Notes on Troilus and Cressida

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:09 am by Peter Leithart

Notes on Troilus and Cressida 2017-09-07T00:09:18+06:00 Peter Leithart

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Scattered notes from Augostino Lombardo, ?Fragments and scraps?Ein Piero Boitani, The European Tragedy of Troilus (Clarendon, 1989).

1) Love seems to be taking hold in the midst of war at the beginning of the play, with Troilus removing his arms to win the war that takes place within him and to pursue the delights of peacetime, the delights of love. Yet, the fact that the love is mediated by Pandar is a sign that something is amiss. He is vulgar and sensual, and degrades everything he gets involved in: and he?s in the middle of the action from the beginning of the love story. Pandar is the great exemplar of the fact that love and heroism are simply incompatible in this world.

2) The war intervenes and destroys love, for as soon as Troilus and Cressida have consummated their love, the Greeks are coming to arrange the exchange of Antenor for Cressida. Public issues prevent private happiness, as in Shakespeare?s other love stories.

3) As Marjorie Garber points out, ?unarming?Eor ?disarming?Efunctions as a motif throughout the play. Troilus begins play removing armor, Hector is unarmed when Achilles sets his men on him, and at the end of the play Troilus dons armor again out of anger at Diomedes.

4) Thersites is also symbol of the confusions of the world. He is ?obscene, repulsive, and as deformed in mind as in body,?Eand is thus ?of a piece with the disharmonious world of the action, its symbol and faithful interpreter, underscoring ?Eand behind this ?denigratory chorus?Elies, of course, both Medieval Vice and the bitter satire of a Marston ?Eall its evil and corruption.?EThersites thus refracts ?men . . . at their vilest, with all their ills and weaknesses,?Ewhich through Thersites takes on a concrete focus in the play ?as the diseased rottenness of the world?Epeopled by heroes ?more grotesque than ridiculous.?E

5) Shakespeare?s own satire is ?less deforming but no less destructive or ruthless.?EThe great heroes of Troy are depicted as inflated blowhards, trading in weighty and irrelevant abstractions. Ajax is the butt of Thersites?Ebitter attacks and the sarcastic treatment of the other Greek heroes. Achilles is treated in a more balanced fashion, but his virtues are set against vanity, passion for Patroclus, and immaturity: ?His traditional ?direful wrath?Eis reduced to puerile hysteria.?EAchilles is a spoiled adolescent, pouting in his tent with his boy-lover.

6) Achilles?Eslaughter of Hector is emblematic of a key theme of the play. It displays Achilles?Ebaseness, and exposes the illusory character of Hector?s attachment to an outdated code of honor: ?A world which precludes love also precludes the ideals of chivalry; Hector?s death is a tragic emblem of this.?EOn the other hand, Hector was as aware as anyone of the stupidity of the war, as his great speeches in Act 2, scene 2 illustrate. As Lombardo puts it: ?he was as aware as Thersites, in all other respects his opposite, that it was a vile and senseless war.?EThersites, typically, puts it in vulgar terms: the war is only about ?a whore and a cuckold.?EHector says much the same, though in more measured tones: ?She is not worth what she doth cost the keeping.?EYet, honor triumphs over reason and morality for Hector. As he prepares to return to the field for what proves to be his final battle, he tells Andomache and Priam that ?mine honor keeps the weather of my fate?Eand ?the dear man holds honour far more precious-dear than life.?E(This also picks up on the important discussion of value/worth in Act 2, scene 2.) This blinds him to the reality that in his clearer moments he is able to see. Lombardo says, ?There is no room for abstract ideals or traditional values: if refusing to fight his cousin Ajax was a mistake?E, sparing Achilles was a fatal error which brought him a treacherous, merciless death. His funeral is as ?beastly?Eas his killing: neither a rite nor a symbol, for here death is not greatness but simply destruction.?ELombardo makes a telling comparison between Shakespeare?s Hector and Don Quixote, and I am reminded of Rebecca?s attack on chivalry in Ivanhoe .

7) Intertwined with these themes of heroism and honor is the overarching theme of mutability. Hector is ?a man of the past in a world in which time and the past hold no surety for the present.?ETo extrapolate from Lombardo?s comment: This detachment of yesterday and today runs through the play: Hector?s values don?t work anymore; Achilles?Edeeds are forgotten (as Ulysses points out in his ?Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back?Espeech in 3.3.); Cressida?s vows of faithfulness do not secure faithfulness the next night, when Diomedes rather than Troilus woos her. For Troilus, this mutability upends the world, unties the bindings of heaven and earth, and divides people in two. Tonight?s Cressid is not last night?s Cressid; and the Cressid of Troilus is separated from the Cressid of Diomedes.

This raises a profound epistemological point. Troilus?Esense that there is no solid link between appearance and reality does not arise from epistemological doubts. He has not embarked on a Cartesian exploration of the foundations of knowledge. Epistemological doubt arises from unfaithfulness. Appearance seems detached from reality because Cressida has not kept her promises. This provides intriguing possibilities for a historical/philosophical investigation of modern epistemology, and especially of skepticism, for it suggests that philosophical skepticism is a result of unfaithfulness or of a breakdown of tradition (severing past and present) rather than a position arrived at on philosophical grounds. (I?m thinking here of Stephen Toulmin?s wonderful study, Cosmopolis .) Epistemological doubt arises from disappointed expectations. This also lends itself to an account of modern atheism, in which skepticism about the existence of God arises from the unfaithfulness, the un-truth, of the people of God or from the apparent untrustworthiness of God (ie, the problem of evil; protest atheism).

Mutability is also linked in the play to the issue of worth/value. Ulysses tells Achilles ?The present eye praises the present object,?Eand elsewhere points out that a man?s honor and worth comes only by ?reflection?Erather than through the inherent merit of his deeds. That is not the notion of worth that Hector enunciates in his brief debate with Troilus in 2.2, but Ulysses would doubtless reply that he is simply telling it as it is. Here?s the dilemma of mutability: In a world where men do in fact praise the present object, how can one value what is past (codes of honor, fair play, vows of love) when the past is always retreating into oblivion, where ?good deeds past?Eare mere ?scraps?Efor forgetful devouring? (This might also link to Ulysses?Eother great speech on ?degree,?Ewhich climaxes with the claim that without degree the ?universal wolf?Eof appetite consumes all, and finally itself.)

8) Speaking of that degree speech, Lombardo suggests that, while Ulysses is passionately nostalgic for the old order of degree, he realizes that it?s an ideal that has been destroyed, and pretty much for good. He doesn?t advocate its reinstitution. Unlike Hector, Ulysses is able to roll with the punches (?man of twists and turns?Ethat he is; POLYMETIS), and operates shrewdly and successfully in a world where ?experience, political realism, and intellectual acumen?Eprovide the path to achievement. For Ulysses, ?the magma of reality can only be faced by the exercise of reason,?Eand it is Ulysses?Erationality that makes him the counterpart to Hector. The latter recognizes the claims of reason, but subordinates them to an older code of chivalric honor. Ulysses thus is a ?man of the past able to face the present.?E

9) Lombardo points out that Troilus & Cressida is pervaded by a ?sustained note of disquietude which borders on desperation,?Esimilar to Timon of Athens . He connects this with ?the crisis in English society,?Esymbolized by the Stuart succession to Elizabe

th, and including the rising power of the merchant middle class and the corresponding decline of the aristocracy, the increasing religious tensions, and the beginnings of modern science and philosophy. In this context, he reads Ulysses?Edegree speech as ?an elegy for a vanished world, an acceptance that the Middle Ages are over and that the Elizabethan synthesis of the medieval and the Renaissance is no longer possible.?EUlysses thus represents the acceptance of the new world of science, philosophy, Realpolitik. Troilus too is entering this world, in anguish passing from romantic illusions to a recognition of the realities of love and war. Cressida too must make the transition. In Shakespeare?s hands she is ?not the traditional symbol of ?frailty,?Ebut a woman whose female condition of subordination and humiliation has created a robust sense of the real, and who will rip away any veil of illusion obstructing her vision.?EGiving the sleeve of Troilus to Diomedes is not ?a theatrical sign of fickleness?Ebut ?the painful awareness that the ?sleeve?Eis an illusory token of an impossible love, and that survival requires a rational and more clear-sighted acceptance of reality.?E

10) The search for coordinates to guide through the new world ?Ethe world in which Hector is dead ?Eis inconclusive in the play. There is no obvious pattern to this new world. The cynicism of Pandar is an option, but not an attractive one. Perhaps the best that can be hoped for is an embrace of realism, and the effort to purge myths, illusions, and false certainties.

11) The crisis that Shakespeare hints at in the play is in large measure a crisis of language, as it is in other Shakespearean plays. Words that used to evoke passion and describe reality and bind persons no longer perform these functions.

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