'What verse for it? What instance for it?': Authority, Closure, and the Endings of Troilus and Cressida in Text and Performance

Abstract

Barbara Bowen’s perceptive reading revels in the relationship between Troilus’ final speeches and Pandarus’ final appearance, but many critics, bibliographers, and editors have argued that the ending printed in both Q (1609) and F (1623) may be only one of the ways the play ended. There is a long history of speculation that Troilus and Cressida was revised, and that the ending may have been altered, perhaps for different audiences. The theories of editors and bibliographers can be read alongside the play’s theatre history, revealing how the heroism and scurrility that Bowen describes have been emphasised and diminished in different literary, theatrical, and social climates. I am particularly interested in exploring the play’s multiple and disruptive movements of closure, and the ways in which changing notions of an ‘authentic Shakespeare’ have been evoked in the critical responses to originary and modern texts and performances.