In addition, while it is necessary to appreciate the play’s specific contemporary contexts, it is essential to recognize, too, the complexity of Euripides’ engagement with the Homeric texts. Where women lament in the Iliad at just a few crucial junctures (see pp.19–23 above), in the Troades we find numerous women lamenting en masse and individually throughout, ultimately showing that the suffering of the defeated is worthy of poetic commemoration (cf. 1242–45, where Hecuba observes the terrible irony that her own destruction has ensured the fame of Troy amongst future generations, lines that, interestingly enough, largely echo the sentiments expressed by Helen in the Iliad [6.357–58]).69 Where the Iliad explored the different reasons for the war’s causes, suggesting through the figure of Helen that she herself was responsible, while elsewhere underlining the role of the gods (e.g. Il. 3.164–65; 14.85–87), the Troades elaborates on the various overlapping, yet conflicting, reasons to explain the conflict, while also magnifying Helen’s culpability (a particular strand of Iliadic reception that we have already met in Chapter 2).
It would be a mistake, however, to reduce Euripides’ drama to a kind of ‘protest play’, serving as a narrow critique of events from the very recent past (chronological considerations only accentuate the unlikelihood of such an intention on the part of the author in the case of Melos) and the political culture of the time.70 For the Troades is a drama that exposes the hollow core of glorious warfare; as Poole has richly put it, the drama exposes how ‘the nutritive elements of the past are related to, and in this case perhaps annulled by, the toxic’.71 The drama’s different characters repeatedly question our underlying assumptions about the true victors of the war, just as the playwright opens up new contexts for celebration and commemoration in dramatic poetry.
Naoíse: Shakespeare’s empty arguments
HECTOR:
Paris and Troilus, you have both said well,
And on the cause and question now in hand
Have glozed, but superficially: not much
Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought
Unfit to hear moral philosophy:
The reasons you allege do more conduce
To the hot passion of distempered blood
Than to make up a free determination
‘Twixt right and wrong, for pleasure and revenge
Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice
Of any true decision.
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act 2 Scene 2.163–7372
Hector’s criticism of his brothers comes midway through the second act of Troilus and Cressida, one of Shakespeare’s most notoriously problematic plays. The brothers have been locked in debate over whether Helen should be returned to the Greeks (for in Shakespearean English the Homeric Achaeans have become ‘Greeks’, cf. Prologue, line 21), thereby ending the war. Troilus, Helenus, and Paris have offered heated arguments in favour of keeping Helen, while Hector maintained it was in the best interests of the city to return her to Menelaus. In the section of his speech quoted above, Hector anachronistically evokes classical Greek models of debate, attributing to Aristotle the notion that young men are not suited to philosophy because of their hot tempers.
Hector’s appeal to Aristotle may clang uncomfortably in our ears, but it might not have been so jarring for Shakespeare’s contemporary audiences. For many of the play’s original viewers, both Hector and Aristotle may have belonged to the same vague and generalized timeframe of ‘antiquity’. Few would have been aware that the Trojan War was thought to have happened some four centuries before the composition of the Iliad, and that this was itself separated from Aristotle by another four centuries.73 For Shakespeare, as in the painting by Rembrandt featured on the cover of this book, the idea of dialogue and engagement between Homer and Aristotle may have posed no conceptual problems. Perhaps more importantly, historical accuracy does not seem to have been a prime concern for Shakespeare in the composition of this scene – it was far more important to communicate the heat of the debate.
Conflict and debate in the Troilus
Debate, persuasion, and rhetoric are central to the plot of Troilus and Cressida, in a way that mirrors their centrality in Euripides’ Troades. In each of the play’s five acts, the rhetorical arts are crucially important in moving the plot forward. In Act 1 (Scene 3), the Greek leaders discuss what to do in the face of Achilles’ ongoing refusal to fight. In Act 2 (Scene 2), Hector argues with his brothers about whether or not to return Helen. In Act 3 (Scene 2), the young lovers Troilus and Cressida exchange rhetorically charged promises of fidelity. In Act 4 (Scene 4), Troilus attempts to persuade Cressida to accept her fate as a hostage amongst the Greeks. And in Act 5 (Scene 3), Hector’s family argue with him unsuccessfully that he should not go out to battle, in a scene which bears only limited similarities with the Iliad (6.369-493 and 22.1–89; see for contrast p.43 above). Beyond these key moments that focus on discussion, the play is also shot through with references to the use and misuse of the rhetorical arts. Ulysses muses on the nature of reputation to goad Achilles (Act 3, Scene 3); Diomedes and Paris revisit the debate about the true value of Helen (Act 4, Scene 1); Thersites reports the words of others to Achilles (Act 2, Scene 3); Patroclus reports the words of Achilles to Agamemnon, and those of Agamemnon to Achilles (Act 2, Scene 3); and a silent letter penned by Hecuba reports the words of Polyxena to the lovelorn Achilles (Act 5, Scene 1). Throughout the play, then, power is shown to reside in words, and in their rhetorical deployment.
As a play so deeply concerned with the political power of words, Troilus and Cressida was perhaps a victim of its own central message. The play has a chequered early history, and there is evidence that it was originally suppressed – not necessarily by the authorities, but perhaps by Shakespeare himself. The play was first entered into the Stationer’s Register in 1603, but does not seem to have been published until 1609, when it appeared simultaneously in two quarto versions. Although one of these versions makes reference to the performance of the play at the Globe Theatre, the second implies that the play had never been performed, claiming that it was ‘a new play, neuer stal’d with the Stage’. When it appeared in the first collected folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays in 1623, there was some uncertainty as to where it should be placed – it ended up being inserted between the histories and the tragedies, excluded from the pagination of both and unlisted in the table of contents.74
The confusion around the play during its early years may have been due in part to its controversial nature. Troilus and Cressida must have been written during 1601–1602, in the immediate aftermath of a major political scandal. In these twilight years of Elizabeth I’s reign, disillusionment and unrest were everywhere, and had found expression in the 1601 rebellion of the Earl of Essex. The charismatic Essex had previously enjoyed both royal favour and popular support, and occupied a position of prominence at court. The elevation of a rival in 1597, however, prompted him to leave court in a sulk, furious with the queen at the perceived slight. He staged a coup in 1601 which failed. This led to his capture and execution, but it also stirred up a wider sense of political disaffection.75 Any play that dramatized either the making of political decisions or the strife of factionalism would have touched a nerve in such troubled times. Troilus and Cressida, with its deliberate and unswerving examination of these sensitive issues, might have been judged ‘too hot to handle’ after its initial composition. The play would also have been politically sensitive simply because it was written by Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s company had staged Richard II, a play that questioned royal power, on eve of Essex’ rebellion in February 1601, and the entire company was mired in controversy as a result.
There are yet more reasons why Troilus and Cressida would have been controversial. The myth of British descent from Troy was widely promoted by the Tudor dynasty.76 Elizabeth herself oversaw an explosion of interest in the myth,77 from Spenser’s extended poem The Faerie Queene (1590–1596)78 to Marlowe’s tragic play, Dido, Queen of Carthage (159
4); and from George Peele’s narrative poem, The Tale of Troy (1589), to jurists such as Edward Coke seeking to establish the origins of English common law in a Trojan past.79 In the political and literary discourse of the time, the Tudor monarchs were the rightful heirs of the Trojan hero Brutus, and the city of London was ‘Troynovant’.80 Any literary work which dealt with the ancient story of Troy could scarcely avoid being seen, therefore, as a commentary on contemporary political claims to be the ‘new’ Troy.
There were yet further parallels between the story of the Trojan War and late Elizabethan politics. The Earl of Essex had been likened to Achilles at several points over the years, and when Robert Greene published his Euphues His Censure to Philautus at the height of Essex’s popularity in 1587, he dedicated it to the Earl. Eupheus described a contest of storytelling between Hector and Achilles, through which it meditated on the true essence of heroism and masculinity. As in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, it was words and rhetoric, rather than martial deeds, which were the focus. A decade later, when Essex had withdrawn from court, comparisons between Essex and Achilles became even more widespread. Indeed, when George Chapman published the first translation of the Iliad from Greek into English in 1598, he too dedicated it to the Earl, describing him as the ‘living instance of the Achileian vertues’ [sic].81 If Essex was Achilles, then Elizabeth might be compared to the bullish Agamemnon, and given that this play explored factionalism in the Greek camp at Troy, would likely have been seen as making a comment on both Elizabeth’s treatment of Essex and on Essex’ failed rebellion.82
There is an apparent incompatibility here of the British being cast on both the Trojan side (by descent) and the Greek (by politics). This seems to have been solved by Shakespeare through the repackaging of the Trojan War as a factional struggle between kin. When Hector faces Ajax in single combat, he discovers that they are cousins, and muses on the merging of bloodlines:
Were thy commixtion Greek and Trojan so
That thou couldst say, ‘This hand is Grecian all,
And this is Trojan; the sinews of this leg
All Greek, and this all Troy; my mother’s blood
Runs on the dexter cheek, and this sinister
Bounds in my father’s.
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act 4 Scene 5.125–30
Shakespeare’s play therefore depicts factionalism within factionalism – not just internal strife tearing apart the body politic, but also as threatening to dismember the body itself. With its heady combination of a politically charged theme, setting, and characters, in 1603 Troilus and Cressida would have been political dynamite. Elizabeth’s death in the same year would have added further complications, and it is hardly surprising that the play remained unpublished for another six years.
Shakespeare’s Homer
Shakespeare, according to his contemporary and eulogist Ben Jonson, had ‘small Latine and lesse Greeke’.83 Jonson’s comments may have been aimed more at elevating his own standing as a classicist than accurately documenting Shakespeare’s, but the comment has nonetheless stuck. It was traditionally assumed that Shakespeare knew little of the Classics, and drew instead from medieval and early modern sources in his depictions of the ancient world. In the case of Troilus and Cressida, medieval texts certainly provided much of the source material for Shakespeare’s Trojan War,84 as they did for the central romantic plot of the play.85
Nonetheless, Troilus and Cressida also seems to have some specifically Homeric resonances. Several details of the narrative action, for example, appear to have come directly from Homer. These include how Achilles surveys Hector’s body, seeking the best place to strike him (Act 4, Scene 6; cf. Il. 22.317–27); and the dragging of Hector’s body behind Achilles’ chariot (Act 5, Scenes 8 and 10; cf. Il. 22.395ff). These details are particularly significant because they occur in parts of the Iliad that had not yet been translated into English at the time that Troilus and Cressida was written. The first instalment of Chapman’s translation of the Iliad had indeed been published in 1598, some three years prior to the composition of Troilus, but this included only seven books – Books 1, 2, and 7–11. Similarly, Arthur Hall’s 1581 publication of Ten Books of Homer’s Iliades, an English rendering of Salel’s French translation from the Greek, covered only the first ten books of the Iliad and did not include these later episodes. In order to learn about these Iliadic details of the duel between Hector and Achilles, Shakespeare must have consulted either the Iliad itself in the original Greek, or a translation of the poem in Latin.86
A more extended allusion to the Iliad can be found in Act 1, Scene 2. In this scene, Cressida watches a procession of leading Trojans as it wends through the streets of Troy, discussing those who pass first with her manservant and later with her uncle Pandarus. The scene is a comedic parody of the Iliad’s Teichoscopia, with a gender role-reversal in Cressida taking the place of Priam as the questioner and Pandarus assuming the role of Helen, naming each of the Trojan warriors and extolling their virtues as they pass. The comedy of the scene derives from Pandarus’ none-too-subtle attempts to elevate Troilus in Cressida’s eyes, comparing him favourably to each man. If the similarities with Book 3 of the Iliad were not plain enough, Shakespeare adds a helpful signpost at the start of the scene for those in the know. The first notables to pass in the procession are Hecuba and Helen. When Cressida asks her manservant where they are going, he replies: ‘Up to the eastern tower, | Whose height commands as subject all the vale, | To see the battle’ (Act 1, Scene 2.2–4). What we are being treated to is a Shakespearean Hodoscopia (view from the road) on the way to the Homeric Teichoscopia (view from the wall; see pp.13–4 above for Helen’s role in the Homeric Teichoscopia). In contrast to Homer’s (literally) elevated overview of heroes and kings, Shakespeare’s is a (literally) more down-to-earth perspective over the desirability of different men. Once more, Shakespeare cannot have relied on Chapman’s new translation of the Seaven Bookes of the Iliades for this episode, as the Teichoscopia occurs in Book 3 of the Iliad – beyond the seven books published by Chapman in his first Iliadic instalment. The formulation of Shakespeare’s Hodoscopia, then, likely owes to Hall’s English rendering of the Teichoscopia, one of the available Latin translations, or even to the Greek text of the Iliad itself.
There has been much scholarship on extent of Shakespeare’s knowledge of and engagement with ancient texts. Despite Jonson’s characterization, it is now well established that Shakespeare was profoundly influenced by a number of ancient texts, including the works of Ovid and Plutarch.87 Recent research has also highlighted that Shakespeare also drew broadly from Greek tragedy, although he may well have encountered much of this indirectly, through a variety of mediating texts and translations.88 The state of the debate over Shakespeare’s relationship to Homer is similar – it is evident that he made use of Homeric themes and motifs, but it remains uncertain whether this engagement was facilitated by a direct reading of the Greek text or through mediating texts, such as the many Latin translations of the Iliad that would have been available, or the various partial translations into English, most notably those of Chapman and Hall.89 What we do know, however, is that Shakespeare’s Iliadic allusions must have been the result of a deliberate set of choices: a choice to deviate from more familiar medieval precedents; and a choice to allude to Homer and the Iliad. By carefully working Homeric echoes and themes through the play, Shakespeare was signalling something – but what?
At some level, the Homeric resonances are partly a demonstration of Shakespeare’s education and classical learning. Although they may have been lost on a wider audience, for the Elizabethan literary elite these Iliadic references would have been obvious. Shakespeare’s deployment of Homeric allusions must therefore, at least in part, have been directed at his literary peers – perhaps a repost to the charge of ‘small Latine and lesse Greeke’. Around the time that Troilus and Cressida was written, there was much rivalry and conflict in literary circles over the methods, techniques, and pr
inciples of drama. It is possible, then, that Shakespeare’s conspicuous display of classical knowledge may have been amongst the milder expressions of this broader tension.
Indeed, although Shakespeare does not seem to have engaged directly in this ‘War of the Theatres’ (1599–1602),90 there is a clear reference to it in the prologue of Troilus and Cressida. The actor tells us: ‘And hither am I come | A prologue armed, but not in confidence | Of author’s pen or actor’s voice, but suited | In like conditions as our argument’ (Prologue 23–5). This is a direct reference to Johnson’s ‘Armed Prologue’ in The Poetaster (1601), itself a lampoon of Marson’s ‘armed epilogue’ in the Antonio and Mellida.91 But Shakespeare’s armed prologue also has another function. The prologue in the Troilus and Cressida is not armed confidently with the words of either the author or the actor, but rather ‘in like conditions as our argument’. This description focuses the audience’s attention on the nature of the argument in question – if the prologue is armed in the same way as the argument, then how is the argument armed? This is a subtle clue of things to come in the rest of the play, a herald of how argument, debate, and the clash of words will be placed at centre stage.
Homer’s Iliad and the Trojan War Page 13