shade darker, highlight the hypocrisies of their varying treatments. As Troilus says in the meeting over whether to return Helen and thus end the war...”Were it not glory that we more affectedThan the performance of our heaving spleens,I would not wish a drop of Trojan bloodSpent more in her defense. But, worthy Hector,She is a theme of honor and renown,A spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds,Whose present courage may beat down our foes,And fame in time to come canonize us”Cressida, however, is traded to the Greeks in return for a captured Trojan leader without a second thought (we are spared the scene where Paris prances around Priam's palace teasing Troilus with a rousing rendition of “Mom and Dad and everyone love me best!). Poor Troilus. He gets marquee status, but his character is distinctly lacking in pizazz. The play's “Ken doll,” he gets the girl, only to immediately lose her to a more powerful, more interesting man. Oh well. Their long term prospects weren't promising anyway.Along with reading the Folger Shakespeare Library edition, which has reasonable size print and fine notes, I listened to the Arkangel recording of this play, which is very well done. Recommended.

[bookworm12_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

“She is a pearl, whose price hath launch'd above a thousand ships.” The story of the Trojan War and the beautiful Helen is well-known, but this Shakespearean tragedy about it is not. Troilus and Cressida is the story of two young Trojans caught in the midst of a nation at war. Despite being surrounded by the problems of others they find themselves falling in love. Troilus is the brother of the infamous warrior Hector and the lovesick Paris who ran away with the married Helen, incurring the wrath of the Greeks. The entire play is filled with passionate declarations of both love and war. The Greeks, like King Agamemnon and the hotheaded Ajax, are itching for a fight. Ajax doesn’t realize until too late that he is only a pawn in the hands of the generals. The Trojans on the other hand aren’t sure how they want to respond. Paris wants to defend Helen’s honor, but his older brother Hector has to decide if she is worth the fall of an entire nation. From his opening scene he has an impossible task. He knows the right thing to do in theory, but the obligations of honor and family loyalty prevent him from doing it. The play is full to the brim with remarkable supporting characters. From the tragic Cassandra, whose prophetic wails go unheeded to Pandarus, Cressida’s uncle the meddling matchmaker. I was surprised to find one of the most poignant wooing scenes I’ve ever come across in a play. Usually the man takes the lead in these scenes, but in this one a guarded Cressida finally reveals how much she cares for Troilus. She been attempting to play hard to get, but she can’t hide her feelings any more. She gushes then quickly chides herself, finally begging him to kiss her so she’ll stop talking. “And yet, good faith, I wish'd myself a man; Or that we women had men's privilege Of speaking first. Sweet, bid me hold my tongue; For, in this rapture, I shall surely speak The thing I shall repent. See, see ! your silence, Cunning in dumbness, from my weakness draws My very soul of counsel: Stop my mouth.”This is a tricky play though because there are so many different plots. There’s the romance between Troilus and Cressida and another one between Paris and Helen. There’s the central story of war between nations. In the midst of all of this the title characters often feel secondary, which can make it hard to become invested in their relationship. The title may be Troilus and Cressida, but that’s really a misnomer. While their romance is sweet, it’s truly the story of the Trojan War and the dicey decisions that warriors must face in battle. What is a single life worth? For Achilles, his love for one man is enough to make him fight or to stay his hand. For the love of his brothers Hector is willing to pick up his sword. The tragedy of war is that it’s a cyclical game; one death always leads to the desire for vengeance from the other side. Grief and bloodshed fuel only more of the same and this play is a poignant reminder of that.BOTTOM LINE: A powerful story of the destructive force of war intertwined with a doomed love story. Bard enthusiasts must read it.  

[shanaqui_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the last text, chronologically, in the class I read it for, but it was the easiest to get hold of. I actually read a version with no notes or glosses, so it'll probably be interesting to go through an annotated version. Obviously I was aware of the story on the Trojan War -- unavoidable when you take Classics for GCSE and A Level -- but I didn't know much about this one.

People are right to categorise this as a 'problem play'. It generally doesn't work to try and put things into hard and fast categories -- just look at the problems with Anglo-Saxon elegies/lyric poems -- but it can be useful. But this one defies all the categories: comedy? Tragedy? History...? None of that seems quite right.

It's Shakespeare, though, so it's bound to be worth reading. I'm looking forward to meeting Shakespeare's sources, and getting to know them better. (I am generally against studying Shakespeare and Chaucer, in my own work, as I feel they're... overdone. Maybe even over stressed, though it's hard to overestimate Shakespeare's impact. Still, I'm very excited about this module.)