“this is, and is not, Cressid”: Comparing with Chaucer's Criseyde

Abstract

Male characters’ condemnations of Cressida in Act IV of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida dramatize the problem of the relationship between Shakespeare’s heroine and Chaucer’s. The two women are artistic realization of the same legendary figure. But their personalities are so dissimilar that some scholars deny that Chaucer’s Criseyde had a significant influence on Shakespeare’s Cressida. Owing to the narrator’s adoration and sympathy toward Chaucer’s Criseyde, Criseyde unlike Shakespeare’s Cressida is characterized as a woman of almost mythological feminity. However, Criseyde’s basic qualities are undeniably reflected in Cressida in spite of the superficial differences between them. Shakespeare emphasizes two aspects of Cressida which distinguish her from Chaucer’s Criseyde: her lack of security and her high sexuality. The latter aspect has provided some critics with the ammunition to attack Cressida as a slut. However, considering her situation in a man’s world which may be even more precarious than Criseyde’s, Shakespeare’s Cressida is no more a wanton or a strumpet than Chaucer’s Criseyde. Rather than a two-dimensional figure of anti-feminist tradition, she is the complex product who reacts to the demands and expectations of the society at war which she belongs to. Together with Shakespeare’s emphasis on her precarious situation, his descriptions of Troilus enable a reader to interpret Cressida’s high sexuality not as definite proof of sluttishness but as a way of self-defense. Shakespeare’s Troilus is, not sexually innocent, not reverential toward Cressida, cares little about her honor. Furthermore, in her overall condition of tremendous vulnerability and helplessness in a Greek camp, Cressida’s opportunism can hardly be very surprising or disillusioning. Rather her futile reactions to mans desire and helplessness deserves more pity and sympathy than blame.