The Error of Our Eye in Troilus and Cressida

Abstract

Though Shakespeare wrote a number of plays based on material from classical sources, Troilus and Cressida is his only play based on the matter of Troy. A glance at the concordance reveals that most of his allusions to Troy in other plays appear in the first half of his career, and most are allusions to the city's fall: What fool hath . . . brought a fagot to bright-burning Troy?; virgin tribute paid by howling Troy; 'Was this fair face the cause,' quoth she,/ 'Why the Grecians sacked Troy?' 1 References to Helen as a paragon of beauty or to Hector as a paragon of chivalry are outnumbered by allusions to the tragic conclusion of the Trojan story. Such an emphasis is consistent with an earlier dramatic interpretation of Troy's history in Peele's Arraignment of Paris, an interpretation already implicit in the Aeneid, appearing again in The Faerie Queene, and contributing to the symbolism in some of the state portraits of Elizabeth 1.2 The pessimistic tone of Troilus and Cressida thus has precedent in Elizabethan, and more importantly in Shakespearean, interpretations of the Trojan war. In numerous other respects as well, the play is less anomalous than typical, as I hope to show. This is not to deny unique aspects of the play, for they are many, from its traditionally problematic tone to its generic indefinabuity. Yet contextual comparison can be revealing, particularly when the inquiry is directed to dramaturgical traditions and influences as well as to patterns of imagery and theme that are identifiably Shakespearean. One of the most pervasive such patterns in Troilus and Cressida is that of failed vision, especially as it relates to the confusion of appearances and reality.3 Paris' choice of Venus, in preference to Juno or Minerva, was frequently interpreted by Elizabethans as evidence of moral myopia. Thus Peele apostrophizes Paris: