Dusty:

In the quarto it is called a “history.” In the folio it’s a “tragedy.” Modern critics have called it a “problem play” and have noted its strong satiric character. Maybe Shakespeare was responding to the contemporary interest in dramatic satire, and decided to take a satiric look at the very familiar “matter of Troy.” The Trojan War continued to be treated with epic seriousness in translations of Homer, but was perhaps thought ripe for satire too. The prologue, not found in the quarto and perhaps added later, reminded me of the Chorus in Henry 5, setting the scene for us, but also suggesting that this heroic contest between Greeks and Trojans was really just a “quarrel” about a woman, and that there were “fools on both sides.”

In 1.1, much of which is in verse, Troilus, not a major figure in Homer, “unarms” himself. Contrast the big deal that is made of Achilles arming himself in Homer. This suggests that we are going to get a behind-the-scenes look at the war, which takes place off stage. Troilus is lovesick, and seems “womanish” even in his own eyes.

1.2 is long — almost 300 lines. And it’s in prose. We now get Cressida and Pandarus. (The war is going on outside the walls, and Trojans are headed to the rooftop to watch the spectacle.) She paints a picture of Ajax quite different from the one in Homer. He is here said to be a man of many “humors . . . his folly sauc’d with discretion.” And although he is fighting with the Greeks, he is in this play (but not in Homer) “a lord of Trojan blood, nephew to Hector.” Cressida seems rather taken with Hector, and Pandarus tries comically to get her to pay attention to Troilus instead. The Trojan heroes pass by, on their way out to battle — Aeneas, Antenor, Hector, Paris, and finally Troilus — and Cressida provides snappy commentary. She also makes saucy jokes about Pandarus. She’s a bit like Beatrice, or maybe Rosalind, keeping her own counsel, determined not to let men take advantage of her. And she has by no means focused her attention on Troilus yet.

1.3 is even longer, almost 400 lines, and we are back to verse. We are now in the Greek camp, as Agamemnon and Nestor try to explain away their failure, after seven years of siege, to take the city of Troy. I imagine that a director would treat them as bloviating generals, pretending that they are in fact winning. Ulysses diagnoses the problem — we have failed to maintain “degree.” But it’s not clear that Ulysses himself observes “degree” in his critical comments on the Greek leaders. We get a report that Achilles and Patroclus have withdrawn to their tents, and pass their time with satiric remarks about their fellow Greeks.

Aeneas arrives with a message from the Trojans, and there is some comic business when he does not recognize Agamemnon as the “god in office.” So much for the practical consequences of degree, when you can’t tell which one is the head guy. He brings a challenge from Hector to engage in single combat. The point of the challenge is not to decide the war, but to prove whose lady is fairer! As Ulysses and  Nestor look forward to the match, Ulysses turns satirist himself, thinking of Ajax and Achilles as two “curs” fighting over a bone.

By the end of Act 1 it’s not yet clear where we are going.

Michael:

I think the play does pick up the fashion for satire, coming right after Poetaster, I recall. But it’s an odd satire, not on anything contemporary but a parodic sort of take on the matter of Troy.

Odd that the first scene alternates between prose and verse. Pandarus is a teasing figure to Troilus’s lovesick one.

More teasing by Pandarus in scene 2; the dialogue reminds me a bit of that between Cleopatra and her women. She seems spirited, as you note. Pandarus seems rather empty-headed in his commentary on the Trojan worthies, and Cressida rather mocking in her responses to him.

The long scene 3 features Ulysses’ famous speech on degree, famous because it supposedly expresses Elizabethan/Jacobean sentiments on the importance of rank and degree. It may, but it seems undercut by what follows. Aeneas seems a representative of medieval chivalry in his courtly address to Agamemnon, especially with the sounding of the trumpet, and Hector’s challenge appears even more oddly chivalric in its focus on the beauty and worthiness of a knight’s lady. Nestor may seem a bit embarrassing in his positive response to the challenge, but there’s no chance he’ll be left to defend. Agamemnon’s chivalric feasting of Aeneas expresses more of the seeming anachronism of the moment. But then Ulysses’ plot to smoke out Achilles undercuts all the noble sentiments, both of Aeneas and Hector’s challenge and, perhaps, the insistence on “degree.” It’s possible that the comedy of Aeneas’ inability to identify the head guy may also undercut the insistence on degree. How can we observe degree if we can’t even tell who’s in charge? In any case, setting Ajax against the proud and insolent Achilles doesn’t do much for observing degree.

If there’s any question about the violation of degree, 2.1 must settled that. Thersites and Ajax trade insults, and Achilles and Patroclus can’t contain him. His quarrelsomeness extends to them as well. Achilles dismisses Hector’s challenge, but Ajax seems interested, and we can already sense the possibility of emulation between them.

Scene 2 presents the crucial issue for the Trojans: Nestor has sent word that the war will end if the Trojans send Helen back. Hector speaks first and accedes to this course; she’s not worth the lives that have already been lost for her. She’s not ours, nor worth anything to us. Troilus speaks up in opposition and seems to suggest that Priam’s kingship cannot be valued in the way Hector wants to sum up Helen’s value. Helenus objects to this line: shouldn’t a king bear his rule with reason, even if no one supports him. Troilus comes back at him with an insulting line that suggests he would follow reason to cowardice. But Hector here has the most basic judgment: Helen is not worth her what she costs. And Troilus comes back with what sounds like a very modern argument: what’s anything worth but as it’s valued. And Hector counters that value cannot be an individual’s estimate, but must depend on some objective valuation: “Tis mad idolatry/ to make the service greater than the god.” Cassandra comes in and fulfills her usual prophetic role, to be right in her prediction but never to be believed: Troy will burn at Paris’ act, unless Helen is released. Hector supports her divination. But Troilus maintains his position against Cassandra’s “madness.” Paris objects that he was supported in his taking of Helen by all of them, and even if he should suffer all the pains, he’d never go back on the rape. Priam mocks his resolution, easy for you to say, Paris. Paris says it wasn’t just for himself that he took her, but for their general good and honor. Hector ventures into anachronism to cite Aristotle, and says the young are not to be trusted in moral philosophy because of their susceptibility to passion and lack of experience. He sums up the reasons why Helen should not be retained. BUT then he gives into his “spritely brethren” and agrees that keeping her is “a cause of no mean dependence Upon our joint and several dignities.” And Troilus exults that fame in time to come will “canonize us.”

Do we recall reading this in the early ’70s about another war?

Scene 3 is introduced by more of Thersites’ bare truth-telling. With Patroclus and Achilles, he indicates that they’re all fools. As the whole Greek leadership come in, Thersites defines the whole war, “the argument is a whore and a cuckhold,” a wonderful quarrel for their emulous factions and to bleed to death upon. It’s clear that there’s no agreement among the top guys. Achilles refuses to come in to talk with them. Agamemnon is annoyed and angry, and Patroclus is dispatched to Achilles, who still won’t come. The dialogue makes clear that degree has no force, and the result is the plot to overvalue Ajax, who is happy to take the role as champion.

By this point the “matter of Troy” has little dignity left. We still haven’t got far with Cressida.

Dusty:

In the railing match in 2.1, Thersites is the most outspoken of the play’s satirists, and apparently serves as the play’s licensed truth-telling “fool.”

2.2 is in verse. Is that because it’s a more formal council, in which the Trojan dispute the question — should they return Helen? — in a civil manner (as opposed to the wrangling on the Greek side)? Shakespeare seems to accept the version of the Troy story in which Paris is said to have had cause to do some “vengeance.” Maybe he is correcting Homer, who of course tended to present the Greek version.

Back to prose in 2.3, with Thersites, a “privileg’d man” (licensed fool), denounces the conflict as a “war for a placket.” But we switch to verse at line 109? Is that because Agamemnon enters, and the level of dialogue is elevated by his rank? Now the question is what to do about Achilles, who won’t fight. Both Ajax and Ulysses denounce Achilles for his “pride” — nothing here about wounded honor or infringed rights. There is a shift back to prose when Ajax speaks, perhaps to signal that everybody knows he’s a brawny dimwit. And then to verse at 163 when wily Ulysses speaks. There’s some pretty broad comedy (with whispered asides) when Ajax is flattered. But by the end of Act 2, as you note, the Greeks have still not succeeded in persuading Achilles to join them. (And the Trojans, having judged it best to send Helen home, decide to hold on to her anyway, as a matter of “honor.”)

You’re right: it’s internecine verbal combat, and not much advance on the struggle between Greeks vs. Trojans. It’s as if Shakespeare, in providing a burlesque version of the Troy story, decided to fill in some of the not-so-pretty back story, what the two sides were doing during this long ten years’ siege when they were not doing much fighting.

On the Trojan side, Act 3 finally brings Troilus and Cressida together. On the Greek side, Achilles is still holding back, but his fellow commanders are maneuvering to get him into action. Things are starting to come into focus, but it’s not yet clear where they are going.

Dusty:

In 3.1 what is Pandarus’s purpose in going to speak to Paris? (It must be more than providing advance notice that Troilus will not be at dinner.)

In 3.2 Pandarus takes Cressida to Troilus. It’s not quite clear to me why Pandarus wants to advance this match. (What’s his motive, what will be the reward?) It’s also not clear why T and C  needed anybody to bring them together: as soon as they meet, they declare their love for each other. And I am also puzzled about the mix of prose and verse: Pandarus speaks in prose, Troilus in verse, but Troilus later lapses into prose. (Is Shakespeare sometimes inviting us to think of these figures as kings and princes, and sometimes as ordinary people; sometimes as lofty and sometimes as low? Troilus gets a nice quotable speech about will vs. execution and desire vs. act (as “slave to limit”) that reminded me of Hamlet. Maybe it also hints that there will be a gap between the mutual professions of love and the actions of lovers. There is unsubtle dramatic irony in Cressida’s lines about “If I be false” then let every false woman after me be said to be “as false as Cressida.”)

In 3.3 we suddenly get a new plot twist, and potential problem: the Trojan traitor, Calchas, whom we have not heard of before, proposes that the Greeks exchange Antenor for Cressida. The audience must conclude that this is going to complicate the Troilus-Cressida relationship.  And then the Greeks continue their plot to get Achilles to join the battle. The big picture is clear enough, though it was not clear to me just what Ulysses has in mind when he goes to Achilles. In some respects he seems to be offering straightforward and sensible advice, especially in his quotable speech about perseverance keeping honor bright. But in other respects he seems to want to goad Achilles by making him jealous of Ajax. So Ulysses is sometimes the moralist, and sometimes the cunning manipulator. And why does Achilles want to meet with Hector anyway, both men unarmed, for a nice chat? Is this part of his “I won’t fight” pose, or a way of distinguishing himself from the pugnacious Ajax, who can’t wait to lay hands on Hector?

Again in this scene some characters (i.e., Thersites) speak in prose, and others (Patroclus, Achilles, Ulysses) speak in verse. Is Shakespeare marking differences in status?

Where are we headed? Presumably to a meeting between Hector and either Ajax or Achilles. And to a betrayal of Troilus by Cressida. Maybe Act 4 (which I cannot remember) will make things clear(er).

Michael:

In 3.1 Pandarus’ language seems cloying, filled with sweet queen, sweet lord, and seems to infect Paris as well. It seems to climax in his song, “love, love, nothing but love, etc.” This seems Pandarus’ identity.

I suspect that Pandarus can’t quite help himself, that getting Troilus and Cressida together is his role and identity. They don’t seem to need him to get them together; perhaps as Cressida’s uncle, in default of her father, Pandarus has a responsibility for her and what would seem her marriage. But the whole scene is devoted to their love, and also to the nature of love, including Troilus’ judgment about “the monstruosity in love,” the infinite will and the confined execution. When Pandarus reenters, the love duet becomes a love trio, but one that’s also shadowed by their after-reputations.

Then in 3.3 Calchas casts another sort of shadow over their love. This is also Ulysses’ scene and he manipulates Achilles to nearly point he wants him. I tend to think of Ulysses as constantly the manipulator, even when he may be expressing good moral advice. In this he remains true to his Homeric reputation, or maybe extends it.

Michael:

Act 4 begins with the irony of Aeneas’ and Diomedes’ courtesies to each other, meanwhile vowing their violent military opposition, which may indicate the final absurdity of the war. This may be underscored by Diomedes’ inconvenient question to Paris:, who deserves Helen most, he or Menelaus. He replies that each has a strong claim, Menelaus because he would take her back without looking too closely at her disgrace and Paris because he would keep her without considering her dishonor, “each heavier for a whore.” She has not spoken words equal in number to the Greeks who have died for her. Paris’ response is lame and presumably embarrassed.

Scene 2 has T & C’s aubade run smack into Pandarus and his joking mockery of them. But it also runs right into the plan to send Cressida to her father in the exchange for Antenor. It all seems wonderfully plotted.

The very brief scene 3 is an ironic dialogue between Troilus and Paris, the man whose love affair ultimately destroys Troilus’.

Pandarus seems to preside over the parting of the lovers, as he’d presided over their coming together. After he departs the farewell continues with Troilus’ pleas for her being true to him, which of course forecasts what will come.  When the Greek party enter, Diomedes’ praise of Cressida immediately raises Troilus’ jealousy and proleptically suggests what’s to come.

Apparently back to the Hector challenge and Ajax’s response in scene 5, but there’s no initial response to Ajax’s trumpet. But when Diomedes brings Cressida in, all the Greek leaders insist on kissing her, Agamemnon, Nestor, Achilles, Patroclus, only Menalaus prevented from her, first by Patroclus, then Cressida herself. Ulysses begs a kiss which he doesn’t take, then when she leaves with Diomede, seems to characterize her as another Helen and sexuality incarnated. Again, so much for the dignity of the matter of Troy.

And at this point Hector’s trumpet is heard and preparations for the single combat ensue. But then Aeneas points out that Ajax is Hector’s kinsman, and so when they “enter the lists” and commence their fight, it’s broken off and Hector demurs from further combat because of their kinship. What follows is a mutual recognition of all the adversaries and mutual courtesies, but still with the recognition that they’ll renew the war next day. Hector and Achilles with match off again. So what’s the point of the Trojan war?

Troilus takes Ulysses aside to ask him about Cressida and whether he can direct her to where Calchas is. The fact that Calchas is with Menelaus and Cressida is being enteretained by Diomed that night doesn’t bode well. And Troilus, avoiding any boast about Cressida, admits that “sweet love is food for fortune’s tooth.” And of course “sweet” had been Pandarus’ constant word.

It’s not going to go well.

Dusty:

In 4.1. Diomedes denounces Helen as a soiled and dishonored whore and contaminated carrion. (And yet he is getting ready to “entertain” Cressida.) We’ve already been invited to regard Cressida from at least three points of view on the Trojan side: that of Troilus, who  is her devoted lover, Pandarus, who rudely mocks her, and Priam, who thinks of her as a nothing more than a bargaining chip.

In the short 4.3 Troilus manages to conceal his feelings, but they burst out in 4.4. I think we are invited to sympathize with the lovers as much as we are with Romeo and  Juliet, but as you say Troilus’s “be thou true” signals what’s to come — though I don’t think Troilus or we have yet been given any reason to doubt her, unless it’s her retort to Pandarus that she can’t be “moderate.”

In 4.5 the several plots come together: Cressida is delivered to the Greeks, Ajax fights in single combat with Hector, and Achilles is still being “played.” The scene, in which Greek and Trojan (male) warriors mingle freely as mutually admiring friends, is a kind of reprise of 4.1. It makes the Trojan War seem more like an ongoing series of hearty athletic competitions, in which the players for both sides fight like hell during the brief and limited games, but drink and feast together between them. And tease each other about Helen. It’s a “homosocial” world in which women are passed back and forth between men, the Greek Helen in Troy, the Trojan Cressida now in the Greek camp. Achilles feasts his male gaze on Hector’s body, in an ironic answer to the way Cressida gets handed around from one Greek man to another. (She doesn’t seem to mind, signaling that she will comply with Diomed’s carnal wishes.)

At the end of 4.5 it seems that Ulysses does not know about Troilus’s love for Cressida. Is that likely? (I thought Ulysses was the wiliest of the Greeks, and likely to know everything. Maybe Ulysses does know — and just pretends not to.)

Dusty:

Act 5 produces two catastrophes — the completion of Cressida’s betrayal of Troilus and the killing of Hector (both of which the audience, and anybody familiar with the story of Troy, know are coming). From Thersites we get more of the sour and sardonic look at both Trojans and Greeks, all brainless, “all incontinent varlots.” (Maybe Thersites avoids insulting Ulysses.) He also echoes Pandarus’s “sweet.” But mixed with the satire are moments of noble sentiment.

In 5.1 we are reminded that this is not a completely homosocial world. Achilles has his “masculine whore” (so it’s sometimes homosexual) and he also has a Trojan girlfriend. It’s not clear why Ulysses conducts Troilus to Calchas’s tent. Does he want to expose Diomed’s lust or to torment (or cure) Troilus? In either case, he  serves as one of the play’s satirists.

In 5.2 we watch Thersites, Ulysses, and Troilus watching Diomed and Cressida. Was the audience shocked that the passionate lover of Troilus is so soon ready to take up with Diomed? Or have they just been waiting for her to show her “true colors” as heartless whore? At the end of the scene we hear of Achilles’ promise to his Trojan girlfriend not to fight. (Do we assume, by the way, that Greek warriors meet Trojan girls with the assistance of go-betweens like Pandarus?)

In 5.3, by contrast with Achilles, Hector insists on fighting, despite the efforts of all his family to dissuade him. He appeals to his “honor,” and the play seems not to undermine him. Is he the one warrior whom Shakespeare spares? Cassandra acts her assigned part, and although Priam and Andromache seem to listen to her, Troilus does not. Does the audience share the view of most of the men in the play that Cassandra is deranged? Or because they all know that her prophetic fears will be fulfilled do they see her as a tragic figure wandering around in  a satiric play? Andromache the fearful wife only gets a brief walk-on, but she seems to serve as a counterpoint to the other women in the play, Helen who forsook her husband and dotes on Paris, Cressida who dotes on Troilus and forsakes him. She’s allied with the wailing Cassandra. But she doesn’t much modify the play’s assumption that women are prisoners of their own passions and utterly unreliable.

We then move to the battlefield for five scenes in which Greeks and Trojans chase each other around the stage, with lots of exits and entrances. Thersites serves up insults for almost everybody, managing to avoid fighting himself. He seems a sort of Falstaff — just as inventive and just as skeptical of the claims of honor. We get moments of single combat, quickly broken off, and then a report that many Greeks have been killed. The death of Patroclus, which is such a big deal in the Iliad,  is reported in a four-word clause — and it’s a vague report that he is “ta’en or slain.” The only fight-to-the-death that we witness is the very unsportsmanlike meeting between an unarmed Hector and Achilles supported by his gang of Myrmidons, who surround Hector and kill him. The Greeks are delighted. Troilus swears revenge, and for the duration of his speech I think we are caught up in his epic passion. So maybe Shakespeare spares Troilus too.

But then the last word is given to Pandarus, who speaks a kind of epilogue to the pandars in the audience. It’s a fitting ending for a play that mixes high and low, epic and satire.

Shakespeare wasn’t the first to suggest that the Trojan War was fought over private passions and quarrels, a Greek princess who whorishly took up with a Trojan prince, and a Greek hero who petulantly refused to fight. But he accentuates both those elements, and adds to them a Trojan princess who whorishly takes up with a Greek prince. On the whole, I think the Trojans come off better.

Michael:

In Act 4 we seem to see Cressida about to become the Trojan version of Helen, especially in the scene of everyone except Ulysses kissing her. As the holdout Ulysses may become the one Greek to retain some dignity.

Does the killing of Hector by Achilles’ Myrmidons become the martial equivalent of Cressida’s treachery to Troilus. Only Hector had been concerned with honor in spite of what he sees as his destiny. And only he had been clear-eyed about the significance of Helen, though he had yielded in the end to the plea to keep her.

5.2 must be the most potent scene in the play, and also the most painful. Diomedes at several points is ready to turn his back on Cressida, but she keeps calling him back, which makes clear her treachery to Troilus. Thersites’ and Ulysses’ presence seems to underscore the significance of what’s happening; Thersites acts like punctuation to what Cressida is doing, and Ulysses tries to draw Troilus away from it all. But then, when Troilus insists on defining what has happened, Ulysses is there to underscore the literal betrayal, while Troilus works to deny it in favor of an ideal construction of his Cressida. This keeps reminding me of Antony and Cleopatra where we seem to be required to believe in Cleo, even though we can’t quite deny the reality of her scheming. But here Ulysses and especially Thersites keep insisting on the literal truth of betrayal. Troilus can insist “This is, and is not, Cressid.” But of course Thersites has the last word, “Lechery, still lechery, wars and lechery!”

Does the whole “matter of Troy” stand in a similar relation, a “madness of discourse,” as Troilus describes it. We know the idealization and tragedy of Homer’s version. But here we see something of a Thersites version: Achilles’ Myrmidons kill Hector, Patroclus is killed in a few lines, Achilles isn’t really heroic at all and Patroclus was his catamite, Ajax is a muscle-bound jerk, etc. etc. The “literal” Trojan war has no dignity left, but its idealization of heroism still stands in the imagination.

But the end of the play rests in Troilus’ curse of Pandarus. And only Pandarus is left on stage, lamenting that “our endeavour” is so loved and the performance so loathed. And then he turns to the audience, as if they’re all pandars and prostitutes. The note in my Arden edition suggests this scurrilous abuse makes plausible the idea of an Inns of Court provenance for the play, an audience that would be amused by being so characterized.

On the whole, the play seems to me well managed, well constructed, both witty and “tragic,” though not formally tragic in the eponymous hero’s death. But it’s never been popular and, it seeems, seldom performed. Is this because Chaucer’s version of Troilus and Cressida has been more canonical? Or are we resistant to Thersites’ perspective on the Trojan war? As you note, Shakespeare wasn’t the first with this take on it all, but this is an effective telling of the most cynical version. I agree the Trojan side comes off better, and we have to spare Aeneas. Ulysses seems to escape the worst too.

Dusty:

You’re right that Troilus cursing Pandarus is the climax of the play. 1.1 begins with the two of them, and it’s fitting that the play ends with them.

Does Ulysses escape censure? True, he does not join in the circle-kiss, but he is the one who presses all the others. And it’s hard to know why he wants to rub Troilus’s face in Cressida’s treachery.

Maybe it’s a “tragedy,” though neither T nor C dies. I think it’s more sardonic than witty,  a worm’s eye view of the Trojan War. And I am still puzzled by the shifts in register.