Sonnets shadow forth facts of Shakespeare's experience and express his personal feelings, we know that Shakespeare had endured the deceptions of both ardent friendship and misplaced passion. Can Cressida have been modelled in a bitter mood from the lady of the Sonnets? The versification of the love-story, indeed, seems to indicate an earlier date than 1602-3, but this may have been a manner ironically assumed, and the spirit of the whole play seems charged with the cruelty of disillusion. The chief sources used by the dramatist are Caxton's Recuyell of the Historyes of Troy, translated from Raoul le Febvre, perhaps the Troy-booke' of Lydgate, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde-especially for the recreated Pandarus of the play-and, for the character of Thersites, Chapman's earlier books of the translation of the Iliad. It must be remembered that the Troilus and Cressida legend is not of classical origin. Two writers of the Latin decadence, the pseudoDares of Phrygia and the pseudo-Dictys of Crete, but especially the first-named of the two, give us the germ of the story. The authority of the pretended Phrygian was naturally preferred to that of the pretended Cretan in the Middle Ages, when the nations of Europe claimed to be descended from the Trojan heroes. The legend was greatly developed by the Norman trouvère Benoit de Sainte-More, who may be styled its true creator. From him it passed to the Sicilian physician, Guido Colonna, who turned into Latin the Roman de Troie of his predecessor. It was again modified by Boccaccio in his Filostrato, which supplied Chaucer with the basis of his splendid invention. For the love-story Shakespeare is indebted to Chaucer, but he alters the Cressida of Chaucer from the attractive though inconstant young widow, of whom we exclaim 'The pity of it! to the wanton of the play; and alters again the Pandarus of Chaucer to the old and worn-out man of pleasure, who indulges his sensuality, as it were, by proxy, and who is at once comic and detestable. Thersites in Chapman's Iliad is the filthiest fellow' of all that had deserts in Troyes brave siege', and Shakespeare assuredly spared nothing in making him filthy, while at the same time Thersites tells no little of shameful truth, and becomes what has been happily styled the 'Satyr-chorus' of the play. But Shakespeare's chief debt is certainly to Caxton, and through Caxton to Raoul le Febvre, though here again the dramatist freely modified at pleasure the matter which he used. In view of certain theories put forward to explain the character of this somewhat enigmatical play, it is of importance to bear in mind that it is not the Homeric siege of Troy which is represented-or, as some will have it, is caricatured, but the siege of Troy as it was refashioned and conceived in the Middle Ages. A case not without some plausible evidence has been made on behalf of the notion that Shakespeare here in disparaging the Grecian heroes, and in particular Achilles and Ajax, was revenging himself on Chapman, who is supposed to have been the rival poet of the Sonnets. Chapman's withers, indeed, could hardly be wrung by what was essentially mediaeval and unHomeric; yet the argument in support of this theory is not undeserving of consideration. Mr. Fleay and others have argued that Troilus and Cressida is Shakespeare's contribution to what has been styled the war of the theatre-the quarrels between Jonson, Marston, and Dekker, which belonged to the close of the sixteenth and the opening of the seventeenth centuries. We are told that Ajax represents Jonson; Achilles, Chapman; Thersites, Dekker; and Hector, Shakespeare himself. We may well be slow to admit that Shakespeare so far departed from his wonted way as to satirize, at once savagely and obscurely, his fellow dramatists, and to exalt his own courage and magnanimity. The play makes no such demand upon our faith or our credulity. It is indeed more cynical than any other play in the Shakespearean canon; more cynical by far than Timon of Athens. But the famous love-story as it reached the dramatist-is that of a great betrayal on the part of Cressida, and on that of Troilus it is the tale of an amorous frenzy, in which judgement is deluded by passion. By Chaucer this tale had been treated with romance and tenderness mingled with humour. What if it were now to be handled in a different way-with a remorseless realism? The central conception of Troilus as a valiant swordsman but a greenhorn in love, and of Cressida as a creature born of the harlot tribe might extend itself to other dramatis personae. If Cressida was a wanton, what was Helen? Did not the whole strife of Greek and Trojan revolve around one who was as morally worthless as Cressida ? The mediaeval romance seemed tumbling into an abyss of shame. The Greek heroes, big in brawn, might they not be small enough in brain? The Achilles of the romance was even in the romance ignoble in his jealousy and in the means by which he compassed Hector's death. Was Ajax at all more admirable? Over against the boy's folly of Troilus might stand the large worldly wisdom of Ulysses; but to what unworthy uses in its dealings with Ajax and Achilles might not such worldly wisdom, untouched by any ray of heavenly light, be put. And here was the filthy fellow Thersites to comment as Satyr-chorus upon the whole life of the camp. We know that Goethe wrote Werther to relieve and rid himself of the Werther mood. Did Shakespeare write Troilus and Cressida to unburden his heart of some bitterness by an indictment of the illusions of romance, which had misled him? Did he on reflection regard it as unsuitable for the stage, and keep the manuscript by him as the record of a mood which he had left behind him? And when a surreptitious copy was given to the publishers of the quarto, was the play in truth 'never clapper-clawd with the palmes of the vulger'? These are but guesses, but there are occasions when we are compelled to guess. Dryden's alteration of the play, acted in 1679, rendered it more effective on the stage. Since 1733 Troilus and Cressida has not, I believe, been performed in an English theatre. ENEAS, ANTENOR, Trojan Commanders. CALCHAS, a Trojan Priest, taking part with the Greeks. PANDARUS, Uncle to Cressida. AGAMEMNON, the Grecian General. MENELAUS, his Brother. PATROCLUS, THERSITES, a deformed and scurrilous Grecian. ALEXANDER, Servant to Cressida. Servant to Troilus. Servant to Paris. Servant to Diomedes. HELEN, Wife to Menelaus. ANDROMACHE, Wife to Hector. CASSANDRA, Daughter to Priam; a prophetess. Trojan and Greek Soldiers, and Attendants. SCENE.-Troy, and the Grecian Camp before it. TROILUS AND CRESSIDA PROLOGUE In Troy there lies the scene. From isles of Greece With wanton Paris sleeps; and that's the quarrel. And the deep-drawing barks do there disgorge Now expectation, tickling skittish spirits, And hither am I come A prologue arm'd, but not in confidence Of author's pen or actor's voice, but suited To tell you, fair beholders, that our play Leaps o'er the vaunt and firstlings of those broils, Like or find fault; do as your pleasures are: 4 8 12 .16 20 24 28 |