“Much to Do with Hate, but More with Love”: Temporal Relations in Troilus and Cressida

Abstract

This article argues that Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida demonstrates how the (historical or geographical) Other is performatively created—and, simultaneously, subverted—in the way the two opposing parties are drawn. While Troy represents a medieval world of chivalry, honesty, and humility, the Greek camp, set in binary opposition, appears as a Renaissance world of cynicism, dissimulation, and arrogance. They are also attached to different literary modes of expressions: poetry and drama. Especially the two archetypal heroes of their parties, Hector and Achilles, form a complementary unit up to the point where they become indistinguishable: in the scene of Hector and Achilles’ final encounter on the battlefield, the dichotomy that had been established throughout the play collapses when, in a sonnet-like sequence that aligns the two with the loving couple of Romeo and Juliet and a corresponding scene in that play, the lines of demarcation collapse and the two opposites, paradoxically, become one.