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Part I Greek 4 The History of Trolius And Cressida
The most famous event in the early history of Greece was the Trojan War, fought a generation after the ti that e have only the legendary tale told by Homer, a Greek poet who supposedly lived in the ninth century bc
Whether Homer actually lived, or whether the poems ascribed to hienuity of literary critics for over two thousand years, but that is not the sort of problem that concerns us here
What does concern us is that the Ho with the Bible and Shakespeare's plays) been the most notable and influential works of literature ever produced in the Western world, and that in 1601 Shakespeare wrote his own version of the Homeric tale
Shakespeare was by no means the first, nor was he the last, to do a version of Homer
Hoether about 850 bc and have been sung or recited by bard after bard, the tale being carried or froh oral tradition About 500 Bc it was carefully edited by Athenian scholars and placed into the formhave
Ho Trojan War which, according to legend, lasted ten years The episode takes place in the tenth and last year and deals with a quarrel between two of the Greek leaders, with the near disaster that befalls the Greek cause as a result, and with the dramatic reconciliation that follows after all the participants have suffered tragic losses
In the course of the epic, hints are given as to events that took place before the incident of the quarrel and of events that were to take place after the reconciliation The popularity of Homer's tale led later Greek poets and dra other portions of the tale based on Hoends then extant but no surviving today
Other ancient writers even tried retelling the tale of the quarrel itself in their oay, and the habit of doing so continued through the Middle Ages and into modern times In 1925, for instance, the American write:
John Erskine published The Private Life of Helen of Troy, putting the tale of Troy into twentieth-century idiom
Shakespeare tried his hand at it too, producing, alas, a play that is not considered one of his better productions and is by no inal
In Troy
Shakespeare chooses to tell (more or less) the same incident that concerns Homer, which es of a long siege Where Ho with incidents in a hich (in his time) must have been well known to all Greeks, with its heroes' na household words, Shakespeare was not quite in the same position
Educated Englishmen in Shakespeare's tis on the subject in Roman and medieval times It was only toward the end of the sixteenth century that Hoe Chapman (whose work inspired a famous sonnet by John Keats two centuries later) At the ti written, only a third of that translation had yet appeared, so it is doubtful how e of Homer's actual tale Shakespeare himself had and how much he had to depend on later (and distorted) versions of the Troy tale
Shakespeare did not apparently feel safe in starting, as Homer did, toward the end of the war, and inserts a soins directly:
In Troy there lies the scene
- Prologue, line 1
The nae was, apparently, Ilion (or Iliu) Hoion in which Ilium was located was known as Troas or the Troad, and from this, the city took the alternate nalish form of this latter name, Troy, that is most familiar to us
It is over three thousand years now since Troy was destroyed and yet, thanks to Homer, its name remains forever fresh to us
Indeed, it reh a period in early modern times when skeptical scholars considered the Trojan War to have been purely mythical and were sure that no city of Troy had ever existed Considering that Hooddesses, monsters, and wonders, it was easy to feel skepticism
However, after all the overlay of the marvellous has been scraped away, a core remains and, as it turns out, that core has value
A German businessman, Heinrich Schliemann, who implicitly believed the essential truth of the Iliad (ods), ao to Greece and Turkey, where he hoped to dig up the ruins of Troy and soreat Greek cities of the time From the 1860s to his death in 1890, he achieved pheno the site of Troy and other places mentioned in the Iliad
Historians no quite a bit about the early phase of Greek history, which they call the Mycenaean Age From what they have learned, we find that Hoh with a few anachronisms) of Mycenaean society Historians are now just as certain that there was a siege of Troy, as a century ago they were certain there was not
isles of Greece The Prologue goes on to describe those ere attacking Troy:
From isles of Greece
The princes orgulous, their high blood chafed,
Have to the port of Athens sent their ships,
- Prologue, lines 1-3
According to the legend, it was a combined expedition of Greek forces drawn frodoms that were then to be found in Greece In theory, all acknowledged an overlord who ruled in the southern portion of the peninsula and it was this overlord who acted as commander in chief of the expedition
The overlordship was not tight, however, and the leaders of the various contingents were very aware of their own rights and privileges There was a strong resemblance between the situation in Mycenaean Greece and that inwas titular overlord but could only with the greatest difficulty induce his various dukes and counts to obey hie of history to fail to understand it, hence his reference to the princes "orgulous"; that is, "haughty"
The Greek forces, co place to for place was at Aulis, a harbor in Boeotia, protected by the long island of Euboea (see page I-59)
Shakespeare hereplace Athens, which is incorrect
toward Phrygia
Having gathered, the united fleet now ean Sea toward Troy The total nuiven:
Sixty and nine, that wore
Their crownets regal, from th'Athenian bay
Put forth toward Phrygia;
- Prologue, lines 5-7
In Mycenaean tiians were in control of western Asia Minor They still dominated the area in the supposed time in which Homer lived, three and a half centuries after the Trojan War, so he could speak of them familiarly Their poas not destroyed till about 700 bc when the noions north of the Black Sea invaded Asia Minor and wreaked widespread destruction The naion of west central Asia Minor throughout ancient times, however
The chances are that the Trojans (although pictured in the Iliad as being in no way different froians
Shakespeare's mention of 69 ships is an extreendary nuht by each Greek contingent in Book Two and the total comes to 1186 Christopher Marlowe in his play Dr Faustus is closer to Ho the shade of the beautiful woht on the war, "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships-"
The ravished Helen
The basic cause of the expedition was undoubtedly most unroean Sea and the Black Sea and was, therefore,tolls for passage, they grew rich, and thisexpedition
Not only did Troy's wealth for prodded from behind New tribes of Greeks from the north, relatively uncivilized ones called Dorians, weretheir pressure felt Conditions at hoe to take part in piratical expeditions overseas increased
Indeed, the tihout the civilized world and it was not only Troy that was suffering harypt and Canaan, for instance Certain contingents of these raiders settled down on the Canaan-ite coast and becaly influenced Israelite history
By Homer's time a iven for the expedition Shakespeare gives it briefly here The Greeks, he says, have sworn
To ransack Troy, within whose strong immures
The ravished Helen, Menelaus" queen,
With wanton Paris sleeps-and that's the quarrel
- Prologue, lines 8-10
In ancient times piratical raids were common Ships would come ashore and armed men would suddenly snatch up cattle and people, then sail away again If the people captured (and intended for the slave-ht be carried through The immediate cause of the Trojan War could well have been such a raid, of which the Trojans uilty or which it siuited the Greeks to say that the Trojans were guilty
With time, the details of the abduction were adorned and elaborated with complicated ive it briefly
At a certain wedding (involving a bride and groooddesses had been invited-with one exception Eris, the Goddess of Discord, had been overlooked She appeared unbidden and in anger tossed a golden apple (the "Apple of Discord") auests It bore the label "To the Fairest"
At once three goddesses claimed it: Juno (Hera), the wife of Jupiter (Zeus); Minerva (Athena), the Goddess of Wisdom; and Venus (Aphrodite), the Goddess of Beauty
The goddesses agreed to accept the decision of Paris, a Trojan prince, and each goddess tried her best to bribe him Juno offered him power, Minerva offered him wisdom, and Venus offered him the fairest woman in the world for his bride He chose Venus, which was probably the honest choice in any case
There was a coh The fairest woman in the world was Helen, as alreadyof Sparta
Guided by Venus, Paris arrived as a guest in Sparta, was royally treated by Menelaus, and then, when Menelaus was off on state affairs, Paris seized the opportunity to abduct the willing Helen (Paris was very handsome) and carry her off to Troy
Menelaus was rightly angry over this and the result was the Greek expedition against Troy
To Tenedos
The journey of the Greek fleet is followed:
To Tenedos they come,
And the deep-drawing barks do there disgorge
Their warlike fraughtage Now on Dardan plains
The fresh and yet unbruised Greeks do pitch
Their brave pavilions
- Prologue, lines 11-15
Tenedos is a small island about four miles off the shore of Asia Minor, near Troy
Troy itself is several miles inland and the plain between itself and the sea is the "Dardan plain" Dardania is a name for a section of the Trojan coast The na to the randson of Dardanus was Tros, from whose name Troy was derived
Having brought the Greeks to Troy, the Prologue noarns the audience that the play will not start at the beginning:
our play
Leaps o'er the vaunt and firstlings of those broils,
Beginning in the middle,
- Prologue, lines 26-28
Troilus, alas
Yet though the play begins in the in with ins with a rather sickly speech of love
The fault lies not in Homer but in medieval distortions of the tale In Shakespeare's time the most popular version of the tale of Troy was a twelfth-century French romance, written by Benoit de Sainte-Maure, called Roman de Troie Even that wasn't based on Homer directly, but on works written in late Roinal account
The Roman de Troie ritten when the devices of courtly love (see page I-54) were taking France by stororously masculine tale became prettified with the addition of an artificial love story It was the love story, rather than the Horound, that interested later writers such as Boccaccio in Italy and Chaucer in England, and through them, Shakespeare
The first scene of Troilus and Cressida is in Troy A young Trojan warrior co frustrated in love He is taking off his ar:
Each Troyan that is master of his heart,
Let him to field; Troilus, alas, hath none
- Act I, scene i, lines 4-5
As the nae extent about Troilus, but who is he?
In Homer's Iliad he is dead before the action starts, and he receives exactly oneof Troy is o to the Greek camp to try to ransom the dead body of his ,[Inuse of the recent translation by Robert Graves, The Anger of Achilles (Doubleday, 1959) ] "Your dead brothers were the best soldiers in hter, and Hector, a very god a one, and s left me"
That is all; nothing more
The later poets and coh, and invented various tales concerning Troilus that agreed in only one respect: he was eventually killed by Achilles, the greatest of the Greek warriors
Since Troilus is heroic and since his tale is not told (and therefore fixed) by Homer, there is room left for addition in medieval fashion, when the medieval writers took their turn It was Troilus to whom the tale of courtly love was affixed
I'll not meddle
With Troilus is an older hs Apparently he has been doing his best to bring the love affair to a happy conclusion Now he pretends to lose patience, saying:
Well, I have told you enough of this
For my part, I'll not meddle nor make no farther
- Act I, scene i, lines 13-14
Who is Pandarus? In the Iliad there is indeed a character by this name He is pictured as an expert archer and appears in Homer's tale on two separate occasions
His first appearance is in Book Four of the Iliad A truce has been declared between the arh the war may end in a co Pandarus, however, treacherously shoots an arrow at Menelaus and wounds hioes on
Pandarus makes a second appearance in Book Five He shoots an arrow at Diohtly A little later, he encounters the enraged Greek at close range and is himself killed Exit Pandarus
Shakespeare's Pandarus has no more in common with this other one than the naenial old man, very interested in sex-a kind of voyeur, in fact-and so unashaht over the whole uage
To be sure, it is not Shakespeare who is entirely responsible for this change Pandarus appears as Pandaro in a short poem ("Filostrato") about this love affair published by the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio in 1338 In "Filostrato" Pandaro is the cousin of the girl whom Troilus loves
The English poet Chaucer (see page I-54) published in 1385 Troilus and Criseyde, a irl's cousin, becairl's uncle
It was Shakespeare next who, using Chaucer's poeed Pandare to Pandarus
fair Cressid
Bues patience on Troilus, and Troilus retorts that he is already superhumanly patient He says:
At Priam's royal table do I sit,
And when fair Cressid cohts-
- Act I, scene i, lines 31-32
Priaure of a royal patriarch He has, all told, fifty sons and twelve daughters by various wives, and Troilus is one of the sons When the Greek expedition arrived before the walls of Troy, Priaht, but he was still in full authority as king
As for "fair Cressid," who is she? She is Pandarus' niece in the play and it is she hom Troilus is in love, but where does she come from? She is not mentioned, not once, in the Iliad
Yet, even so, we can trace her origin from the very first book of the Iliad In that first book, Hoareatest warrior in those forces, Achilles
The army, it seems, has conducted a raid, carried off captives, and divided the loot Agairl nairl named Briseis (The similarity in names is unfortunate and is a sure source of confusion)
It turns out that Chryseis is the daughter of Chryses, a priest of Apollo The priest cohter but when he is brusquely turned away by Agaue into the Greek caaamemnon pettishly insists that, in that case, he will appropriate Briseis in return
The quarrel flares and Achilles, in a rage, declares he will retire to his tent He and his warriors will fight no more on behalf of this miserable leader (And surely, our syed Achilles at the start)
The arguaative as commander in chief is unassailable Achilles insists that the com an injustice Thesyhts Hoht be in love with Chryseis or Achilles with Briseis; certainly not in the medieval sense
Later writers, however, more ro the love story, and make Achilles in love with Briseis
In Benoit's ht in to further complicate theThe Trojan prince Troilus is also in love with Briseis, so that now there is a triangle offor her
Benoit distorts the name, and "Briseis" becomes "Briseide" Since it is al "Briseis" with "Chryseis," "Briseide" easily becomes "Criseide" Hence Chaucer wrote of Troilus and Criseyde; and by a further se Shakespeare wrote of Troilus and Cressida
Hector or my father
Poor Troilus also co heart and conceal the fact that he is hopelessly in love:
Lest Hector or my father should perceive me
- Act I, scene i, line 38
Hector was Priaate in the field, the coreatest warrior on the Trojan side, second only to Achilles as a fighter He is one of the most attractive personalities in the Iliad and is the picture of patriotism
The bias in his favor is far more pronounced in medieval versions of the tale, since the Trojans were supposed to be the ancestors of the Roes Such a bias may also be expected in Shakespeare's play and it is there Shakespeare consistently pictures Hector as braver and better than Achilles, for instance
Why Troilus should be so reluctant to let Priam or Hector know of his love is not ue that it was a tiht and not to love and that father and older brother would object to having young Troilus moon away his time when the city was in such peril More likely, however, courtly love is, by convention, supposed to be barred by tremendous hurdles; barriers of law or caste, parental disapproval, royal disfavor, and so on Troilus must not be allowed to have it too easy, therefore
somewhat darker than Helen's
As for Pandarus, it is his task at theof Cressida, saying:
An her hair were not somewhat darker than Helen's
- Act I, scene i, lines 43-44
He does not go on and really, the iht almost be compared with Helen can only be considered humorous
Ever since the tale of the Trojan War has been extant, Helen has been considered beauty incarnate and beyond coh, the implication that darker hair is, in itself, a blot on beauty (see page I-436)
Cassandra's wit
Pandarus continues to praise Cressida Having co style, he searches for a way of praising her mind He says:
I would somebody had heard
her talk yesterday, as I did I will not
dispraise your sister Cassandra's wit, but-
- Act I, scene i, lines 47-49
Cassandra was one of Priaic of them She was beloved by Apollo and had proift of prophecy When he had granted her that favor she nevertheless reift could not be withdrawn, but in revenge Apollo decreed that no one would ever believe her true prophecies In other words, people believed her mad
The comparison, then, with Cassandra in natter of wit is but another buh fro in the audience
behind her father
Troilus continues to beo-between therefore tries the other extreme Violently, he disowns the whole business and washes his hands of i He will do nothing further for Troilus and says:
She's a fool to stay behind her father
Let her to the Greeks, and so
I'll tell her the next time I see her
- Act I, scene i, lines 83-85
Cressida's father is Calchas, a priest of Apdo If Cressida's name is derived from the Iliad's Chryseis, her father's name must be derived from the name of Chryseis' father, Chryses He too was a priest of Apollo
Why "Calchas" from "Chryses"? Because there is also a Calchas in the Iliad He is a skilled prophet or soothsayer on the Greek side, and can interpret the oue striking at the Greeks was the result of Agamemnon's refusal to surrender Chryseis to her father Both Chryses and Calchas are thus involved in the deamemnon surrender Chryseis
There is no hint in the Iliad that Calchas: anything but a Greek and certainly there is no confusion between him ad Chryses In later stories, however, the confusion arises Chryses the "Trojan priest of Apollo and Calchas the Greek soothsayer are combined ad the story arises that Calchas, a Trojan priest of Apollo, knowing through his prophetic arts that Troy must fall, deserts to the Greeks
The story of the lost daughter is retained, though Since Calchas/Chryses has now turned voluntarily to the Greeks to re to retrieve a daughter from the Greeks After all, he's there He hter fro to the Greeks And it is this Trojan daughter, Cressida/Chryseis, whom Troilus loves
thy Daphne's love
Troilus is at once anxious to placate Pandarus, who, after all, ree by which he can reach Cressida Pandarus, however, pushing his advantage, rushes off, leaving Troilus behind to sing Cressida's praises, calling on Apollo (the god of poetry) to help him:
Tell me, Apollo, for thy Daphne's love,
What Cressid is
- Act I, scene i, 102-3
It is interesting that Apollo, the personification of ically unsuccessful in his loves Cassandra refused hie I-36) is an even more famous love
What news, Aeneas
Troilus' soliloquy ends when another Trojan warrior enters He is in full armor, on his way to the battle, and is rather puzzled that Troilus is lingering in Troy Troilus asks:
What news, Aeneas, from the field today?
- Act I, scene i, line 11:
Aeneas, in the legends, is a son of none other than Venus, though hi father, Anchises, was a mortal man Aeneas was not a Trojan exactly but a Dardanian; that is, the inhabitant of a district neighboring Troy proper He attempted to maintain neutrality in the war at first but the attacks c Achilles forced him to join forces with Priam and his sons
None of this is in the Iliad In the Iliad he is an ardent Trojan fighter second only to Hector He is a darling of the gods and is saved by Venus and Apollo when about to be killed by Diomedes, and on another occasion by Neptune, when it is Achilles who is about to kill him
Homer eneral sack that destroys Troy (see page I-209) This was the basis of Vergil plot in the Aeneid, which deals with the wanderings of Aeneas after the destruction of Troy
Because Aeneas was viewed as the ancestor of the Romans, he had to be treated with particular care by Western poets The English had to 1 even lorious beginning
Several endary past that traced the early Britons back to Troy It seerandson, Brute, who, having inadvertently killed his father, fled Italy and finally landed in the northern island, which got its name of "Britain" from him
There is absolutely nothing to it, of course, other than the accidental similarity between the common Roman naave the English a profound interest in the tale of Troy and a strong pro-Trojan sympathy In particular, Aeneas ay, debonair, and the perfect ht
Menelaus' horn
Aeneas tells Troilus that Paris has been wounded in a duel with Menelaus (Such a duel is described in Book Three of the Iliad and it is after that duel, which Menelaus wins, that a truce is negotiated, a truce which is broken by Pandarus' arrow-see page I-79)
Troilus shrugs it off:
Let Paris bleed; 'tis but a scar to scorn:
Paris is gored with Menelaus' horn
- Act I, scene i, lines 115-16
There was an accepted convention in Shakespearean England that a betrayed husband had horns; invisible ones, of course This aht each other for the possession of a harem of does The deceived husband is, perhaps, likened to a defeated stag; hence his horns
The husband whose wife had fooled him was universally vieith amused contempt in Shakespeare's time This attitude arose, perhaps, froe I-54) where the knight was, ideally, supposed to love the wife of another In all such tales, the husband was the villain (witness the well-known romance of Tristan and Iseult) and the audience cheered when the horns were, so to speak, placed on his forehead
The betrayed husband was therefore an inexhaustible theme for comedy and any mention of horns or horned anihter-and Shakespeare made the most of that
Thus it is that Troilus scorns poor wronged Menelaus To modern ears, which do not find adultery either as serious or as comic as the Elizabethans did, such jests fall flat
Queen Hecuba
The scene shifts to Cressida now She enters with her servant, Alexander, looking after tomen who have hastened by She inquires who those ho passed and Alexander answers:
Queen Hecuba and Helen
- Act I, scene ii, line 1b
Queen Hecuba (or Hecabe, in the Greek form) was the second wife of Pria Hector, Paris, Troilus, and Cassandra of those s, she was a favorite character in tragic dramas devoted to the Trojan War and, indeed, in Hae II-115) Here, in Troilus and Cressida, however, she never appears onstage
He chid Andromache
Apparently the to to the walls to see the battle, for they fear itpoorly After all, even Hector is perturbed, or as the servant says:
Hector, whose patience Is as a virtue fixed, today was moved
He chid Andromache, and struck his armorer,
- Act I, scene ii, lines 4-6
Andromache is Hector's wife The last part of Book Six of the Iliad is devoted to a scene in which she hurries with her infant son, Scamandrius, to meet Hector before he leaves the city on his way to the battle It is thescene of married love in Homer Andromache pleads with Hector to stay in the city, for all her own relatives are dead "So, dear Hector," she says, "you are now not merely my husband-you are father, mother, and brother, too!"
But Hector ive his son a farewell and to pray over hi that soree that "His father was the lesser man!" Alas, it was not to be, for Hector's son was killed when Troy was destroyed
A lord of Troyan blood,
Toht be and is told:
there is a the Greeks
A lord of Troyan blood, nephew to Hector;
They call him Ajax
- Act I, scene ii, lines 12-14
Ajax plays a great role in the Iliad He is one of two men in the epic that bears the nae, he is called "Ajax the Greater" Of the two, only "the Greater" appears in Troilus and Cressida, so it suffices to call him Ajax
In the Iliad Ajax is the strongest of the Greeks, save only for Achilles, but is considerably th than for his subtlety He is never wounded in the Iliad, and he is the only important hero who never at any tioddess He is the epitoh hard work, without inspiration
He is not, in the Iliad, of Trojan blood; nor is he a nephew to Hector The attribution of Trojan blood to Ajax is probably the result of confusion with Ajax's half brother (see page I-103)
a gouty Briareus
Alexander goes on to describe Ajax and makes him out to be a parody of the picture presented in Ho more than a stolid, dim-witted man-mountain He says of Ajax:
he is a gouty Briareus, many hands and no use,
or purblind Argus, all eyes and no sight
- Act I, scene ii, lines 29-30
Briareus was an earthborn monster with fifty heads and a hundred arured was one in which the tale of a revolt against Jupiter is central The other gods, led by Neptune and Apollo, succeed in binding Jupiter, and he ht have been overthrown, but for the action of a sea nyht Briareus to the rescue The ods
As for Argus, he was a monster with a hundred eyes as sent by Juno (Hera) in order that he ht watch the nyod had turned her into a heifer to hide her froilance (his eyes never closed in unison; fifty at least were always open and alert) would prevent Jupiter fro Io back into human form
Jupiter sent Mercury (Herus to a si lullaby and then cut off his head Juno placed Argus' many eyes in the tail of her favorite bird, the peacock
Alexander's description of Ajax, in other words, is that of a man who has all the physical attributes required for a warrior but who lacks the intelligence to make those attributes work for him
And, apparently, what bothers Hector is that this mule of a man has struck him down Hector cannot help but feel the shame of it
That's Anterior
Pandarus arrives on the scene and at once begins busily to praise Troilus, hoping to arouse Cressida's ardor Cressida, who knows exactly what he is doing, teases hi his praises to stand but turning everything on its head
Soon thefrom the field at the close of the day, and Pandarus decides to let Troilus' own appearance do the talking He leads Cressida to a place where she can see the the others as they pass
Aeneas passes first and is praised, of course (Aeneas is always praised-he must be) Then comes another, and Pandarus says:
That's Anterior He has a shreit, I can tell you;
and he's h-he's one
o' the soundest judgments in Troy whosoever
- Act I, scene ii, lines 197-99
In the Iliad Antenor was one of the elders of Troy He was a councilor of Priaht There is undoubtedly confusion here with Agenor, his son, who in the Iliad plays an important role as a Trojan warrior
That's Helenus
Pandarus' fussing becomes funnier and funnier Hector and Paris pass and he praises therowing constantly more upset because Troilus doesn't appear
When Cressida asks the na warriors, Pandarus answers absently:
That's Helenus 1 marvel where Troilus is
That's Helenus I think he went not forth today
That's Helenus
- Act I, scene ii, lines 227-29
Helenus was another son of Pria to some accounts, a twin brother of Cassandra He was likewise blessed with the powers of a soothsayer and was a priest He was the only one of Priam's sons to survive the fall of Troy (perhaps because of his priestly character) and in the end, according to soether they ended their lives ruling over Epirus, a district in northwestern Greece
That's Deiphobus
But Cressida is still teasing Pandarus unmercifully She clearly knows all theIn fact, she sees Troilus before Pandarus does and asks in mock disdain:
What sneaking fellow comes yonder?
- Act I, scene ii, line 234
And, at the crisis, Pandarus fails to recognize hi:
Where? Yonder? That's Deiphobus
- Act I, scene ii, line 235
Only belatedly does he realize it is Troilus
Deiphobus is still another son of Priam and Hecuba After Paris dies in battle, it is he who next marries Helen As a result, when Troy is taken, he is killed by Menelaus and his corpse is hideously led
Pandarusup such a caterwauling after him that Cressida is embarrassed; not so e
It is only after Pandarus leaves that she reveals in a soliloquy that she is actually in love with Troilus, but holds off because she thinks wo as they are not attained
after seven years' siege
With the third scene we find ourselves in the Greek camp for the first time
There is a general air of depression over the ca to instill heart in the warriors Their troubles are, after all, long-standing ones, so why be disheartened now?
is it matter new to us
That we come short of our suppose so far
That after seven years' siege yet Troy walls stand;
-Act I, scene iii, lines 10-12
If this is the last year of the war, as itnine years, not seven-but that is a small error that makes no difference
Agaoes on to point out that the difficulty of the task but tests their mettle and tries their worth
Agamemnon is in a difficult position, for as commander in chief of the Greek army, the chief odium will fall upon him if the expedition fails He is co of Mycenae, which at the tiave its nae It declined soon after the Trojan War thanks to the devastation that accompanied the Dorian conquest of e in the days of Greece's greatest period, centuries later
Mycenae, located in the northeastern Peloponnesus, six os, has been excavated in the last century, and areatness
Agae I-68) and, in theory, he ruled over all of Greece, though in actual fact the princes of northern Greece (Achilles a them) were restive in the face of the claims of leadership on the part of the southern city, Mycenae
He wasof Sparta, a city located some fifty-five miles south of Mycenae
The younger sister of Clytemnestra was none other than Helen, over who Helen's beauty was such that her life, fro to end, was one of fatal attraction to irl of twelve, she was kidnapped, according to the legends, by the Athenian hero Theseus She was rescued by her brothers, Castor and Polydeuces, and after she was restored, her father, Tyndareus, decided to marry her off and let her husband have the responsibility of holding her
That was easier said than done, for when the ent out that Helen's hand was to be given in e, all the heroes of Greece came to Sparta to compete for her It see enemies of all the others
It was Ulysses who had the solution He had no real hope of gaining Helen for hiested to Tyndareus, therefore, that the coree to whatever decision was made as to Helen's husband and to proht attempt to take Helen away from him This was done and Ulysses was rewarded with the hand of Penelope, Helen's cousin
It was Menelaus as chosen as Helen's husband For one thing, he ealthy; for another, he was the younger brother of the King of Mycenae, Agamemnon
Agamemnon himself could not compete for Helen because he was already er brother, and it was very likely because of the prestige and pressure of the "Great King" that Menelaus was accepted
This was a good stroke of policy on Agamemnon's part Menelaus succeeded to the throne of Sparta, as Helen's husband Since Menelaus was a rather passive character, doathened by his indirect control of the important city of Sparta
By the saamemnon, for it weakened Menelaus' claim on the Spartan throne (which was Helen's rather than his own) Agamemnon had to push hard for a punitive expedition on Troy, and it , rather than any vohich gathered the feudal lords of Greece into the expedition
In the Iliad Agamemnon does not shine His quarrel with Achilles, in which the Great King is entirely in the wrong, nearly wrecks the Greek cause, and on more than one occasion Ho deservedly corrected by others
Nestor shall apply
When Agamemnon is done, the oldest of the Greek leaders stands up to second his words:
With due observance of thy godlike seat,
Great Agamemnon, Nestor shall apply Thy latest words
- Act I, scene iii, lines 31-33
In the Iliad Nestor is active a the Greeks despite the fact that he is described as ruling over the third generation of subjects Although he is so old, he survives to see Troy sacked Then, ten years after the fall of that city, when the last of the Greek warriors returns ho in his city of Pylos on the southwestern shore of Greece Pylos, like Mycenae, was an important center in the time of the Trojan War, but faded away in later tunes It left not even a village behind
The frequent reference to Nestor's age rant him two hundred years, but that is not really necessary In the Mycenaean Age it is quite likely that the life expectancy would be no more than twenty-five to thirty years, and that few men would reach forty before violence or disease laid them low If Nestor was seventy years old at the tieneration of men, and even ten years after the fall of Troy, he would be only eighty
An occasional person could reach such an age, even in the short-lived times of the ancients, but certainly he would represent a marvel
In the Iliad Nestor is shown in the field, driving his chariot He does not actually engage in co his forces What's -winded speeches, and although no one in the Iliad ever indicates that he is bored by Nestor, it seems clear that Nestor is a bore just the saets the idea that the saain The old man seems more obviously a bore in Shakespeare's version
The gentle Thetis
Nestor seconds Agamemnon's views The old man points out that any-} one can succeed when the task is easy, but that great enterprises call out the best in man On calm seas, any ship can sail, but on stor vessel that makes its mark Nestor says:
But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage
The gentle Thetis, and anon behold
The strong-ribbed bark through liquid mountains cut,
Bounding between the two moist elements
Like Perseus' horse,
- Act I, scene iii, lines 38-42
Boreas is the personification of the north wind and Thetis is used here as the personification of the ocean, but that is wrong There is common confusion between Thetis and Tethys The latter was a Titaness and the wife of Oceanus (who is clearly the god of the ocean), so that Tethys can serve as a feminine version of the personification
Thetis, in her own right, plays an important role in the Greek myths and in the Iliad particularly She is a sea nymph (all the easier to confuse her with Tethys) and it was she who brought Briareus to the rescue of Jupiter (see page I-86)
Thetis' beauty was such that both Jupiter and Neptune tried to win her, until they found out she was fated to have a son stronger than his father It was unsafe for either god, or any god, to marry her in that case, and she was forced to marry a mortal The mortal chosen was a Thessalian prince naainst the will of Thetis) all the gods and goddesses assembled
It was at this wedding that Eris appeared with her Apple of Discord What's e was Achilles, as, indeed, far stronger than his father Peleus
In the Iliad Thetis makes several appearances in her role as Achilles' lory but short life
The reference to Perseus' horse is to the faasus Perseus was a Greek hero in the generations before the Trojan War, whose great feat was the destruction of Medusa, one of the three Gorgons, whose appearance was so fearful that they turned to stone anyone who looked at them With divine help, Perseus was able to cut off the head of Medusa The blood that dripped froasus, who leaped up at once and winged his way into the sky In that sense, he was Perseus' horse, though there was no further connection between the two
hear Ulysses speak
When Nestor is finished, the shrewdest of the Greeks arises, and addressing the two preceding speakers says:
let it please both Thou great, and wise,
to hear Ulysses speak
- Act I, scene iii, lines 68-69
As Nestor is the very personification of the rather tedious wisdoe, so Ulysses (Odysseus) is the very personification of shrewdness and clever, but not always ethical, strategy This comes out even better in Homer's companion poem, the Odyssey, which deals with Ulysses' return home after the fall of Troy, and of the ten years of adventures he survives through cleverness and endurance
The later tales of the Troy cycle attributed to Ulysses all the clever stratagems devised by the Greeks, notably that of the wooden horse itself, hich the fall of Troy was finally encoenerates into slyness and rascality, some of the later myths picture Ulysses as a deceitful coward None of that, however, appears anywhere in Homer, where Ulysses is depicted as uniformly admirable Nor does it appear in Shakespeare's play
Prince of Ithaca
Agamemnon says at once:
Speak, Prince of Ithaca;
- Act I, scene iii, line 70
Ithaca is the home island of Ulysses; its exact location is not certain Indeed, it has been an interesting ga classical scholars to try to deteriven in the Odyssey
The general feeling is that it is one of the Ionian Islands off the west coast of Greece The particular island (called "Ithake" on modern maps) is small, only thirty-six square miles in area, and soer islands, which presumably also represented part of Ulysses' domain
rank Thersites
Agamemnon states that there is as much chance that Ulysses will utter folly as that:
When rank Thersites opes his mastic jaws,
We shall hear music, wit, and oracle
- Act I, scene iii, lines 73-74
Thersites plays one small part in the Iliad He is the only common man, the only non-aristocrat, mentioned by na hiue, and poured out an endless strea whatever cah Thersites was by far the ugliest ed, lame, hump-backed, crook-necked and bald"
His appearance is in Book There as a result of a amemnon, the Greek army is about to break up andto stop theamemnon and keeps it up until he is stopped by a blow from Ulysses and some stern words
That is all! It must be remembered that the Iliad ritten about aristocrats and for an aristocratic audience, and, e that kept bards in comfort Homer and those like him could scarcely afford to portray a co doarriors and noblemen
And yet, if one reads Thersites' speech in the one scene given hi the best of the loot and for offending Achilles, on whoh, and the blow he received did not alter that fact Horim fun with the aristocrats
Shakespeare, as likewise patronized by aristocrats and who likewise rarely showed the coht, adopted Thersites as part of the coh it is black comedy indeed Thersites'out untold bitterness, and we are prepared for that in this coamemnon's
the glorious planet Sol
Ulysses points out that the trouble with the Greek force rests in its divisions, the existence within it of factions that neutralize its efforts This lack of central authority, he ainst nature itself, for inanimate nature shows the beneficial effects of order even in the heavens, where the planets h the sky in strict accordance with certain rules:
And therefore is the glorious planet
Sol In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
Amidst the other; whose med'cinable eye
Corrects the influence of evil planets,
- Act I, scene iii, lines 89-92
"Sol" is the Latin word for "sun" and is the personification of the sun in the Roman myths
This passage sounds as though Shakespeare, through Ulysses'the sun to be the ruler of the planets, for he is "in noble eoverns and controls the others
If so, this is a startlingly modern view, not only for Ulysses, but even for Shakespeare, for it seems to refer to the heliocentric theory of the solar system, which places the sun at the center andthe earth itself) revolve about it The mere fact that the sun is at the center would make it appear to rule the planetary system (so that it is a solar system), and Isaac Newton eventually showed, some sixty-seven years after Shakespeare's death, that the sun's overwhelravitational force did, indeed, keep the planets in their place
It is surprising that Shakespeare should seeh his plays he shows himself a complete conservative as far as science is concerned and accepts only the Greek view of the universe To be sure, some Greeks, notably Aristarchus of Samos, about 250 bc, claimed the sun was the center of the planetary system, but few listened to them, and the Greek majority view continued to place the earth at the center This latter doctrine was rand synthesis of the astronomer Ptolemy, about ad 150 (The earth-at-center theory is therefore called the "Ptolemaic system" in consequence)
In 1543 Copernicus advanced the same notion that Aristarchus once had, but withHis vieas not accepted bytime, and in Shakespeare's lifetime the Copernican vieas still widely considered rather far out and blasphemous
Can Shakespeare, then, be taking the progressive Copernican view against the conservative Ptolemaic attitude?
No! That he remains conservative is clear at several points He refers, for instance, to the "planet Sol" The Greeks observed that several heavenly bodies shifted position constantly against the background of non-shifting of "fixed" stars These bodies they called "planets," lish, "wanderers" The known planets included the sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, seven bodies in all
Once the Copernican view of the planetary system was established, it seemed unreasonable to call the sun a planet, since it didn't wander aht to be the motionless center of the planetary system
It fell out of fashion to call the sun a planet, therefore The name "planet" was then applied only to those bodies which revolved about the sun This meant that the earth itself would have to be viewed as a planet The moon revolves about the earth, the only body to retain its Ptole, viewed as a planet any longer It is a satellite Of the Greek planets, therefore, only Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn retain the name and to these are added the earth and the planetary bodies since discovered: Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and a host of tiny bodies called planetoids or asteroids
Shakespeare refers to Sol as a planet, however, thus insisting that the sun moves and is not the center of the planetary system He has the sun not merely enthroned but also "sphered" That is, it is ee I-25), whereas if it were the center of the planetary system, it could not be part of a sphere
Finally, in speaking of the necessity of order in the heavens, Shakespeare has Ulysses say, a bit earlier in the speech:
The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center
Observe degree, priority, and place
- Act I, scene iii, lines 85-86
That makes a clear distinction between the planets and "this center," that is, earth
If the sun is "in noble eminence enthroned," then, it is only because, in Shakespeare's view, it is the brightest and nificent of the planets and not because it has a central position
In evil mixture
Ulysses goes on to point out the harmful effects of disorder in the heavens:
But when the planets
In evil mixture to disorder wander,
What plagues, and what portents, what mutiny,
- Act I, scene iii, lines 94-96
This seey in Greek times, in Shakespeare's times, and, for that matter, in our own times The planets were supposed to influence ainst the stars and relative to each other Certain positions foreboded evil and therefore represented "the planets in evil mixture"
And yet the motions of the planets followed a fixed pattern that could be worked out, and orked out, by Greek astronomers (a thousand years after the Trojan War, to be sure) so that such "evil mixture" could not really represent disorder They followed inevitably from planetary motion
There were, however, some heavenly phenomena which were very spectacular and which took place only rarely; notably eclipses of the sun and of the htening, and rens of apparent disorder in the heavens even after they had been explained astronomically and had been proven to be predictable
Stilland disorderly were the occasional appearances of cos seeoverned by the sun's gravitational field only two centuries after Shakespeare's death
The great Achilles
Having established (eneral principle that only in centralized authority accepted by all, only in an established hierarchy of mastery, is order and efficiency to be found, Ulysses descends to specifics Agaainst Troy, but his subordinates flout him and, in particular:
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, and in his tent
Lies ns
- Act I, scene iii, lines 142-46
Achilles was certainly the foremost hero on the Greek side and in the Iliad he is by no means treated as a conceited fop Before the poem opens, he has been the mainstay of the army; his expeditions have subdued the Trojan doht harder than anyone
It is only when Agairl Briseis, and scorns hiathered arht He proves hieful and cruel thereafter, but at least he has a reasonable cause for his anger
In Roend of the Ro popular opinion heavily in favor of the Trojans Achilles was therefore downgraded and there seelorious conceit, rather than in righteous wrath Furthermore, the proponents of courtly love did not fail toAchilles' love for a Trojan princess That will appear later in the play as a cause for his
With him Patroclus
Nor is Achilles alone He has a friend:
With him Patroclus
Upon a lazy bed the livelong day
Breaks scurril jests,
- Act I, scene iii, lines 146-48
Patroclus is one of the important characters in the Iliad and is pictured there as the boso of the relationship beyond that of loving friendship, but the later Greeks casually assu in homosexuality and even felt it to be a superior for Achilles and Patroclus as lovers in the literal sense of the word This did not prevent Patroclus froentlest of the Greeks) and a brave warrior
In Christian Europe, however, homosexuality was an abomination and the Greek outlook could not be retained on its own terms Shakespeare is forced to present Patroclus as effeh he does not deprive him of all our sympathy either
roaring Typhon
Ulysses is offended at the fact that Patroclus mimics the Greek leaders for Achilles' amusement Vehemently, Ulysses insists that the ih he does not hesitate to describe them with a realis imitated
He describes Patroclus pretending to be Agareat self-ie (undoubtedly not too ae Patroclus uses, says Ulysses indignantly, is so ridiculously exaggerated that:
fro Typhon dropped,
Would seem hyperboles
- Act I, scene iii, lines 160-61
Typhon, in the Greek est s were serpents, his eyes flashed fire, and hisrocks He may have been a personification of a volcano or, possibly, of a hurricane
The gods themselves fled in terror before him and he was even able to capture Jupiter and for a while incapacitate him Typhon was, however, eventually defeated and buried under Mount Etna, the largest and most fearsome volcano known to the ancient world
Whether volcano or hurricane, it is clear that Typhon had a roaring voice, and that is the point of the metaphor
Vulcan and his wife
Ulysses next describes Patroclus iht alarain presumably very nantly:
That's done, as near as the extremest ends
Of parallels, as like as Vulcan and his wife,
- Act I, scene iii, lines 167-68
Since parallels never meet, they can be extended infinitely in either direction The i, as is an infinite distance in one direction from an infinite distance in the other The other comparison of opposites is Vulcan (Hephaestus) and his wife, Venus (see page I-11)
He hath a lady
Ulysses does not go on to say that Patroclus iine he does and that that is what really annoys the Ithacan
But further discussion is interrupted by a ay, bringing a challenge frole coe which Aeneas delivers as:
He hath a lady wiser, fairer, truer,
Than ever Greek did compass in his arms;
- Act I, scene iii, lines 275-76
This is straight out of the ht in the names of their ladies in accord with the rules of courtly love (see page I-54) Aga the silly conventions on his own account, saying:
This shall be told our lovers, Lord Aeneas;
If none of them have soul in such a kind,
We left them all at home But we are soldiers;
And may that soldier a mere recreant prove,
That means not, hath not, or is not in love!
- Act I, scene iii, lines 284-88
It is hard to believe that such lines can be read seriously in surroundings that even hint at the grandeur hich Homer surrounded the Trojan War
the great Myrmidon
Agae to the various tents, but it is clear that it is meant for Achilles
When he is gone, Ulysses huddles with Nestor Ulysses has an idea-Why send Achilles against Hector? Suppose by some accident Achilles is wounded With Achilles known to be their best man, that would be disastrous
If, on the other hand, someone other than Achilles is sent, and loses, it will still be taken for granted that Achilles would have won if he had fought On the other hand, if the lesser ain for the Greeks, but Achilles hi himself in second place behind a new cha and laziness and would buckle down to the serious business of fighting Ulysses' advice is that they:
make a lott'ry;
And by device let blockish Ajax draw
The sort to fight with Hector; a ourselves
Give him allowance for the better man,
For that will physic the great Myrmidon
Who broils in loud applause, and make him fall
His crest that prouder than blue Iris bends
- Act I, scene iii, lines 373-79
At the start of Book Seven of the Iliad, Hector does challenge the Greek cha courtly love Several Greek chae, lots were drawn, and the choice did fall on Ajax, though Homer makes no mention of any device to do so
As for the Myrmidons, they were a tribe in Phthia in southern Thessaly over whoreat Myr "ant," and the ancient mythmakers invented an explanation for this
Aeacus, the grandfather of Achilles, ruled the sina near Athens Either it was not populated to begin with or its population was destroyed by a plague In either case, Aeacus prayed to Zeus that he be given od converted the ants on the island into men These Myrmidons followed Aeacus' son, Peleus, to Thessaly and froent ith Peleus' son, Achilles, to the Trojan War
Iris is usually the personification of the rainbow (see page I-67), but here she is used to represent the sky generally
I as Cerberus
Noe are ready to have our first glimpse of Ajax and Thersites A proclae and Ajax wants to knohat it says Since Ajax is illiterate, he must ask Thersites to read it for hi mood (He never is)
Thersites scolds Ajax most viciously and eloquently and Ajax, who can speak only with his fists, uses those as arguments Thersites strikes back (ords) where he knows it will hurt :
Thou grumblest and railest every hour on Achilles, and thou
art as full of envy at his greatness as Cerberus is at Proser
pina's beauty
- Act II, scene i, lines 33-35
Cerberus is the ugly, slavering, three-headed dog that guards the gateway to the underground abode of the dead, serving to prevent any living fro Proserpina, on the other hand, is the beautiful queen of the underworld, the daughter of Ceres, whoe I-7)
Achilles' brach
Achilles and Patroclus co Thersites further Achilles is clearly aes hi Ajax, to the latter's huge annoyance Nor does Thersites spare Achilles hientle Patroclus tries to quiet the lowborn railer, Thersites says, sarcastically:
/ will hold my peace when Achilles'
brach bids me, shall I?
- Act II, scene i, lines 119-20
"Brach" is an archaic word for a bitch and Patroclus is thus compared with a female animal This is one of the few explicit and contemptuous references to homosexuality to be found in Shakespeare
Thersites then departs, leaving Achilles to read the news of Hector's challenge to Ajax (pretending to care little about the matter for himself)
Let Helen go
In the Iliad, the duel between Ajax and Hector takes up a good portion of Book Seven It ends with both cha had clearly the worst of it (This is reflected in the earlier statement in Troilus and Cressida that Ajax had beaten Hector down on one occasion, see page I-87)
At the end of the duel, therefore, it is reasonable that the disheartened Trojans hold a conference and consider whether or not to offer to give up Helen, pay an indemnity, and buy off the Greeks Antenor counsels this line of action, but Paris insists he will not give up Helen, and when the offer of an indemnity without Helen is ) refuse, so the war goes on