Troilus et Cressida et la chute de Troie

Abstract

Troilus and Cressida and the Fall of Troy The plot of Troilus and Cressida has often puzzled spectators and commentators because of its strange appearance as scenes from the Fall of Troy, weighted by commentaries on the reasons (or lack of rational arguments) for the long war. To an audience for whom the story was central to their preoccupations with war and civic destruction, the “pageant” of the play functions by reference to a long tradition of classic texts and discussions, including in other work by Shakespeare. Troy was the paradigm of extreme catastrophe. The play is held together by its sense of fatality, in which every event, every argument, is a step towards the death of Hector and the tragedy which ensues from that death. Since Hector is as much a symbol as a character, his destiny is Troy’s, and it is Troilus (and not Hector himself) who understands how far his murder and mutilation represent the massacre and destruction of the city. The horror and terror of that tragic fall represents, and not just for modern spectators, the first genocide in the European consciousness.