"So Unsecret to Ourselves": Notorious Identity and the Material Subject in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida

Abstract

T ROILUS' BITTER REMARK AS HE WATCHES Cressida in the Greek camp may reveal stupefaction, inability to comprehend what he sees, splitting of Cressida into his Cressida and Diomed's Cressida. But if we remember that Cressida herself has already warned him that I have a of resides with you, / But an unkind that itself will leave / To be another's fool (3.2.146-48),1 we can also consider Troilus' remark to be the first lucid assessment he has made of her in the play thus far. moment marks Troilus' recognition that he has, in fact, made the mistake Montaigne fears: he has Cressida for another. And we can well understand Montaigne's fear. To be taken for another is to be at all. Rather, it is to be left behind, exchanged, as it were, for this mysterious for whom one is mis-taken. But what happens when it is one's self who is the for whom one is mistaken? Or, when the self for whom one is is only a kind of self, a that is really beside itself? These questions are central to Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, as characters throughout the play mis-take each other and are in turn mis-taken. Paradoxically, the figures who inhabit this play are notoriously known. And yet, it is precisely these legendary figures who are at great pains to secure their own and each others' identities as they try to lay to rest a haunting sense that they are, and are not, themselves. Troilus' exclamation in the face of Cressida's betrayal is paradigmatic merely of this moment but of the play as a whole. This is and is not is a phenomenon that haunts Troilus and