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Shakespeare changes this Hector's challenge has been issued and it has not yet been taken up, yet the Trojans are now seen in council trying to reach an important decision Nestor, on behalf of the Greeks, has offered to end the war if the Trojans surrender Helen and pay an indemnity It seems unreasonable to suppose that the Greeks would make such an offer or the Trojans consider one while the issue of the duel remained in doubt
Yet the council proceedings are presented In Shakespeare, it is Hector who makes the plea for a peace even at the price of a virtual surrender, saying in part:
modest doubt is called
The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches
To the bottoo
- Act II, scene ii, lines 15-17
This is in character for Shakespeare's Hector and for Homer's Hector too In the Iliad Hector is never pictured as a fire-eater for the sake of battle He is pictured as knoell that Troy is in the wrong and that Paris' abduction is indefensible, but he fights because Troy is his city He is a fighter in a poor cause, but his own character enforces respect nevertheless
for an old aunt
Paris argues the hawkish view in the Iliad, but it is Troilus who speaks first here He points out that it was the Trojans who first suffered loss at the hands of the Greeks and that the abduction of Helen was but a retaliation that all the Trojans favored at the tioes on to describe Paris' retaliation:
And for an old aunt whom the Greeks held captive
He brought a Grecian queen, whose youth and freshness
Wrinkles Apollo's and
- Act II, scene ii, lines 77-79
The "old aunt" is Hesione, a sister of King Priam When Hercules captured and sacked Troy, he carried off Hesione into captivity She was never returned despite Trojan demands
The capture of Hesione plays no part in the Homeric tale, and the abduction of Helen could, in any case, never be viewed as a fair return for an earlier outrage Hesione was captured as a war prisoner, and however deplorable we consider such things now, this was considered legitimate in ancient times Paris, on the other hand, had taken Helen not as the spoils of war, but by treachery and at the cost of violating as due his host, Menelaus, as entertaining him with all hospitality The two actions simply weren't comparable
The tale of Hesione has another point of iement on the tale of Troy She arded to Telamon, the brother of Peleus By her, Tela-mon had a son named Teucer, who is therefore first cousin to Achilles Teucer does not appear in Troilus and Cressida but he does appear in the Iliad as a skilled archer
Telamon, by a previous wife (an Athenian woman), had another son, as none other than Ajax Ajax is therefore first cousin to Achilles and half brother to Teucer In the Iliad Teucer is always fighting at the side of Ajax and the two half brothers are devoted to each other
Teucer, notice, is half Trojan through his mother and is actually a nephew of Priam and a first cousin to Hector, Troilus, Paris, and the rest, as well as to Achilles At the beginning of the play, when Ajax is first mentioned to Cressida, he is described as "a lord of Troyan blood, nephew to Hector," which he isn't The confusion is with Teucer, who is a lord of Trojan blood, cousin to Hector
Our firebrand brother
The council is interrupted by Cassandra, Priahter, whose prophecies are always true, but never believed She wails:
Cry, Troyans, cry! Practice your eyes with tears!
Troy oodly Ilion stand;
Our firebrand brother, Paris, burns us all
-Act II, scene ii, lines 108-10
Just before Paris was born (according to legends that play no part in the Iliad) Hecuba drea firebrand A soothsayer, when consulted, said that this meant that Troy would be burned and destroyed because of the child about to be born He urged that the child be killed as soon as born
Pria done, had a herds him to kill it The herdsman could not do it either, but exposed the child in an uninhabited place There it was found by a she-bear, which suckled it
The herds the child alive when he returned after so it up as his own son, and it hile the young oddesses Juno, Minerva, and Venus came down to have him decide which was the most beautiful
After this, Paris, still in his role as herds held in Troy, did nized by Cassandra as the long-lost Paris There was no thought of killing him; he was restored to his royal position and, eventually, proved his title to the firebrand drea Helen
whom Aristotle
Hector refers to Cassandra's cries as proof that Helen ought to be returned and the war ended, but Cassandra is simply dismissed as mad by Troilus Paris rises and places himself on Troilus' side
Hector is not convinced He says his two younger brothers argue:
but superficially: not much
Unlike young ht
Unfit to hear moral philosophy
- Act II, scene ii, lines 165-67
This is, actually, one of the ets, for thea war that took place in 1200 bc, and has Hector refer to a philosopher who died in 322 bc-rune centuries later
And yet, although Hector denigrates the arguainst the kind of argulory, and patriotism It is decided (as in the Iliad) to keep Helen and let the war go on
thy caduceus
The scene shifts back to the Greek ca outside Achilles' tent, is brooding over his recent beating by Ajax He inveighs against the stupidity of both heroes, Achilles as well as Ajax, and invokes the vengeance of the gods upon the:
O thou great thunder-darter of Olympus,
forget that thou art Jove, the king of gods;
and, Mercury, lose all the serpentine craft of thy caduceus,
if ye take not that little, little,
less than little wit from them that they have;
- Act II, scene iii, lines 10-14
Jupiter (Zeus) was, in all likelihood, a storinally His hoather Olyical choice, for it is the highest h at that, only 18 miles It is located in northern Thessaly, about 170 miles northwest of Athens
As a stor He would therefore be a thunder-darter, or, more correctly, a thunderbolt-darter
Mercury (Herods, a kind of e I-67) It is because of Mercury's swiftness in fulfilling his errands that he is usually pictured with ss on his sandals and hat
In carrying theas Jupiter's herald or substitute and therefore carried with him the aura of Jupiter's majesty In token of that he carried a staff, as earthly heralds did In earliest tis at the end which would be wound back over the body of the staff
In later tis, shown in representations of Mercury and misunderstood, became serpents It is this serpent-bound staff, called the caduceus, which became a characteristic mark of Mercury The caduceus was further confused in still later tient by which Mercury, at the behest of Jupiter, brought about supernatural effects Thersites therefore speaks of the "craft of thy caduceus"
the Neapolitan bone-ache
Having wished evil on Ajax and Achilles specifically, Thersites goes on to curse the Greeks generally:
After this, the vengeance on the whole camp!
Or, rather, the Neapolitan bone-ache, for that,
on those that war for a placket
- Act II, scene iii, lines 18-21
The "Neapolitan bone-ache" is syphilis This was not recognized as a serious, contagious disease until the early sixteenth century Indeed, the story arose that it first appeared in Italy during battles at which some of Columbus' sailors were present It therefore seemed that those sailors had picked up syphilis in the New World froht it back to Europe (Europe sent the Indians smallpox in return)
This may not be so and the disease may have occurred in Europe earlier, and been considered one of the forms of leprosy, perhaps; but if so, syphilis occurred less frequently then and less virulently If the sixteenth century did not find it a new disease, it found it at least a more serious version of an old one, and it still required a new name
This was difficult to find, for it was early recognized that contagion h sexual intercourse, so that it became shameful to adroup to consider it characteristic of a neighboring group The French, for instance, would call it the "Neapolitan bone-ache," while the Italians would call it the "French disease"
In 1530 an Italian physician, Girolamo Fracastoro, wrote a Lathi epic poem which was a mock myth about a shepherd who offended Apollo and who fell victim to what Fracastoro called the "French disease" The shepherd's na one (but not real Greek) of Syphilis, and it is this which gave the present name to the disease
In Shakespeare's time the disease was still less than a century old in European consciousness It had the doubtful virtue of novelty and of being associated with sex Any reference to it, then, was good for a laugh, especially if it was arranged to have the laugh at the expense of foreigners Thersites not only affixes it to the Neapolitans ( the reference doubly anachronistic, since Naples was not to be founded till some five centuries after the Trojan War) butit is to be what is expected for any army that wars for a placket (a petticoat, and therefore a coarse term for a woman)
References to syphilis abound in Shakespeare, usually at the expense of the French, but since moderns don't find the subject as humorous as the Elizabethans did, I shall pick up such references as infrequently as I can
a privileged man
Thersites assumes, in this scene, a totally un-Homeric role He is a jester; a htly addled brains) whose remarks and responses are a source of amusement He had apparently fulfilled that function for Ajax but Ajax had beaten hi employment with Achilles instead
In return for a his master (in days when amusement was not yet electronified and easy to come by at the flick of a dial) a jester was allowed extraordinary leeway in his ht have Naturally, this worked best when the jester's patron was powerful and could suppress the hurt feelings of underlings who ht otherwise break the jester's neck
Thus, when Thersites begins to perfors of violence to one of Thersites' scurrilous re:
He is a privileged man Proceed, Thersites
-Act II, scene iii, line 59
Such a jester was often called a "fool" and many a Shakespearean play has someone listed as "Fool" in the cast of characters This was not necessarily because they were foolish, but because very often they hid their sharp satire behind oblique comments in such a way that the points were not immediately apparent and therefore seemed foolish to the dull-witted It also helped keep the jester from broken bones if he played the fool so that those he ht not be certain whether his remarks were deliberately hurtful or whether they were perhaps just the ais of a lackwit
Thersites is given this naainst Achilles and Nestor is surprised at the spleen of those remarks Ulysses explains:
Achilles hath inveigled his fool from him
- Act II, scene iii, line 93
and a cuckold
Thersites' bitter jesting for the benefit of Achilles, and largely at the expense of Patroclus, is interrupted by the arrival of a deputation from the Greeks Achilles pro to talk to the himself, Thersites expresses his opinion of both sides of this inter-Greek friction:
Here is such patchery, such juggling, and such knavery
All the argument is a whore and a cuckold
- Act II, scene iii, lines 73-75
The whore is Helen, of course, and the cuckold (that is, the deceived husband) is Menelaus
Why cuckold? The word is a form of "cuckoo" The co in the nest of another and s the cuckoo fledgling Thein the nest of another, to use the ribald analogy that o as Roman times, for the Romans called an adulterer a "cuckoo" The word shifted to "cuckold" and the name passed frouarded reference to it, was as sure-fire a source of laughter in Elizabethan tie I-84)
rely on none
The deputation of Greeks who have arrived at Achilles' tent intend to urge hiorously
This parallels, in a way, Book Nine of the Iliad, where the Greeks, having had soloomily anticipate ain
A deputation of three, Ajax, Ulysses and Phoenix (the last an old tutor of Achilles), are sent They offer to return the girl Agaifts as compensation for Achilles' humiliation By noever, Achilles has so consurievance to all else and he absolutely refuses
In the Iliad Achilles puts hi at this point, so that in the end he will have to suffer too, as well as Agamemnon and his Greek ar, he does it at least in a grand fashion
In Troilus and Cressida Achilles can offer nothing but petulance Ulysses enters the tent and eamemnon asks the reason, Ulysses replies:
He doth rely on none,
- Act II, scene iii, line 165
This is mere sulkiness, or, as it turns out later, lovesickness and treason, which is even worse Shakespeare thus continues his Trojan-biased downgrading of the Horeat Greek hero
more coals to Cancer
It is time for the Greeks to make do without Achilles as best they can, obviously, and they begin to flatter Ajax into accepting the duel with Hector
Thus, when Agaests that Ajax be sent into the tent to plead with Achilles, Ulysses dereat an honor as having a man like Ajax demur to him:
That were to enlard his fat-already pride,
And add more coals to Cancer when he burns
With entertaining great Hyperion
- Act II, scene iii, lines 197-99
Hyperion (the sun, see page I-11) round of the stars in the course of one year The stars in its path are divided into twelve constellations, which, all together,"circle of animals" because so many of the constellations are visualized as animals)
On June 21 the sun enters the sign of Cancer (the Crab) and summer starts on that day Ulysses refers to su because of the entry of great Hyperion Ajax koing to Achilles would but make summer heat hotter; that is, it would make proud Achilles prouder
Bull-bearing Milo
The flattery grows grosser and grosser and Ajax, delighted, accepts it all Ulysses says, in praise of Ajax:
for thy vigor,
Bull-bearing Milo his addition yield
To sinewy Ajax
- Act II, scene iii, lines 247-49
Milo was an athlete of Croton, a city on the coast of the Italian toe, whose feats of strength had grown legendary The most famous tale was that he lifted a particular calf onto his shoulders every day It grew heavier with age, of course, and finally Milo was lifting a full-grown bull This was the reason for his addition (that is, tide) of "Bull-bearing," a title which, Ulysses was saying, he would now have to yield to Ajax
This is another anachronism, of course, almost as bad as the one about Aristotle Milo was not a h the stories about hierated, to be sure) He died about 500 bc, seven centuries after the Trojan War
Fresh kings
Ajax is now thoroughly softened up and has played the scene as an utter puppet in the hands of Ulysses This is coure in the Iliad and was viewed as a syure in later tales Partly this was because he was considered an Athenian, for he was from the small island of Salamis, which, in the century when the Iliad was edited into its final form, had just been annexed by Athens
Yet there is an echo of the classic too After Achilles' death there was a competition for his armor, which narrowed down to Ulysses and Ajax Ulysses won out and Ajax, in grief and shame, went mad Ajax, it would seem, in one way or another, is always at the mercy of Ulysses
This part of the task done, Ulysses now suggests that Agaeainst Hector be completed He says:
Please it our great general
To call together all his state of war;
Fresh kings are come to Troy
- Act II, scene iii, lines 260-62
It would not have been reasonable to suppose that the city of Troy, all by itself, could have withstood a huge expeditionary force of a united Greece Rather, it stood at the head of a large combination of forces itself The tribes of Asia Minor stood with it and one of the most prominent Trojan heroes in the Iliad was Sarpedon, a prince of Lycia in southwestern Asia Minor, some three hundred miles south of Troy He does not appear in Troilus and Cressida, but Pandarus, who does, is also a Lycian-at least in the Iliad
In Book Ten of the Iliad, immediately after the unsuccessful deputation to Achilles, there is, indeed, the tale of a new reinforce who has led both men and horses to the aid of the Trojans Thrace is in Europe, to be sure, but it lies to the northeast of Greece and was inhabited by non-Greeks (Nor did it ever becoion that aria)
In the Iliad Ulysses and Dioht and assassinate Rhesus, nullifying the effect of his reinforce of the sort takes place in Troilus and Cressida The reference to fresh kings co to Troy is all that is left
O Cupid, Cupid, Cupid
As Act Three opens, Pandarus has finally ether for a night and has come to Priam's palace to persuade Paris to cover for Troilus, so that no oneprince is
This gives Shakespeare a chance to place Helen herself on stage-in one scene only
In the Iliad Helen's beauty isAll are victims of it and all are affected by it Ho effectiveness, in the e feels the influence He says:
"At Helen's approach, these grey-beardsshe is! Like an ioddess! Yes, marvellously like one! I cannot bla over her so bitterly!'"
And Helen is her own victim too She is conscious of herself as the cause of immense misery; she is contrite and ashamed, and, in the same scene referred to above, she says to Priam:
" 'I ought to have died before eloping with Prince Paris-ihter, and so e! But leave them I did, and noeep for remorse Oh, I am a shameless bitch, if ever there was one'"
Furtherent and in the Odyssey, when, ten years after the fall of Troy, she is once again the wife of Menelaus and the two are entertaining the son of Ulysses in their home, Helen is clearly more quick-witted than her husband
But how does Shakespeare present Helen in the one scene in which she appears? She appears as a vain, silly wo about) what she has caused, and incapable, apparently, of ent remark
Helen scarcely allows Pandarus the chance tofor her, saying:
Let thy song be love
This love will undo us all
O Cupid, Cupid, Cupid!
- Act III, scene i, lines 111-12
Cupid (Eros) is the god of love (see page 1-19)
This is Helen as viewed through the eyes of courtly love By the convention of the troubadours, a woman need not deserve love, she need merely be a woman
be thou my Charon
The arrange Troilus and Cressida together Troilus is waiting for him in a fever of impatience, and says:
I stalk about her door
Like a strange soul upon the Stygian banks
Staying for waftage O, be thou my Charon,
And give me swift transportance to those fields
Where I mayin the lily beds
Proposed for the deserver
- Act III, scene ii, lines 7-12
The Stygian banks are those that border the river Styx, which, according to the Greekit from the abode of mortal men The spirits of dead uidance of an underworld deity called Charon (see page I-68) ferried him across
It is not to Hades itself that Troilus dee I-13) where he can " in the lily beds"
"As false as Cressid"
The loverseverything but forcing the peopletheir love Troilus swears his constancy, adding a new simile to the common comparisons for truth:
"As true as Troilus" shall crown up the verse
And sanctify the numbers
- Act III, scene ii, lines 183-84
Cressida, si a new and climactic one, in case she should ever be unfaithful:
Yea, let them say, to stick the heart of falsehood,
"As false as Cressid"
- Act III, scene ii, lines 196-97
Pandarus too chimes in:
/ have taken such pains to bring you together,
let all pitiful goers-between be called to the world's end
after my name; call them all Pandars
- Act III, scene ii, lines 201-3
All these wishes came true, as Shakespeare knew they would, for they were already current in his tioers-between are still called Pandars (panders) to this day
Let Diomedes
But the young lovers have no sooner ather In the Greek caue of Chryses in the Iliad)
His services have been such that Aga to ask the Trojans to surrender Cressida in return for soht be prisoner of the Greeks They have always refused But now the Greeks have captured Antenor and he is so iive up Cressida to have him back
It is curious how this reverses the situation in the Iliad In the Iliad Chryses the priest asks Agahter, Chryseis, who is held in the Greek caahter, Cressida, who is held in the Trojan caarees
Agamemnon says:
Let Diomedes bear him,
And bring us Cressid hither; Calchas shall have
What he requests of us
- Act III, scene iii, lines 30-32
Dioainst Thebes (see page I-57) Dioe that defeat They were called the Epigoni ("after-born") and succeeded where their fathers had failed-taking and sacking Thebes
Not long after that, Dioe I-58), joined the expedition to Troy, leading the os
In the Iliad, Diomedes is one of the most effective of the Greek warriors, third only to Achilles and Ajax Indeed, in Book Five Dio the Trojans and not even Hector can stand against him It is only in post-Homeric times that his role in the Troilus-Cressida story was invented
great Mars to faction
Dioe to Hector that the Trojan's challenge has been accepted and that Ajax will fight with him
With that done, Ulysses now tightens his net about Achilles He suggests that the Greek princes pass the great hero by with slight regard, while he follows behind to explain to the startled Achilles that what is past is easily forgotten and that , not on what he has done It is Ajax who is now the darling of the arht Hector, and Achilles, who is doing nothing, is disregarded Yet Achilles, he admits, is one
Whose glorious deeds, but in these fields of late,
Made eods themselves
And drave great Mars to faction
- Act III, scene iii, lines 187-89
In the Iliad the gods the Most active on the Greek side are Juno and Minerva (who lost out in the contest before Paris) and Neptune (who had once built walls for Troy and then been defrauded of his pay) Most active on the Trojan side are Venus (on the contest before Paris), her loving Mars, and Apollo (who had also been defrauded in the matter of the walls, but apparently didn't care)
At one point Mars actually joined in the spearing and killing as though he were huuided by Minerva, wounded him and drove him from the field
The gods do not appear in Troilus and Cressida, and their fighting leaves behind but this one reference by Ulysses
one of Priahters
Achilles says brusquely that he has his reasons for reht, whereupon Ulysses explains, dryly, that the reasons are not private:
'Tis known, Achilles, that you are in love
With one of Priahters
- Act III, scene iii, lines 192-93
The daughter in question is Polyxena She does not appear in the Iliad, but later poets, anxious to add love and romance to Homer's austere tale, supplied her Achilles was supposed to have fallen in love with her and to have been ready to betray the Greeks for her sake Others write, variously, that she was indeed e rites that Achilles was slain by Paris (with Polyxena's treacherous help, according to some) Other versions are that she killed herself after he died, or was sacrificed at his burial rites
Pluto'sgold
Achilles writhes in embarrass that his secret is known:
The providence that's in a watchful state
Knows alold
- Act III, scene iii, lines 196-97
Pluto, as the god of the underworld, was naturally related to gold and to other forround It was an easy transition to iod of wealth Actually, the personification of wealth was given the name "Plutus," a close variant of "Pluto"
In later ined to be the son of Ceres (Deoddess and the reference to wealth in the grounds can refer to the richly growing gram as well as to the minerals But then, Pluto (Hades) was the son-in-law of the saoddess, since it was he who carried off Proserpina, Ceres' daughter
To be pedantically correct, one should speak only of Plutus in connection ealth, but the mistake is a small one
young Pyrrhus
Ulysses further turns the knife in the wound:
But itPyrrhus now at home,
When fame shall in our islands sound her trump,
And all the Greekish girls shall tripping sing,
"Great Hector's sister did Achilles win,
But our great Ajax bravely beat down him"
- Act III, scene iii, lines 209-13
Pyrrhus (also known as Neoptolemus) is Achilles' son, and his birth came about as follows
Before the expedition to Troy began, Thetis had hidden her young son Achilles on the island of Scyrus, for she knew that if he went to Troy he would win deathless fa She preferred to have hiuised as a maiden at the court of the Scyran ruler
The Greeks ca that they could not take Troy without Achilles Ulysses cleverly discovered whicha display of jewels and finery, airls snatched at the jewels, Achilles seized the sword
Apparently, Achilles also revealed himself to the other maidens in such a fashion as to father a son on one of them That son, Pyrrhus, remained in Scyrus while Achilles was at Troy
The accretion of myths and elaborate tales about the central pillar of Hoy of the affair
For instance, it is at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis that the Apple of Discord is flung auests, and it is immediately afterward that Paris, still a herdser at the time and Achilles is not yet born, so Paris must be at least fifteen years older than Achilles
Eventually, Paris abducts Helen and the Trojan War starts Now Achilles is old enough to go to war Let us say he is fifteen at the start of the war and has already left a girl with child By the time of the last year of the war, in which both the Iliad and Troilus and Cressida are set, Achilles is twenty-four and Paris is thirty-nine Since Hector is the oldest son of Priam, he must be in his late forties at least
This is bearable, perhaps, but now consider that Pyrrhus, at Achilles' death in the last year of the war, can scarcely be ends, he is brought to Troy and fights with surpassing bravery in the final battles, to say nothing of being one of the crudest of the sackers at the end (see page I-209)
Such things did not bother those who listened to the tales, of course, and they don't really bother us, either, since the value of those tales does not depend on such y However, it is a curiosity and so I mention it
A valiant Greek
Achilles is left shaken after Ulysses departs and Patroclus urges his great friend to return to the wars (This Patroclus also does in the Iliad) But Achilles cannot yet bring hiests only that Ajax, after the combat, invite Hector and the other Trojan leaders to visit hi of truce
Meanwhile, Dioreeted by Paris and Aeneas and Paris says:
A valiant Greek, Aeneas; take his hand
Witness the process of your speech, wherein
You told how Diomed, a whole week by days,
Did haunt you in the field
- Act IV, scene i, lines 7-10
This reflects a passage in the Iliad, but one that is considerably softened in Aeneas' favor In Book Five of the Iliad, the one dominated by the feats of Diomedes, Aeneas and Diomedes meet in the field and the latter has reat boulder, Diomedes strikes down Aeneas and would surely have killed him except that first Venus and then Apollo swooped down to save him
Anchises' life
Aeneas is all chivalrous graciousness, in the best tradition of allantry, and says:
Now, by Anchises' life,
Welcome indeed!
- Act IV, scene i, lines 21-22
Anchises is Aeneas' father Venus fell in love with the handso Anchises and had Aeneas by him She made Anchises promise, however, that he would never reveal the fact that he was the goddess' lover Incautiously, Anchises let out the secret and was in consequence paralyzed, blinded, or killed (depending on which version of the story you read)
Anchises was far better known to Shakespeare's audience than one ht expect from the Greek il's Aeneid The aged Anchises cannot walk (this fits in with the suggestion that he was paralyzed because of his indiscretion concerning Venus) and was therefore helpless at the time of the sack and destruction of Troy Aeneas, therefore, bore hireatly admired example of filial love, a love that is reflected backward by having Aeneas swear by his father's life
By Venus' hand
Aeneas goes on to combine hospitality and martial threat in courtly manner:
By Venus' hand 1 swear,
No man alive can love in such a sort
The thing he means to kill
more excellently
- Act IV, scene i, lines 22-24
The ht of the events in Book Five of the Iliad When Aeneas lies felled by Dioods did not intervene, Venus (Aeneas' mother) flen from Olympus to save hioddess and wounded her in the hand She fled, screa, and it was only when the much more powerful Apollo took her place that Dio by that part of his mother which had been hurt on his behalf
Some say the Genius
On the very ether, the news coive up Cressida and send her to the Greek camp
Brokenhearted, Troilus and Cressida vow eternal fidelity Troilus gives Cressida a sleeve (an arm cover which in , not sewn to shirt or robe) and Cressida returns a glove
The deputation waits outside for Cressida to be turned over to them, and when Aeneas calls out impatiently, Troilus says:
Hark! You are called Some say the Genius
Cries so to him that instantly must die
- Act IV, scene iv, lines 50-51
To the Romans, every man had a personal spirit (the equivalent of ould call a guardian angel) which they called a "Genius" Every woman, similarly, had her "Juno," and Genius may be a masculine forifted as a "genius," though we forget that by this we h him with particular effectiveness
Hosts of superstitions naturally arose concerning these Geniuses It would warn the person it guarded of imminent death, for instance, as Troilus says here
Fie, fie upon her
Cressida is brought to the Greek camp, where she is suddenly a different person She has been flirtatious and a little hypocritical with Troilus, teasing and a little ribald with Pandarus, but nothing so bad In the Greek ca with the Greek leaders and eager to kiss them all-even Nestor
Only the clear-eyed Ulysses refuses, insulting her openly, and saying to Nestor after she leaves:
Fie, fie upon her!
There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip;
Nay, her foot speaks Her wanton spirits look out
At every joint and motive of her body
- Act IV, scene v, lines 54-57
Without warning, Cressida is pictured as an utterly worthless woman
Why so sudden a change? Surely there must have been room to express Cressida's side of the matter in at least one speech She is torn away froht, with only her father at her side, frightened, uncertain, weak Chaucer, in his version, presents Cressida's dilemma far more sympathetically and lets us pity her in her fall Shakespeare only lets us despise her
Might we speculate that Shakespeare is being savage to Cressida and showing her in the worst possible fashion because he wishes to make a point outside the play?
The play seems to have been perfor it in 1600-1 Is there a possibility, then, that Shakespeare was influenced by a dra the play?
Shakespeare's patron, Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southae I-3), hom Shakespeare may have been on the closest possible terms, was himself a member of the faction of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex
About the ti his career as a dramatist, Essex had become the favorite and lover of Queen Elizabeth I (as thirty-three years older than he was)
Essex longed for a successful h he eneral In 1596, however, he finally persuaded her to allow hiland was still carrying on a desultory war, a war of which the defeat of the Arh point) Southampton accompanied him on this expedition
The expedition had a certain success, for the city of Cadiz was seized and sacked Elizabeth I did not consider the results of the expedition to have been worth its expense, however-she was always a -and Essex did not receive the credit that he (and his faction, including Southampton and, presumably, Shakespeare) felt he deserved
Essex, however, becahts of victory In 1599 he talked the reluctant Elizabeth (who by noas beginning to feel he was beco him lead an expedition into Ireland to put down a rebellion there Again Southampton left with him, but this time Elizabeth called him back, to his deep discomfiture
The Essex faction had high hopes for the Irish adventure, and Shakespeare, writing Henry V while Essex was in Ireland, refers to the expedition ly in the chorus that precedes Act V of that play (see page II-508)
The expedition, however, proved a coland in absolute fury at what he, and his faction, believed to be the lish court It seeainst Essex to prevent hi military renown
In desperation, Essex began to plot rebellion Southaed to have Shakespeare's play Richard 11 revived It dealt with the deposition of an English e II-304) and Elizabeth did not miss the point Both Southampton and Essex were arrested, tried for treason, and convicted in February 1601 Essex was, indeed, executed on February 25, but Southampton's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and, after Elizabeth's death in 1603, he was released
It is te to think that Shakespeare wrote Troilus and Cressida under the deep shadow of the misfortunes of Essex and Southampton
To hiainst Troy ainst Cadiz and, later, against Ireland These expeditions were fought for what seerateful and worthless wos of her faithful servants and who herself with Essex's rival, Sir Walter Raleigh, while the faithful Essex was suffering in the field Could this be why Shakespeare draws Helen as so contee I-111)?
The factions that disrupted the Greek effort on the fields of Troy were nified by Shakespeare, perhaps as a bitter satire on the factions at the English court that had, in the view of the Essex faction, stabbed Essex in the back
And Cressida, of course, would then be another aspect of Elizabeth- that false woallows Could Shakespeare have been working on the fourth act just when the execution of Essex came to pass (with Southampton still in prison)? Could he have turned to his pen for revenge on Cressida,no effort whatever to explain her or excuse her? Did he want her defection to be as bare and as disgraceful as possible so that Ulysses' "Fie, fie upon her!" ly as possible upon the Queen?
The youngest son
At last we are ready for the duel between Hector and Ajax Since Ajax is a relative of Hector's (here again is the confusion between Ajax and Teucer) it is agreed that the fight is not to be to the death
While they prepare, Agamemnon asks the name of a sad Trojan on the other side Ulysses answers:
The youngest son of Priaht,
Not yet mature, yet matchless
- Act IV, scene v, lines 96-97
It is Troilus being described here, in the very highest ter directly to do with the play, and one cannot help but wonder if Shakespeare intends it to refer to the betrayed and executed Essex; if it is his epitaph for that rash person
This is an example, by the way, of the curious way in which in Troilus and Cressida the combatants on either side don't seeh they have presu each other for years
This is true in the Iliad as well In Book Three of that poe ready for their duel, Priam and his councilors sit on the wall and view the Greek army Helen is there too, and Priaameht to know these people Perhaps the as ends (and, for all we know, in truth) but grew longer to accommodate the numerous tales added to the primitive story by later poets-and perhaps Ho inconsistencies as a result
Not Neoptolemus
The duel between Ajax and Hector is fought and ends in a draw and in a graceful speech by the chivalrous Hector, as does the similar duel in Book Seven of the Iliad (where, however, Hector clearly gets the worse of the exchanges)
Ajax, who is not very good at speaking,beaten Hector definitely
To which Hector, rather vaingloriously, replies:
Not Neoptolemus so mirable,
On whose bright crest Fame with her loud'st "Oyes"
Cries, "This is he!" could promise to himself
A thought of added honor torn from Hector
- Act IV, scene v, lines 141-44
The only Neoptolee I-116), as also known as Pyrrhus,a nickname This is possibly an anachronis of a boy who had not yet appeared in the war-or else it is Achilles who is being referred to rather than his son
/ knew thy grandsire
The Trojan leaders are then invited to the Greek cae I-116) There they greet each other with careful courtesy, and old Nestor says to Hector:
I knew thy grandsire,
And once fought with him
- Act IV, scene v, lines 195-96
Hector's grandfather was Laoend, he built them with the aid of Poseidon and Apollo, ere condeainst hie I-86) When the walls were coe they sent a sea e the Trojan coast
The Trojans had to sacrifice maidens periodically to the hter, Hesione, was exposed to him She was rescued by Hercules It hen Laoain and refused certain horses which he had promised in return for the rescue, that Hercules sacked the city and took Hesione captive He also killed Lao son was Priam
Nestor is not recorded as having fought with Lao of the phrase) There is, however, an odd coincidence here Hercules is also recorded as having ainst Neleus, Nestor's father, to have slain Neleus and all but one of his sons and to have placed the one survivor, Nestor, on the throne of Pylos In this respect, Priaood deal in common
your Greekish embassy
Hector also greets Ulysses (who has cleverly cut off what promises to be a flood of Nestorian reminiscence) and says:
Ah, sir, there's many a Greek and Troyan dead,
Since first I saw yourself and Diomed
In llion, on your Greekish embassy
- Act IV, scene v, lines 213-15
This represents a point of difference froan, the Greeks had sent Ulysses and Menelaus (not Dio of truce, to demand the return of Helen This is referred to in Book Three of the Iliad
It is, however, very easy to associate Dioends about Troy In the Iliad it is Ulysses and Diomedes who act in concert in Book Ten to kill Rhesus the Thracian
In later ether sneak into Troy itself in order to steal the Palladiue of Minerva (Athena), who bore the alternate name of Pallas, after which the object, holy to her, was nauard the city and it was not until it was stolen that the city became vulnerable
Tomorrow do I meet thee
As the fourth act ends, it would see prepared Troilus approaches Ulysses to ask where Calchas' tent ht be located Ulysses has shown that he adreat feat to guess that he will be the instrument whereby Troilus will learn of Cressida's infidelity
As for Achilles, Ulysses' plan has worked wonderfully He is a new , he says:
Dost thou entreat me, Hector?
Tomorrow do I meet thee, jell as death;
- Act IV, scene v, lines 267-68
What, then, ought we to expect in the fifth act? Troilus will learn of Cressida's faithlessness, we can be sure, and will go raving out on the field to avenge himself on the Greeks Perhaps he is to be killed by Diomedes, perhaps by Achilles-but he ends that deal with him, before Achilles' spear, and of what draedy as outlined in this play?
Achilles must also kill Hector, since that is an absolute necessity; all versions of the Troy legend agree there In the Iliad Achilles returns to the fight only after Hector has killed Patroclus, but perhaps Shakespeare ht not have needed that part of Homer's plot After all, Shakespeare's presentation of Patroclus scarcely fits the notion of that effehty warrior (Homer's presentation of Patroclus was quite different) Shakespeare ht well have felt it would bethat set Achilles to fighting again
Then, Cressida must die too Perhaps by her own hand out of contrition or perhaps, in shausted, or sated, or callous Diomedes
Indeed, a century before Troilus and Cressida ritten, a Scottish poet named Robert Henryson had written a continuation of Chaucer's tale and called it Testament of Cresseid It was so close an imitation of Chaucer that for a while it was considered authentically Chaucerian and in 1532 was actually included in an edition of Chaucer's works
In the Testarows tired of Cressida and casts her off Cressida rails against Venus and Cupid and is stricken by them with leprosy in punishment Her face and body utterly altered by this loathsonificent on his horse, passes her and tosses her a coin, without recognizing her
It is a crude denoueentle Shakespeare ht never have felt tempted to adopt it, but it was popular and shohat an audience would like in the way of dramatic retribution
What does Shakespeare really do, then?
Very little, really The fifth act falls apart and Troilus and Cressida, which is tight enough and sensible enough through the first four acts, becomes a rather unsatisfactory play as a result of the fifth act While it is not ments, it appears that the fifth act is so poor that soested that Shakespeare did not write it
We can iine such a possibility Suppose that Essex's execution had taken place while Shakespeare riting Troilus and Cressida HeCressida in her place, and then have found the whole thing too unpleasant to continue If he abandoned the play, some other member of the actors' company of which Shakespeare was afor the play; one that could not one before, naturally
Or perhaps we don't have to go that far It is not absolutely essential to absolve Shakespeare of every inferior passage in his plays He reatest writer who ever lived but he was still a od He could still write hurriedly; he could still write halfheartedly And with Essex's execution burning him, he may have botched the last act himself
a letter from Queen Hecuba
Just as the fifth act begins there is a sudden retreat from the situation as it had been developed at the end of the fourth act Suddenly Thersites delivers a letter to Achilles, who reads it and says:
My sweet Patroclus, I am thwarted quite
Froreat purpose in tomorrow's battle
Here is a letter from Queen Hecuba,
A token frohter, my fair love,
Both taxingme to keep
An oath that I have sworn 1 will not break it
- Act V, scene i, lines 38-43
So all of Ulysses' careful planning, all his wisdo, and when Achilles is brought to battle it will be in Homer's fashion In that case, why should Shakespeare have introduced Ulysses' plot at all? It is al no idea as to what Shakespeare intended, fell back on Ho else
Ariachne's broken woof
Meanwhile Ulysses has guided Troilus to Calchas' tent, where the young man quickly sees that Cressida is false The conversation is one long, shallow flirtation of Cressida with Dioives hiiven her
The brokenhearted Troilus tries to chop logic and convince himself that he does not really see his Cressida; that there are two Cressidas One is Diomedes' Cressida, a faithless, worthless woman; and the other, secure in his own mind, is his ideal Cressida, faithful and true Yet he must admit that this separation is not real, that somehow the two are one:
And yet the spacious breadth of this division
Admits no orifex for a point as subtle
As Ariachne's broken woof to enter
- Act V, scene ii, lines 147-49
Arachne (not "Ariachne," a change Shakespeare makes to save the meter, apparently) was a Lydian woed Minerva (Athena) herself to compete with her In the competition, Arachne produced a tapestry into which those ods oven When she was done, Minerva could find no fault with it and petulantly tore it to shreds Arachne tried to hang herself, but Minerva, soirl into a spider and the rope into a strand of spider web
Troilus is saying that not even the finest strand of a spider's web can really be fit between the two Cressidas he is trying to conjure up He realizes that there is only one Cressida and that he has been betrayed
The fierce Polydamas
And now suddenly the play explodes into a battle scene, soins with Hector ar himself for the fray despite the pleas of his wife Andromache, his sister Cassandra, and his father Priaes his for revenge on Diomedes
The tide of battle goes against the Greeks to begin with and Agae to rally his men:
Renew, renew! The fierce Polydamas
Hath beat down Menon;
- Act V, scene v, lines 6-7
Polydamas appears briefly in the Iliad as a friend of Hector's, one who counsels inning to ride high, Polydaainst cocksureness and predicts the endvictories because Achilles is not fighting, but what if he rejoins the battle?
It is to him that Hector makes a famous rejoinder In quite an un-Homeric mood, he derides all the o on the right or on the left, and says: "A divine e is: 'Defend your country!'"
Palamedes
Menon, whom Polydamas has "beat down," does not appear in the Iliad, nor dothe tale of defeats in sonorous syllables
One nah he does not appear in the Iliad Agamemnon speaks of:
Palamedes Sore hurt and bruised
- Act V, scene v, lines 13-14
Palamedes appears in the later myths as a man alathering to go to Troy, Menelaus and Palae Ulysses to come Ulysses had learned from an oracle that if he went he would not return for twenty years and then penniless and alone, so he pretended to besalt instead of seed Palamedes watched the display cynically, and suddenly placed Ulysses' one-year-old son, Telemachus, in the path of the plow Ulysses turned it aside and his pretense of madness was broken
Ulysses never forgave Pala him framed for treason This happened before the Iliad opens and there is no hint concerning it in Homer's tale
This speech of Agamemnon's reflects the situation in Book Fifteen of the Iliad Achilles obdurately refuses to fight; a nuamemnon, Diomedes, and Ulysses, have been wounded, and the Trojan fortunes are at their peak The Greeks have fallen back to their very ships and the Trojans, with Hector leading the the torches hich to set those ships on fire
Patroclus ta'en
But in the course of Aganificant phrase creeps in:
Patroclus ta'en or slain
- Act V, scene v, line 13
Thus, in four words, is masked thebrutally rejected Agameht and in to pay
That payment comes in Book Sixteen, when Patroclus, horror-stricken at the Greek defeat and at the is Achilles to let hirees He allows Patroclus to wear Achilles' own armor, but warns him merely to drive the Trojans from the ships and not to attempt to assault the city
Patroclus does well The Trojans are driven back, but the exciteet Achilles' advice He pursues the fleeing Trojans, is stopped by Hector, and killed
bear Patroclus' body
Agamemnon's remark that Patroclus is either taken or slain is soon settled in favor of the latter alternative Nestor enters, saying:
Go, bear Patroclus' body to Achilles,
- Act V, scene v, line 17
Again, in a feords, many dramatic deeds in the Iliad are slurred over In Book Seventeen there is a gigantic struggle over Patroclus' body Hector es to strip the dead man of the arht in which Menelaus and Ajax do particularly well In the Iliad it is Menelaus who sends the e to Achilles, not Nestor, but then it is Nestor's son, Antilochus (who does not appear in Troilus and Cressida), who actually carries the e
Great Achilles Events follow quickly Ulysses co:
O courage, courage, princes! Great Achilles
Is areance!
Patroclus' wounds have roused his drowsy blood,
- Act V, scene v, lines 30-32
So it happens in the Iliad Achilles, paid back for his intransigence, realizes too late that he has sulked in his tent too long In the Iliad, however, he doesn't ariven it to Patroclus, who had lost it to Hector
A new set of ar to which Book Eighteen of the Iliad is devoted In Book Nineteen there is the foramemnon and Achilles, and only then, in Book Twenty, does Achilles join the battle
I'll hunt thee for thy hide
In Books Twenty, Twenty-one, and Twenty-two, Achilles is at war, and none can stand before him Indeed, in those three books, no Greek warrior but Achilles is ainst the Trojans (with occasional help frood or another) and defeats them
In Book Twenty-then the Trojan ar Achilles, Hector at last comes out alone to meet him in the climactic battle of the Iliad But the issue is never hi doubt
The onrush of Achilles daunts even Hector, and at the last h one of the city gates Achilles heads him off and three times they run coe-size by modern standards)
Only then does Hector turn, perforce, to face Achilles, and is killed!
None of this can appear in Troilus and Cressida The medieval poets, with their pro-Trojan/Roently, and Shakespeare inherits that attitude from them
He has the two chaht indeed, but it is Achilles who has to fall back, weakening Hector says, gallantly,
Pause, if thou wilt
- Act V, scene vi, line 14
And Achilles goes off,that he is out of practice
Yet so must be done to account for the fact that Hector does indeed die at the hands of Achilles, so ShakespeareHector meets an unnamed Greek in rich armor and decides he wants it When the Greek tries to run, Hector calls out:
Wilt thou not, beast, abide?
Why then, fly on, I'll hunt thee for thy hide
- Act V, scene vi, lines 30-31
Nowhere in Hoive anyone reason to think he would ever call a foeman "beast" or take the attitude that war is a hunt, with otherthe role of animals, and it is partly because of this that some critics doubt that Shakespeare wrote the last act And yet it is necessary for Hector to do soht earn the retribution that now falls upon him
Troy, sink down
Hector catches his prey and kills hiht is over Perhaps he is helped to that decision by his eagerness to try on the new armor he has won At any rate, he takes off his own armor, stands unprotected-and at that ent of his Myrmidons appear on the scene
Hector cries out that he is unarrim satisfaction:
So, Ilion, fall thou next! Come, Troy, sink down!
Here lies thy heart, thy sinews, and thy bone
- Act V, scene viii, lines 11-12
For Achilles to kill Hector in this way is unthinkable in a Homeric context and e But there it is-the medieval pro-Trojan, pro-Hector view
wells and Niobes
Troilus bears the news of Hector's death to the Trojan army:
Go in to Troy, and say there Hector's dead
There is a ill Priam turn to stone,
Make wells and Niobes of the maids and wives,
- Act V, scene x, lines 17-19
Niobe was a Theban queen, a daughter of Tantalus (see page I-13), whose pride in her six sons and six daughters led her to boast herself the superior of the goddess Latona (Leto), who had only one of each La-tona's children, however, happened to be Apollo and Diana
To avenge the taunt, Apollo and Diana shot down all twelve children, the twelfth in Niobe's arms She wept continuously after that, day after day, until the gods, in pity, turned her to stone, with a spring of tears still bubbling out and trickling down
no more to say
This essentially ends the play As Troilus says:
Hector is dead; there is no more to say
- Act V, scene x, line 22
To be sure, Troilus proe on the Greeks and on Achilles particularly, but that is just talk There can be no revenge Troy must fall
Nor has Troilus revenge on Diomedes or Cressida Diomedes still lives and still has Cressida
The fifth act is an ending of sorts, but it is not the ending tohich the first four acts were heading