Troilus and Cressida

“Tell me, Apollo, for thy Daphne’s love,

What Cressid is, what Pandar, and what we?

Her bed is India; there she lies, a pearl:

Between our Ilium and where she resides,

Let it be call’d the wild and wandering flood,

Ourself the merchant, and this sailing Pandar

Our doubtful hope, our convoy and our bark.”

Troilus’s lines illustrate the play’s motif of mercantile imagery (See: Symbols & Motifs), where Cressida’s bed is compared to a rich land where Troilus the merchant must go to seek his fortune. Pandarus, the go-between, is the “bark” or merchant ship that can ferry Troilus to Cressida. The metaphor reflects how important the colonizing enterprise was in Shakespeare’s time, with European sailors looking for fresh, opportune shores. Though Troilus is lovelorn and the speech an expression of his pining for Cressida, the mercantile imagery undercuts the romanticism, foreshadowing the doomed trajectory of Troilus’s love for Cressida through the Disillusionment of Romantic and Heroic Ideals.

“Let Paris bleed; ‘tis but a scar to scorn;

Paris is gored with Menelaus’ horn.”

This couplet by Troilus is an example of the play’s use of iambic pentameter, the line that features five pairs of unstressed-stressed syllables. For instance, note the five stressed syllables, denoted by caps, in Line 113: “Let PAris BLEED; ‘tis BUT a SCAR to SCORN.” Troilus and Cressida is written in blank verse or mostly unrhymed but metered verse; blank verse often features the iamb or the unstressed-stressed combination, as in the case of these lines. Here, Troilus, preoccupied with thoughts of Cressida, brushes off news of Paris’s injury, since that physical wound is nothing in comparison to the cuckold’s horn Paris has bestowed on Menelaus by his affair with Helen.

“PANDARUS. You are such a woman! one knows not at what ward you

lie.

CRESSIDA. Upon my back, to defend my belly; upon my wit, to

defend my wiles; upon my secrecy, to defend mine

honesty; my mask, to defend my beauty; and you, to

defend all these: and at all these wards I lie, at a

thousand watches.”

As this exchange shows, the pun is an important literary device in Shakespeare’s plays, the source of much humor. Cressida puns on the double-meaning of the word “lie,” when Pandarus says women lie at every opportunity. However, the double innuendo quickly turns into social commentary, where Cressida says women must indeed lie down and tell lies at every turn to defend themselves. In bed they must fight to defend their belly or avoid getting pregnant, and outside bed they must lie to preserve their honesty or chastity. Thus, women must resort to thousands of wily methods to guard themselves, with Cressida’s awareness of women’s gendered expectations speaking to The Divided Self and Its Performance.

“Women are angels, wooing:

Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing”

Cressida’s practical estimation of the worth of women establishes her as an intelligent character. She knows women appear angels to men while men are wooing them, but are taken for granted after they have been wooed. Thus, she prefers to appear an angel to Troilus, suppressing her true feelings for him. Cressida’s frank words show how women are forced to put up a performance in a gendered society.

“The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center

Observe degree, priority, and place,

Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,

Office, and custom, in all line of order.”

Ulysses’s words express an important Elizabethan belief: Hierarchy and the chain of command are central to the organization of any body, whether the physical body, a social institution like marriage, or a political entity like an army or the kingdom. This hierarchical harmony derives from nature itself, where every heavenly body knows its place. The word “degree” occurs several times in the speech from which this extract is taken, and refers to rank. Just like the Greek army has fallen into disarray because soldiers forget their rank, society goes haywire when women disobey their superiors, that is men, and men disobey their leaders. “Insisture” is a little-known noun, perhaps of Shakespeare’s own coinage, and means consistency.

“Then every thing includes itself in power,

Power into will, will into appetite;

And appetite, an universal wolf,

So doubly seconded with will and power,

Must make perforce an universal prey,

And last eat up himself.”

These lines present a cogent argument for law and order. When humans are left to their own devices, their lust for power takes over them. The rule of the jungle prevails, with the powerful first preying on the weak, and ultimately upon their own selves. Power and appetite or hunger are personified here to emphasize their inherent danger. Ulysses’s words echo the long-standing argument between reason and passion. Ungoverned passion turns into a hungry, self-devouring wolf.

“THERSITES. I would thou didst itch from head to foot and I had

the scratching of thee; I would make thee the

loathsomest scab in Greece. When thou art forth in

the incursions, thou strikest as slow as another.”

These lines illustrate the text’s symbolism around sickness and disease (See: Symbols & Motifs). Thersites’s words to Ajax contain graphic imagery around never-healing itches, scratching, and horrible scabs. Such images pile up throughout the play to build upon the theme that everything, from spirit to body, is affected by an illness, reflecting The Pervasive Futility and Corruption of War. Thersites abusing his master Ajax in this way is also a stock trope in Renaissance theater, with Shakespeare’s fools in particular stripping the higher classes of their pretenses.

“HECTOR. Brother, she is not worth what she doth cost

The holding.

TROILUS. What is aught, but as ‘tis valued?”

This exchange between Hector and Troilus illustrates the motif of bargains, deals, and estimations of value in the play (See: Symbols & Motifs). Using the play’s mercantile imagery, Hector suggests that Helen is not worth her cost, that is, the many Trojan lives lost defending her. Troilus argues that “value” or worth is subjective: Things are worthy because people desire them. Since Helen is so desired, she is worthy. Troilus cannily explores the idea of market value, where a commodity’s price is determined by demand. The transactional language here undermines Helen and Paris’s romance, reducing Helen to an object.

“ACHILLES. Where, where? Art thou come? why, my cheese, my

digestion, why hast thou not served thyself in to

my table so many meals? Come, what’s Agamemnon?”

Food represents baser appetites and lust in the play. Here, Achilles’s appetite is for the crude entertainment that Thersites offers, making fun of Agamemnon. The fact that Thersites has defected from Ajax to the table of Achilles illustrates the motif of infidelity (See: Symbols & Motifs), where no human is permanently loyal to another.

“PANDARUS. The shaft confounds,

Not that it wounds,

But tickles still the sore.

These lovers cry Oh! oh! they die!

Yet that which seems the wound to kill,

Doth turn oh! oh! to ha! ha! he!”

Pandarus’s lewd song, recited on Helen’s request, is an example of the play’s use of bawdy humor. It also reflects the play’s anti-romantic strain, where a love song is actually a crude joke on the sexual act. Cupid’s “shaft” or arrow refers here to the male organ, which, instead of hurting the woman, pleases her. Wounded by the arrow, the lovers “die”—common Elizabethan slang for sexual climax—and moan in ecstasy.

“TROILUS. I am giddy; expectation whirls me round.

The imaginary relish is so sweet

That it enchants my sense: what will it be,

When that the watery palate tastes indeed

Love’s thrice repured nectar?”

Troilus’s lines illustrate the food imagery of the text, where he wonders about the taste of Cressida’s love. Since food is associated with lust in the play, the romantic language couches Troilus’s baser appetite for Cressida, hinting at the Disillusionment With Romantic and Heroic Ideals that awaits him. The passage also illustrates Troilus’s tendency to romanticize life: He builds up his encounter with Cressida to such an extent that the reality is bound to appear anticlimactic.

“CRESSIDA. They say all lovers swear more performance than they

are able and yet reserve an ability that they never

perform, vowing more than the perfection often and

discharging less than the tenth part of one.”

Though Cressida is viewed as a fickle, inconstant character, she often speaks a truth that gets to the heart of the matter. When Troilus professes his ardent love for her, Cressida notes that lovers often put on a performance to get what they want, promising more than what they can ever deliver. Not only do her words illustrate the play’s central theme of The Divided Self and Its Performance, they also foreshadow Troilus’s actions. When Cressida is handed over to the Greeks, Troilus will do little to stop it.

“What, are you gone again?

you must be watched ere you be made tame, must you?

Come your ways, come your ways; an you draw backward,

we’ll put you i’ the fills.”

As he brings Cressida to Troilus, Pandarus’s vocabulary veers close to a hustler selling his wares, speaking to the mercantile motif in the play (See: Symbols & Motifs). Cressida is compared to a hawk, who must be tamed. The allusion is to falconry, where a hawk or eagle was tamed for human use; here, Cressida is the falcon whom the falconer, Pandarus, must groom for his purpose.

“Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devoured

As fast as they are made, forgot as soon

As done.”

Ulysses uses the metaphor of scraps of food to describe past good deeds; time gobbles these scraps up before one can blink twice. The idea here is that Achilles cannot rest on past laurels; he must keep performing his destiny to stand the test of time. These lines illustrate the text’s symbolism around time and impermanence (See: Symbols & Motifs).

“He, like a puling cuckold, would drink up

The lees and dregs of a flat tamed piece;

You, like a lecher, out of whorish loins

Are pleased to breed out your inheritors:

Both merits poised, each weighs nor less nor more;

But he as he, the heavier for a whore.”

These lines by Diomedes are filled with misogyny. He compares Helen to table scraps, the “lees and dregs” or leftovers of men, since she has slept with more than one man. Diomedes goes on to call Paris a lech for wanting children from the loins of a “whore”—that is, Helen. The offensive vocabulary reflects the attitudes towards women during the time the play was written and first performed while also reflecting the Disillusionment With Romantic and Heroic Ideals in the play.

“O you gods divine!

Make Cressid’s name the very crown of falsehood,

If ever she leave Troilus! Time, force, and death,

Do to this body what extremes you can;

But the strong base and building of my love

Is as the very center of the earth,

Drawing all things to it.”

These lines are filled with dramatic irony, since the audience already knows Cressida will shortly go back on her exalted promises to Troilus. They are also an example of the problematic characterization of Cressida: Since she must fit in with the known myth of the betraying woman, her words and actions often appear contradictory speaking to The Divided Self and Its Performance.

“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.”

After Cressida playfully refuses to kiss Ulysses, he pettily calls her a wanton woman before Nestor. Ulysses’s words are rife with misogyny; he scans Cressida’s body, attributing lust to her every movement, whether it be the motion of her lip or her foot.

“TROILUS. Let it not be believed for womanhood!

Think, we had mothers; do not give advantage

To stubborn critics, apt, without a theme,

For depravation, to square the general sex

By Cressid’s rule: rather think this not Cressid.”

Troilus does not want Cressida’s particular infidelity to describe the general state of women, since if all women are cheaters, so would be the mothers of men. However, his very anxiety around the subject of women’s infidelity shows he is dangerously close to believing the worst of women. The only way he can safeguard himself from such broadly misogynistic views is by assuming the cheating Cressida is not Cressida at all. Troilus’s dissociative state of mind is an example of the play’s modern treatment of The Divided Self and Its Performance.

“Lechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery nothing

else holds fashion: a burning devil take them!”

Thersites’s lines are among the most famous in the play and aptly sum up the play’s pessimistic views about human nature and the Disillusionment of Romantic and Heroic Ideals. All there is to existence is violence, pettiness, and base lust. Having viewed Cressida’s betrayal of Troilus, Thersites condemns all people everywhere, with the infidelity symbolic of the corruption of an entire society (See: Symbols & Motifs).

“TROILUS: Brother, you have a vice of mercy in you,

Which better fits a lion than a man.”

Cressida’s infidelity is a climactic moment in the play, since it changes Troilus for the worse. Troilus, who was not even interested in battle in the first act, now chides Hector for his mercy, reflecting The Pervasive Futility and Corruption of War. Troilus’s words reflect his cynicism about human nature: Mercy is a quality more suited to the magnificent lion than the measly human. The human must be merciless to survive. Troilus’s words foreshadow Hector’s death, since Hector’s mercy towards Achilles costs him his life.

“HECTOR: What art thou, Greek? art thou for Hector’s match?

Art thou of blood and honor?

THERSITES. No, no, I am a rascal; a scurvy railing knave:

a very filthy rogue.”

HECTOR. I do believe thee: live.”

As the play edges towards its end, its tone grows bleaker and more pessimistic. Hector’s mercy towards Thersites is characteristic of him, but the exchange has another meaning: Thersites deserves to live because he is a rascal. The world is meant for rogues and knaves.

“Most putrefied core, so fair without,

Thy goodly armor thus hath cost thy life.”

Hector’s words, after he slays a man for his sumptuous armor, illustrate the play’s interest in appearance and reality and The Pervasive Futility and Corruption of War. Beautiful performances mask a bitter truth, as Hector himself has been conned by the “goodly armor” and will pay for it with his death.

“HECTOR: I am unarm’d, forgo this vantage, Greek.

ACHILLES: Strike, fellows, strike, this is the man I seek.

Hector falls.

So, Ilion, fall thou next! Come, Troy, sink down!

Here lies thy heart, thy sinews, and thy bone.

On, Myrmidons, and cry you all amain

‘Achilles hath the mighty Hector slain!’”

Achilles’s dishonorable slaying of the unarmed Hector epitomizes the play’s interest in Disillusionment With Romantic and Heroic Ideals. Although Hector earlier spared his life and is now disarmed at the battle’s end, Achilles orders his followers to kill Hector. What is more, he decides to claim the credit for Hector’s death as though he had defeated him in a one-on-one combat, thereby presenting himself to the Greeks as an honorable warrior who has performed a great deed. Achilles’s cynical, opportunistic behavior and dishonesty speak to the play’s interest in ostensible heroes behaving in an unheroic fashion.