Type of Work: Tragedy of Ignorance

.......Troilus and Cressida is classified as a tragedy, but who suffers the tragedy is arguable. Although callow Troilus loses his love, he fails to realize she was a wanton to begin with. Moreover, he does not die or experience a moment of epiphany. Hector dies, but he is neither a title character nor a character whose psyche and personality undergo thorough examination. Fickle Cressida, forcibly separated from Troilus, does not resist the Greeks. In fact, she welcomes their attentions, in particular those of Diomedes. She is anything but tragically heroic. 
.......One may fairly argue that the real tragedy in the play lies in the major characters' ignorance of who they are and what spurs them to action. Troilus, Cressida, Achilles, Ajax, Paris, et al., are blind to their faults and fail to learn from the mistakes they make. True, Hector ends the duel with Ajax shortly after it begins, for he realizes the folly of fighting with a relative. But he later challenges Achilles, not understanding the larger truth that all men come from the same human family.
.......But not only do the characters fail to understand themselves; they also fail to understand (or they wish to ignore) the significance of a key event as it unfolds: the surrender of Cressida to the Greeks in exchange for the captive Trojan Antenor. This development evens the score: The Greek Diomedes has the Trojan Cressida, the Trojan Paris has the Greek Helen, and the Trojan Troilus and the Greek Menelaus are cuckolds. In other words, the cause of the war, the abduction of Helen by Paris, has been negated by the surrender of Cressida to Diomedes. 
.......However, the war goes on–for pride, for glory, for lasting fame.

Key Dates

Date Written: 1602. 
Publication: 1623 as part of the First Folio, the first authorized collection of Shakespeare's plays.

Sources 

The main sources for the play were accounts of the Trojan War from Greek myths; from Homer's epic poem, The Iliad; and from Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. 

Setting

.......City of Troy and surrounding plains in northwestern Anatolia, a region in the Asia Minor that is part of modern-day Turkey. The action takes place in Troy and the Greek camp outside the walls of Troy. Anatolia is west of Greece (across the Aegean Sea) and north of Egypt (across the Mediterranean Sea). The time is about 3,200 years ago in recorded history's infancy.

Characters

Background From Greek Mythology
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.......In the ancient Mediterranean world, feminine beauty reaches its zenith in Helen, wife of King Menelaus of Greece. Her wondrous face invades every man's dream, including a young Trojan named Paris. He decides one day that he has to make her his own. So, with the help of his Trojan friends, he kidnaps Helen and takes her to Troy (in present-day Turkey). Infuriated, King Menelaus and his brother, Agamemnon, assemble a mighty army of which Agamemnon is supreme commander and cross the sea to make war against Troy and reclaim Helen and Greek pride. The great Greek storyteller Homer told part of the tale of the Trojan War in The Iliad, depicting the warriors on both sides–Achilles, Hector, Ajax the Great, Menelaus, Diomedes and Odysseus (Ulysses in Shakespeare's play)–as heroes worthy of imitation. In Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare depicts them as quite human, even bumbling, petty, and stupid. Some of them are morally corrupt. Shakespeare's version of the story begins at the end of the seventh year of the Trojan War. The plot summary follows.

.......Meanwhile, out on the plain before the walls of Troy, the Greeks argue among themselves about how to end the long and weary war. Achilles, their fiercest warrior, could be the key. He is Hercules, Sir Lancelot, and Rambo all wrapped up in one. But when the leaders of the army hold an important strategy meeting to plan their next move, the great Achilles refuses to attend. In fact, he refuses to resume fighting. Shakespeare does not go into detail about why Achilles has withdrawn from battle, but Homer’s Iliad–well known to Shakespeare’s audiences–makes it clear that Agamemnon, the general of the Greek armies, insulted him. Agamemnon further offended him when he took for himself a beautiful slave girl Achilles had captured when raiding locales around Troy. To spite Agamemnon, Achilles keeps to his tent, sitting back and wallowing in his greatness, all the while laughing at his bickering comrades. 

The lustre in your eye, heaven in your cheek, 
Pleads your fair usage; and to Diomed 
You shall be mistress, and command him wholly. (4. 4. 121-123)

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. (4. 5. 66-69)

Thou art, great lord, my father’s sister’s son, 
A cousin-german to great Priam’s seed; 
The obligation of our blood forbids 
A gory emulation ’twixt us twain. (4. 5. 140-143)

Ignorance breeds mediocrity. The central characters in the play do not understand themselves and do not learn from their mistakes. Consequently, they do not grow or change radically; they remain small and mediocre. 
Love is blind. Troilus falls in love with Cressida without due heed to her faults. 
Fame and glory are false gods. The Greeks and Trojans kill for glory, bragging rights, and eternal fame–false gods that entice them onto the path of self-destruction.
It is folly to fight a war for a trivial reason. The Greeks and Trojans went to war after Paris took Helen from King Menelaus, bruising Greek pride and honor. After seven years of war, the combatants stubbornly continue to fight.
Appearances are deceiving. Outwardly, Cressida and Helen are beautiful and charming; the various warriors, handsome and mighty. Inwardly, they are all ugly, spiteful, weak, and/or depraved. 

Plot Structure

.......The plot centers on a love story (involving Troilus, Cressida, Pandarus, and Diomedes) and a war story (involving Achilles, Agamemnon, Ajax, Hector, and other soldiers). Three events interweave the two stories: the defection of Calchas to the Greeks, the agreement to exchange Cressida for Antenor, and Hector's proposal to fight a Greek warrior one on one. Thersites and Ulysses comment on the action–Ulysses with eloquence and Thersites with invective that points out the shortcomings of the so-called heroes. 

Anticlimaxes

.......There is no high point in Troilus and Cressida; nor is there a surprising or shocking twist or turn. Each time the play approaches what promises to be a climactic moment–for example, Troilus's confrontation with Diomedes upon the departure of Cressida to the Greek camp, Hector's fight with Ajax, Cressida's reception in the Greek camp, the Act V showdown between Achilles and Hector–the moment ends in anticlimax. Cressida willingly becomes the mistress of Diomedes, Hector and Ajax fight to a draw, Cressida welcomes the attention of the Greeks, and Achilles waylays Hector with the help of fellow Greeks when Hector is unarmed and resting. 

Role of Thersites

Thersites is a slave who runs errands for the Greek warriors. Ironically, this lowly fellow is the one character in the play who well understands the folly of the war and the inanity of its participants. Shakespeare makes him the conscience of the play–a sharp-tongued, often sarcastic conscience. Time and again, he openly insults the other characters in diatribes laced with invective. But his characterization of them as incompetents and nincompoops is generally accurate. In the presence of Ajax, he tells Achilles that Ajax's “pia mater is not worth the ninth part of a sparrow” (2.1.47) and that he “wears his wit in his belly and his guts in his head” (2. 1. 47). Then he turns on Achilles, telling him that “a great deal of your wit, too, lies in your sinews . . .” (2.1 66).  
Thersites reserves his most searing insults for Patroclus, who engages in a homosexual relationship with Achilles. Here is the conversation (Act V, Scene I) in which Thersites lambastes Patroclus:

THERSITES...Prithee, be silent, boy; I profit not by thy talk:
thou art thought to be Achilles' male varlet.
PATROCLUS...Male varlet, you rogue! what's that?
THERSITES...Why, his masculine whore. Now, the rotten diseases
of the south, the guts-griping, ruptures, catarrhs,
loads o' gravel i' the back, lethargies, cold
palsies, raw eyes, dirt-rotten livers, wheezing
lungs, bladders full of imposthume, sciaticas,
limekilns i' the palm, incurable bone-ache, and the
rivelled fee-simple of the tetter, take and take
again such preposterous discoveries!
PATROCLUS...Why thou damnable box of envy, thou, what meanest
thou to curse thus?
THERSITES...Do I curse thee?
PATROCLUS...Why no, you ruinous butt, you whoreson
indistinguishable cur, no.
THERSITES...No! why art thou then exasperate, thou idle
immaterial skein of sleave-silk, thou green sarcenet
flap for a sore eye, thou tassel of a prodigal's
purse, thou? Ah, how the poor world is pestered
with such waterflies, diminutives of nature! (5. 1. 16-22)

.......Because of its cynicism and mocking tone–as well as its depiction of legendary Greek heroes as stupid, petty, incompetent, or fickle–Troilus and Cressida resembles a dark comedy. This play is also classified as one of three of Shakespeare's "problem plays" (along with Measure for Measure and All's Well That Ends Well) because of its presentation of heroes who are seriously flawed. Audiences used to applauding and identifying with admirable heroes and heroines find it difficult to applaud or identify with the flawed characters in Troilus and Cressida. 

Epigrams

.......In the dialogue of Troilus and Cressida and other Shakespeare plays, characters sometimes speak wise or witty sayings, or epigrams, couched in memorable language. Among the more memorable sayings in Troilus and Cressida are the following: 

Words pay no debts. (3.2.40)
Pandarus uses a metaphor to compare words to a kind of currency, but the currency does not pay debts. 

To fear the worst oft cures the worse. (3.2.47)
Cressida uses a paradox to say a fear neutralizes the object of the fear. 

To be wise, and love, 
Exceeds man’s might; that dwells with gods above. (3.2.102-103)
Cressida speaks a couplet that uses alliteration (man’s might). 

For honour travels in a strait so narrow, 
Where one but goes abreast. (3.3.163-164)
Ulysses uses a metaphor comparing honour to a sea traveler passing through a strait (a narrow waterway connecting two oceans, gulfs, bays, or other large bodies of water). He also uses a paradox saying that the strait is so narrow that only one person can swim abreast. But abreast refers to two or more people proceeding side by side.

You do as chapmen do, 
Dispraise the thing that you desire to buy. (4.1.82-83)
In a paradox, Paris describes what shoppers sometimes do when bargaining with a merchant (chapman): They belittle the object they want to buy to get the chapman to lower the price. 

.......Because Troilus and Cressida unfolds in the age of Greek mythology, Shakespeare makes many references (allusions) to the deities and other nonhuman beings from Greek myths. Among the beings to whom or which Shakespeare alludes are the following: 

Apollo: The sun god who daily drives his chariot across the sky; also, the god of music, prophecy, poetry, medicine
Argus: giant with 100 eyes who served as a spy for Hera (Roman name, Juno) queen of the Olympian gods. The messenger god, Hermes (Roman name, Mercury) killed him. Hera removed his eyes and placed them on the tail of the peacock.
Boreas: God of the north wind.
Briareus: Monster with 100 arms and 50 heads.
Cerberus: Fierce, three-headed dog at the gate of the Underworld.
Cupid: Roman name for Eros, the god of love. 
Daphne: beautiful nymph (nature goddess) pursued by Apollo. After she refused his advances and prayed for deliverance, her father, a river god, changes into a laurel tree.
Diana: Roman name for Artemis, the virginal moon goddess.
Juno: Roman name for Hera, queen of the Olympian gods.
Jupiter: Roman name for Zeus, king of the Olympian gods.
Mercury: Roman name for Hermes, the messenger god.
Neptune: Roman name for Poseidon, god of the sea.
Niobe:  Woman who bragged to the goddess Leto that she had six sons and six daughters. Leto had only two children, the god Apollo and the goddess Diana (Artemis). Because of her boastfulness, Apollo killed her sons, Diana killed her daughters, and Jupiter (Zeus) turned her into a mass of stone on Mount Sipylus (in present-day Turkey). The block of stone cried tears ceaselessly as Niobe wept for her dead children. 
Nymph: Nature goddess.
Pegasus: Winged horse born from the blood of the beheaded Medusa.
Perseus: Hero who beheaded Medusa, one of three sisters whose gaze could turn a human into stone. Each sister's hair was made of intertwining snakes.
Pluto: Roman name for Hades, the god of the Underworld.
Prosperpine: Roman name for Persephone, the goddess of the Underworld.
Thetis: Sea goddess who was the mother of Achilles.
Typhon: Monster with 100 dragon heads.
Venus: Roman name for Aphrodite, goddess of love. 
Vulcan: Roman name for Hephaestus, the god of fire and the forge who made armor in his Olympian smithy. 
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Study Questions and Essay Topics

1. Which character in the play is the most despicable? Explain your answer. 
2. Are there any admirable characters in the play? Explain your answer.
3. Write an essay that compares and contrasts Cressida’s concept of love with Juliet Capulet’s (Romeo and Juliet).
4. Write an essay that compares and contrasts Shakespeare’s depiction of the Greek and Roman warriors with Homer’s depiction of them in The Iliad.
5. Does Thersites speak for Shakespeare? Explain your answer.
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