Critical Views towards Troilus and Cressida
Leigh Anne Ehnot
Class of 2011
“Part of the reason that we no longer have a clear view of the important dimensions of Shakespeare’s meanings has to do with a tendency to read this plays out of context.” This is according to Paul Edward Yachnin in his article on The Perfection of Ten: Populuxe Art and Artisanal Value in Troilus and Cressida. He seems to believe that in the modern cultures, we tend to take what was originally interpreted one way during the Renaissance and misconstruing passages into full text that fit what the present culture considers morally acceptable. It is with him and various other authors that there are a range of different parallels to Shakespeare’s play Troilus and Cressida. Everything from infidelity, sexuality, characters disposition and the basic overall understanding of this play is interpreted in a variety of different forms. However, they all seem to have one common factor of not being able to identify one singular theme of the play.
Starting very simply with the usually identifiable theme of many plays, Troilus and Cressida is problematic having various different genres, noting that it “breaks generic boundaries” (Detmer-Goebel, 174). One critic may consider the play a tragedy, however, there are numerous occasions throughout the play where themes change and boundaries are crossed between audience and stage to implicate all of us. This makes the audience a participant in making meaning of the play as we try to make sense of the characters’ actions (Detmer-Goebel, 175). There are also various other critics who label this particular play as either a comedy or history, but mainly all seem to end up back at the original genre of tragedy. However, somehow is it not properly placed as a tragedy whereas later critics have tried to resolve the whole dilemma by placing this play in a new categories altogether, naming it a “problem play” or a “comical satire” (Flannery, 151). Overall, the theme is one of the many different aspects which make this play one of the most conversable plays written by Shakespeare.
“Troilus and Cressida is a tragedy that calls into question the very pretensions of tragedy itself” (Oates, 3). In this particular reading, Joyce Carol Oates tends to look further from just the obvious idea of tragedy as the overall theme, by putting evidence behind her thoughts. She looks beyond the tragedy of the main arguments and focuses her approach to the various infidelities within the play. She says “Infidelity is the natural law of the play’s world, and, by extension, of the greater world: woman’s infidelity to man, the body’s infidelity to the soul, the infidelity of the ideal to the real, and the larger infidelity of time.” She takes the necessary time to explain in detail how Cressida manipulates Troilus’s love and how Troilus is not totally in tune with the happenings around him, that he tends to miss out on significant signs. The speeches throughout the play seem to always end up out of focus or out of proportion to the ideals of the worlds. The characters are being identified in one fashion the completely contradict themselves in the next moment. Finally, the “infidelity of time is not the primary theme of the play; it is rather an illustration of the results of the tragic duality of man and his division into spirit and flesh” (Oates, 12).
The infidelity theme tends to spread out through the entire play making it original to the play’s plot. Man is the real aspect to which all the discrepancies are made. It is man and the ideals attached to him who alters scenes into something more exaggerated to fit the ego of man or the ideals of men themselves. But, the real tragedy and infidelity of this play is the limitations and obsessions of humanity which Shakespeare refuses to lift the spirit of man about himself (Oates, 6). He more or less leaves it to the character to act out their role naturally and see where it will lead them on their endeavors, which tend to have an assortment of different routes. One in particular has to deal with the homosociality relationship between characters.
“The relationship between Troilus and Cressida relates to the issues concerning gender seeming sexual because it is caught in the contradiction between an aristocratic worldview and the emerging norms of human relationships” (Gil, 343). Shakespeare uses contradictions between ways of understanding the world and the relationships that make it up. “Troilus is seen as an image of male prejudice who demonstrates how to purify sex by configuring it in terms of the consumption of maternal provisions. He views sex as an exclusively oral one in which Cressida is transformed into a symbol of the maternal body”, but Troilus finds the sex to be incapable of satisfying his desire (Voth). He fears being cheated on and also that as Cressida establishes herself with the Greeks, he will lose her faster and easier. These feelings he holds towards Cressida gives him much pain and worry to which he cannot perform causing him more anguish.
“Cressida is handed over to the Greeks in a prisoner exchange that seems to resolve the homosocial imbalance yet; two different social models can fuse to produce a sexual charge that stands at some remove from the conventions of homosociability” (Gil, 342). Even though the exchange is made, there is still tension between the characters about the decision. All the men within the play leave an issue unresolved and Shakespeare portrays the Trojan War as an arena of emasculation (Voth). This leaves the men feeling as if there is still a lingering factor which was never resolved throughout the course of the play. Troilus is the most defined in this position where he theatrically strips himself of his social privilege in relation to a woman who is identified as having no social privileges at all. It is with Troilus that the audience shows sympathy towards, but other critics feel is too soft and needs to become stronger for the time period he is living in.
“Troilus’ flaw is not his inability to understand a moral code, but his humanity” according to Oates. She feels that throughout the play, Troilus seems to be utterly confused in his own world. He may understand the meaning behind the actions he performs, however he seems to lack the knowledge necessary to create an active judgment on the people involved. It is almost an oxymoron acting upon his own life making him almost a more pathetic figure throughout the duration of the play. He turns into a victim of his own self embodiment who is suffering from an education to guide him on the proper path towards righteousness. On the other hand, Cressida may hold a different attitude, but she still somehow seems to blend with the figure of Troilus.
According to Yachnin “Cressida is an embodiment of one of the most salient and formative feature of Shakespeare’s art.” He seems to believe that her involvement in this play holds such a significant role in identifying the upcoming events which triggers the scene’s themes. She is dismissed as a “shallow, cold, calculating prostitute whose decisions are more challenging and better motivated than is usually assumed” (Voth). Cressida is looked at from critics as a manipulative character that is more complex than many would assume. Her whole existence was to lure Troilus in only to make him want her more, and then hurt him in a way in which she knew would destroy his morality. He ends up claiming “to be utterly simple and without sophistication and asserts that Cressida is unimaginably more sophisticated than he” (Gil, 343). Troilus lets his guard down and is clearly exposing his weakness to the world which turns him into a self pitying figure and Cressida into an arising character. In the end, “the good characters are destroyed or destroy themselves. The evil characters drop out of sight; their fates are irrelevant” (Oates, 1).
Thersites seems to end up being the character in this play that holds the necessary balance to its deceitful idealism. He can best be compared to Iago in Othello who both seem to be lacking the necessary love they long for and end up pulling other characters down to their level. They both have a characteristic which happens to depend on other people to create their own moods. These are figures within Shakespeare’s plays that destroy the illusions which may be perceived as an act of other actors. Thersites raises the tempers of several characters that then turn out to have boiling mindsets of their own. He is a character worth mentioning for his implementing emotions he leaves on the rest of the cast.
In conclusion, the Shakespearean play of Troilus and Cressida has a great deal of various different analyses. The critics have the genres placed in many different categories even breaking boundaries to come up with their own specific genres to hold this play. The infidelity and sexuality within the context of the writing is a topic which can be overlooked or even just thought of as unimportant. However, like Yachnin says, it is all about the interpretations of the play which makes the different dimensions of the written script up for interpretations for years to come.
Works Cited
Detmer-Goebel, Emily. "Crossing Boundaries in Shakespeare." Project Muse (2007): 171-183.
Flannery, Christopher. "Troilus and Cressida: Poetry or Philosophy." West, John Alvis and Thomas G. Shakespeare as a Politica Thinker. Durhan: Carolina Academic Press, 1981. 145-156.
Gil, Daniel Juan. "At the imits of the Social World: Fear and Pride in Troilus and Cressida." Project Muse (2001): 336-359.
Oates, Joyce Carol. The Tragedy of Existence: Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida". Spring 1966 and 1967. 8 November 2010 <http://jco.usfca.edu/troilus.html>.
Voth, Evans, Lynch, McCandless. Shakespearean Criticism/ Troilus and Cressida (Vol. 71)- Introduction. 8 November 2010 <http://www.enotes.com/Shakespeare-criticism/troilus-cressida-vol-71/introduction>.
Yachnin, Paul Edward. ""The Perfection of Ten": Populuxe Art and Artisanal Value in Troilus and Cressida." Project Muse (1953): 306-327.