65 pages • 2 hours read
William ShakespeareTroilus and Cressida
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1601A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Act VChapter Summaries & Analyses
Act V, Scene 1 Summary
Achilles tells Patroclus he will heat Hector’s blood that night with wine so that he can cool it tomorrow by killing him. Thersites approaches Achilles with a letter from Troy. Achilles and Patroclus trade insults with Thersites, with Achilles calling Thersites a “crusty batch of nature” (5.1.6) and Thersites referring to Patroclus as the “masculine whore” (5.1.18) of Achilles.
Achilles tells Patroclus that the letter is from Queen Hecuba, bearing a message from her daughter, Polyxena. The princess entreats Achilles not to fight her kinsfolk tomorrow, so Achilles has no choice but to stay away from the war. Achilles and Patroclus depart for the banquet. Thersites stays back, muttering insults to describe the Greek commanders as they leave the feast. Diomedes exits the feast, claiming he has urgent business somewhere. Ulysses and Troilus follow Diomedes secretly. Remarking that lecherous Diomedes is up to no good, Thersites too decides to tail him.
Act V, Scene 2 Summary
Diomedes stops before Calchas’s tent and asks for Cressida. Cressida comes out to meet him. As Ulysses and Troilus watch from one hidden corner, and Thersites from another, Diomedes flirts with Cressida. Troilus is shocked to see Cressida behave familiarly with Diomedes. Diomedes asks for proof of Cressida’s feelings. Cressida is reluctant to provide the proof, but stops Diomedes when he makes to leave. She finally brings out the sleeve that Troilus had given her as a token for Diomedes.
Watching this, a heartbroken Troilus begins to shake in fury. Ulysses begs Troilus to control his emotions. Cressida is conflicted about giving the sleeve to Diomedes, since the person who gave it to her will be thinking of her right now. Diomedes seizes the sleeve and tells Cressida he will wear it into battle tomorrow as a challenge for her unknown lover. Diomedes leaves. Cressida says that a part of her belongs to Troilus, but the other has strayed. It is not her fault; she claims that women tend to take decisions based on their eyes (implying Diomedes is handsome) rather than their brains. She exits the stage.
Thersites mutters that Cressida’s excuse can be best explained as “[her] mind is now turn’d whore” (5.2.139). Ulysses tells Troilus that his and Cressida’s love is finished. Troilus replies that he knows what he saw, but is still unable to believe it. He wishes the Cressida he just saw was either a magician’s trick or a hallucination. Cressida loosened the pure bonds of love that tied her to him, and has tied rotting threads to Diomedes instead.
As Troilus laments, Aeneas joins him and Ulysses to take the Trojan prince back to Hector. They depart. Thersites wishes he could do some harm to Diomedes. He feels sickened by what is happening around him, which is just more and more “war and lechery” (5.2.213).
Act V, Scene 3 Summary
In Troy, Hector’s wife Andromache pleads with him to stay home that day. She has had bad dreams all night, foretelling slaughter and catastrophe. Hector must not fight. Andromache is surprised by Hector’s refusal to listen to her, since he usually takes her advice.
Hector’s sister Cassandra tries to stop him as well. Hector tells the women that he must go, as he has sworn an oath to the gods to meet Achilles in battle. Cassandra tells Hector that angry oaths are not good offerings for the gods, so he need not feel obliged to fight. Hector dismisses the women, saying his honor is more important to him than his life. Andromache asks Cassandra to bring Priam in order to convince Hector.
Meanwhile, spotting Troilus getting ready for battle, Hector asks his youngest brother to disarm himself. Troilus is too young to risk his life. Troilus is in an altered, harsh mood and scolds Hector for being too merciful. Hector’s foolish mercy has made him spare many an enemy. Today, even Hector cannot stop Troilus from going to the battlefield.
Cassandra returns with King Priam. Priam also tries to exhort Hector to stay back from battle, but Hector refuses. Cassandra prophesizes Hector’s death, and leaves. Pandarus brings in a letter from Cressida to Troilus. He tears up the letter after reading it, saying Cressida only has empty words for him, but her actions favor another. Hector and Troilus leave for the battlefield.
Act V, Scene 4 Summary
In a corner in the battlefield, Thersites comments on the tussle between Diomedes and Troilus. Diomedes wears Troilus’s sleeve on his helmet to taunt him; Troilus pursues him hotly; all for a lying woman who has no sleeves (no honor) at all. Thersites also abuses the other warriors, calling Achilles the dog who won’t fight (Achilles is refraining from battle on his Trojan beloved’s request).
Diomedes and Troilus enter, battling. Troilus calls Diomedes a fleeing coward. Diomedes responds he isn’t running from Troilus, just drawing him to a place where Diomedes is not outnumbered by Trojans. They exit.
Hector enters and spots Thersites. He asks the Greek if he is an honorable man who can meet him in battle. Thersites replies that he is nothing but a “rogue.” Hector spares Thersites and leaves.
Act V, Scene 5 Summary
This scene unfolds as several vignettes from the battle. Diomedes asks his attendant to take Troilus’s horse to Cressida, so that she believes he has vanquished the Trojan prince and is now her knight. Agamemnon rails that several important Greeks have been killed, with Patroclus either dead or a prisoner of war. Nestor enters with Patroclus’s body and asks his attendants to take the corpse to Achilles. Ulysses remarks that after seeing Patroclus dead, the great warrior Achilles will weep and swear vengeance.
Soon, Achilles has decided to enter the battlefield to avenge Patroclus’s death. Ajax too foams at the mouth in rage, as Patroclus was his friend. He now directs his fury against Troilus, who has been merciless in battle all day. Achilles enters, shouting for Hector, whom he believes has killed Patroclus. Achilles promises to show Hector his full wrath.
Act V, Scene 6 Summary
Ajax and Diomedes look frantically for Troilus, keen to kill him. Troilus enters and mocks Diomedes for stealing his horse. Ajax and Diomedes argue over who will fight Troilus, till Troilus tells the “cogging Greeks” (5.6.14), he will fight them both.
Achilles and Hector meet in the field and fight. Achilles, who is out of practice, loses the first round. Hector lets Achilles go; Achilles promises to meet Hector again in battle soon. Hector spots a Greek soldier dressed in rich, expensive armor. Wanting the armor for himself, Hector chases the soldier, intending to kill him.
Act V, Scene 7 Summary
Achilles gathers his men, known as the Myrmidons, ordering them to follow him in battle. When Achilles approaches Hector, the Myrmidons must close in on the Trojan and kill him.
Thersites runs into the Trojan Margarelon, who introduces himself as Priam’s bastard son. Thersites says he is a more amplified bastard: a bastard by parentage, educated by a bastard, and above all, a bastard in thoughts and actions.
Act V, Scene 8 Summary
Hector has killed the armored man and brings his body on the stage. He declares his day’s work done and begins to disarm. Achilles and the Myrmidons enter. Achilles tells Hector that, just as the sun is setting in the sky, Hector’s life’s sun too is about to set. Hector asks Achilles not to take advantage of his unarmed state. However, Achilles charges his men to attack. They close in on Hector and kill him.
Achilles declares that with Hector, Troy has fallen too. The Myrmidons must spread the news that Hector has been killed by Achilles. On Achilles’s command, the Myrmidons tie Hector’s body to the tail of Achilles’s horse so he can drag the corpse behind him.
Act V, Scene 9 Summary
In the Greek camp, the leaders’ drums proclaim Hector’s death by Achilles’s hand. Ajax thinks Achilles’s declaration is unseemly, as Hector was an honorable man. Agamemnon sends a message that he will see Achilles in his tent. If the news of Hector’s death is indeed true, the terrible war may finally be over.
Act V, Scene 10 Summary
Troilus tells Aeneas and the rest of the army that Hector is dead. He is being dragged like an animal by Achilles. This is such a horrible fate that Troilus wishes the gods would smite Troy right now to put the Trojans out of their misery.
Aeneas requests Troilus to control his emotions, as he is demoralizing the army. Troilus counters that his lament does not imply the Trojans should stop fighting. Troilus is preparing himself to fight to the death if need be. He will wreak havoc on the Greeks the next day and ensure Achilles, the great coward, rues his misdeeds. Troilus asks Aeneas to break the terrible news of Hector’s death to Priam and Hecuba. Aeneas exits.
Pandarus enters the stage, wanting a word with Troilus. Troilus shoos him away, calling him a “broker-lackey” (5.10.36) or a dishonorable middleman. He exits the stage.
Pandarus, left alone, wonders at the fate of matchmakers and pimps. A while ago, Troilus sought him dearly, but now shuns him. The world has shunned Pandarus as well, whose bones ache with venereal disease. Pandarus addresses the audience and says his fate serves as a warning for the people of Pandar’s house (the house being either the theater or a brothel, implying people in the audience trade in sex work). When Pandarus gets better, may they inherit his disease.
Act V Analysis
In the final act, the play moves away completely from the interior, private realm of love and domesticity into the political, cynical world of war, signaling the triumph of war over love and The Pervasive Futility and Corruption of War. Though the act covers a decisive time in the Trojan War, it features hardly any heroic or even action-packed sequences. Combat, when it takes place, is truncated or desultory, as in the case of Hector’s bout with Ajax and Hector’s first battle with Achilles. In both cases, the battle ends soon and is accompanied by a sense of anticlimax. When the bout is more visceral, it is unheroic and cowardly, as in the case of Achilles having Hector killed.
The sequence in which Hector spots a man in a beautiful armor and slays him may seem odd, but it can be read as a metaphor for the futility and corruption of war. Hector is uncharacteristically covetous and gives chase to the mysterious soldier. When he returns with the man’s corpse, he addresses it as “most putrefied core, so fair without” (5.8.1). Hector notes that though the soldier’s armor is impressive, he, like all other people, was corrupt on the inside. Hector may well be talking about his own venture to kill the soldier for his armor: Though the pursuit seemed urgent when it started, Hector now realizes it was meaningless.
The pall of anticlimax hangs heavily over key battle moments, further highlighting the futility of war. Just as the Prologue predicted, war is an arbitrary, nihilistic matter. Victory is about chance, rather than skill or a moral high ground. Keeping with the arbitrary, nihilistic tone of the play, it ends with a puzzling speech by Pandarus, a man of dubious conduct who has shown an unhealthy interest in his own niece’s virginity. Thus, while the battles of Act V are presented as a crucial turning point in the war, there is no sense that the victory is an honorable one or will serve much good even for the Greek warriors in the long run.
The nihilism of the battlefield is reflected in the cynicism of the private sphere as well. Cressida’s volte-face is by now characteristic. Earlier, she reversed her decision to never admit her feelings to Troilus. Now, she reverses her decision to be loyal to him and further reverses her decision to be coy before Diomedes. Her shifts speak to The Divided Self and Its Performance. While this behavior is intended to show Cressida’s fickleness and establish her as an anti-heroic character, her vacillation can also be seen as her attempt to survive in her new milieu. Cressida knows that her return to Troy is unlikely; therefore, she must have a Greek sympathizer to manage in her altered reality. She gives in to Diomedes out of pragmatic self-protection.
Cressida’s behavior with Diomedes in this scene has a performative quality, as if she is trapped in a role she must play. She notes that despite her love for Troilus, she must perform how weak-willed women are expected to perform. Being a woman, she is cursed with a universal fault, as evident in these lines: “Ah, poor our sex! this fault in us I find / The error of our eye directs our mind” (5.2.134-135). Her suggestion that women are easily changeable and base their feelings on external appearances contrasts with the youthful idealism and anxiety over fidelity she demonstrated earlier in the play.
The theme of Disillusionment With Romantic and Heroic Ideals is underscored by the sneaky way in which Achilles has Hector killed. This is not Homer’s Achilles, who slayed Hector himself in single combat, but a cynical, sly character who ambushes an unarmed character. The fact that Hector had earlier shown Achilles mercy after defeating him one-on-one enhances the treachery of Achilles’s behavior, presenting Achilles as an opportunistic man who does not even conform to the heroic ideals a Greek warrior is supposed to embody. Likewise, it is significant that Achilles has his followers swarm and kill Hector instead of doing so himself—a choice that reinforces his cowardice and cynicism, especially since he takes credit for the killing afterwards to reap the glory for himself. Achilles’s machinations thus present the Greek champion as someone without honor or even especial skill in this battle, suggesting that the heroic ideals other Greeks associate with him are hollow and meaningless.
Though Pandarus and Thersites are sometimes thought to have similar roles in the play, they are distinct from each other. Pandarus “panders,” to Troilus, to Cressida, and finally to the audience. However, Thersites functions as the wise fool who shows himself and the characters of the play the mirror of truth. He also represents the watcher, observing events and commenting on them, though he knows his commentary changes nothing.
Emphasizing the metatheatrical aspect of the play—as in a play that knows it is putting on a performance—Thersites is the audience of the actions in Troilus and Cressida. This is obvious in Act V, when Thersites follows Ulysses and Troilus to Calchas’s tent. As the two men watch Diomedes and Cressida, Thersites watches them as well, thus creating another layer of observation. He comments not just on Cressida’s conduct but on that of Troilus, concluding in the end that there is nothing to the matter but “wars and lechery; nothing else” (5.2.213). When he meets Hector on the battlefield, he is, ironically, the only character there who seems to see himself for what he really is, describing himself as a “rogue” instead of crediting himself with any special or heroic qualities.
The choice of closing speech reinforces the play’s prevailing sense of futility and cynicism while also reflecting the play’s metatheatrical elements. Pandarus’s direct address to the audience implies that existence is a performance, war is a performance, and performance is meaningless because it does not change anything. Thus, the play ends on a bitter, open note. Pandarus has achy bones, which is shorthand for being afflicted with syphilis and invokes the play’s motif of disease and corruption (See: Symbols & Motifs). Though the sick, odd-looking, or raving fool is a stock comedic device in Renaissance theater, in the play’s context, Pandarus’s final appearance only enhances the senseless tragedy of life.
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By William Shakespeare
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