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| Cressida and Pandarus View Passing Warriors by Alexandre Bida 1890 |
I was excited to find that this play, wholly unknown to me prior to this reading, was set during the Trojan War. I had enjoyed The Odyssey in high school, and more recently made my way through The Illiad (incidentally, I was surprised by where The Illiad ended: Troy is still standing, Achilles’ heel hasn’t been a problem, and nobody had even mentioned a giant horse). Troilus and Cressida presented me with an interesting combination: a play I knew nothing about, but with a cast of characters that I did know fairly well.
It’s a good thing that I am into the Trojan War, because the marquee-garnering romance between Troilus (son to Priam, king of Troy, and youngest brother of Trojan hero Hector) and Cressida (some Trojan lord’s daughter) totally takes a back seat here to the war itself. Like The Illiad, Troilus and Cressida spends a lot of time on the Greeks’ struggle to get Achilles to come out of his tent and actually fight, and also on what eventually transpires between Achilles and Hector (when Achilles is finally done throwing his little fit). Cressida completely disappears during Act 2 while we check in on the problems and resulting arguments of both the Greek and Trojan leaders, which wouldn’t have seemed weird if she hadn’t gotten top billing.
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