Troilus and Cressida

In Act III, Disillusionment With Romantic and Heroic Ideals is once more at play. In the second scene of this act, Troilus and Cressida finally unite, declaring their love for each other. The orchard in which they meet acts as a brief respite from the clamor of war and politics, much as Achilles’s tent is his sanctuary with Patroclus. Although the sequence of Troilus and Cressida’s union is tender and romantic, the romance is offset by the presence of Pandarus. Pandarus’s transactional and deliberate behavior is at odds with the raw honesty of the feelings of the young lovers. He exhorts the young lovers to “go to, go to” (3.2.51), spurring them to kiss each other so that his task as a matchmaker is finished. Pandarus calls their union “a bargain made” (3.2) and asks Troilus and Cressida to close the deal with a kiss. 

Pandarus’s vocabulary of bargains, deals, and exchanges (See: Symbols & Motifs) is juxtaposed against the exulting words of Troilus, who describes himself as dizzy with an expectation that “whirls [him] round” (3.2.16). The contrast between the words of Pandarus and Troilus mirrors the conflict between the cynical, external world of trade and politics and the interior world of love and domesticity. Pandarus’s words infuse a tone of lechery in the romantic atmosphere of Troilus and Cressida’s union. As he leads them to Cressida’s house, Pandarus cynically wishes that “Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here / Bed, chamber, Pandar to provide this gear!” (3.2.209). The act of love becomes a mechanical routine, with Pandarus providing the tools or “gear” of bed and chamber. To further drive the carnal aspect of Troilus and Cressida’s love, Pandarus reminds the watching audience of the meaning associated with his name, which is a “panderer,” someone who flatters and pimps.

When Cressida last appeared, she swore never to reveal her love for Troilus. Here, she changes tack and does confess her feelings to the young prince. The turnarounds in the behavior of characters show that they are torn between various versions of their selves, illustrating the theme of The Divided Self and Its Performance. After Cressida tells Troilus she loves him, she walks away, saying she is sick of her own self. She feels divided between the Cressida that loves Troilus and the Cressida she knows will betray him. While these lines foreshadow Cressida’s disloyalty to Troilus, they also show Cressida cannot reconcile her private and public selves. She wants to be faithful to Troilus in her private self, but her public identity—that is, her gendered role as a woman, as well as the betraying character from Chaucer’s poem—will demand that she forego Troilus. 

Significantly, the burden of fidelity in their relationship falls on Cressida. Troilus declares that he would believe Cressida could be faithful to him if a woman were capable of faithfulness. The problematic idea that women are prone to infidelity was a continuing trope in medieval, Renaissance, and Jacobean literature; in the case of Troilus and Cressida, the audience would be familiar with Chaucer’s tale. Thus, Cressida is destined to be unfaithful, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The motif of women as commodities to be traded and exchanged recurs with Calchas arranging Cressida’s arrival in the Greek camp (See: Symbols & Motifs). It should be noted that Cressida herself is never asked if she wants to go to her father. As an unmarried woman, she is her father’s property and has no say in her fate. An unlikely parallel is seen between the speeches of Cressida and Achilles in this act. When Ulysses cunningly decides that Achilles must be shunned, his strategy has the desired effect. Achilles immediately feels the sting of indifference, playing straight into the hands of Ulysses. The speech in which Achilles expresses his hurt at being shunned stresses the fickleness of human favor. Just as Cressida fears that a man’s affections are subject to change, Achilles notes that people are like butterflies, flocking only to the summer of one’s good fortune. The butterfly simile underscores the fleeting nature of human feelings, since the short-lived and wandering butterfly symbolizes mortality and wantonness.

Ulysses’s speech to Achilles, just like his speech to the Greek generals in Act II, is a discourse on the importance of order, lawfulness, and good governance. He reveals to Achilles that he knows about the warrior’s love for Polyxena, since a good government keeps watch over its subjects like a god. There are no secrets from such a government. Ulysses’s words could be a satirical allusion to the watchful surveillance state of Queen Elizabeth. Taken together, Ulysses’s speeches on good governance in Acts II and III illustrate the text’s ambiguous stance on the subject. While a government must enforce order and discipline, things get problematic when it infringes on individual rights and privacy. 

Further, Ulysses’s knowledge about Achilles’s love for Polyxena symbolizes that the political, public world is encroaching upon the private world of love and domesticity, illustrating the theme of The Pervasive Futility and Corruption of War. The world of political machinations and war cannot let the private bubble of individual desire exist, and must puncture it. Thus, Ulysses summons Achilles to the battlefield, and encourages him to “wrestle” Hector rather than Polyxena. The violent fight must give precedence to the fight for love.