The Ambiguity of Troilus and Cressida

Abstract

QAVV HE mock ritual of its structure and its corrupted opposites of reason and intuition explain partially the of Troilus and Cressida. Anti-tragic aspects of characterization and plot undermine the apparent tragic conception. It is this incomplete assimilation of tragic and anti-tragic elements which makes Troilus and Cressida a problem play long baffling to critics. That the assimilation is incomplete, however, does not suggest that Shakespeare's art here was not controlled, or that it was inferior to that of his other works, but rather that Shakespeare was dealing with a different in writing Troilus and Cressida. The result is dramatic, but it is not dramatic because of the essential dramatic values of the uneven story-which are unbalanced by philosophical problems-but rather because the structure of the work is conceived dramatically. Ritual is established and then shown to be mock ritual; action moves as expected and then is, improvisationally, halted, redirected, brought to no formal conclusion. So-called poetic justice is certainly mocked. Within this framework Shakespeare has created a hero in a tragic vein and has introduced him into an atmosphere of anti-tragic or comic elements, so that the result is jarring and frustrating, and appears incomplete. Brian Morris, one of the few recent critics who consider Troilus and Cressida tragic, is certainly right in judging Troilus of a different dimension from the other characters', but he does not examine the incongruity of this phenomenon, nor of the phenomenon of a precise, geometrical formulation of a play whose final lines constitute an affirmation of ethical nihilism. Most critics and editors classify the play as a comedy. While this term is helpful in suggesting that there are anti-comic elements in the it seems often employed as a means of eluding the essential problems of analysis and classification. If Troilus and Cressida is a comedy, even a dark comedy, how is it to be reconciled with the other dark comedies of Shakespeare, which do not end in chaos? All is well on stage only if it ends well. How is the play to be distinguished from legitimate tragedy? Objectively the plot concerns a man of passion who gives himself to certaini ideals, moral and emotional, and is broken by the betrayal of these ideals; this man, one of the Trojan heroes, then goes into battle to die-after the formal ending of the play. Surely the lack of an on-stage death and a final soliloquy should not disqualify the play from tragedy. Are Troilus' suffering and character less tragic than those of Timon of Athens, who is evidently the only humor character Shakespeare asks us to consider a tragic hero? H. B. Charlton, writing in I940, interprets the play mainly as a study of the individual's relationship to society, which he sees to be a proper