© Gunnar Tómasson
19 March 2016
Background
The most vexing and ambiguous of Shakespeare’s plays
(Joan Carol Oates)
Troilus and Cressida, that most vexing and ambiguous of Shakespeare’s plays, strikes the modern reader as a contemporary document—its investigation of numerous infidelities, its criticism of tragic pretensions, above all, its implicit debate between what is essential in human life and what is only existential are themes of the twentieth century. Philosophically, the play must be one of the earliest expressions of what is now called the “existential” vision; psychologically, it not only represents the puritanical mind in its anguished obsession with the flesh overwhelming the spirit, but it works to justify that vision. It is not only the expense of spirit in a “waste of shame” that is catastrophic, but the expenditure of all spirit—for the object of spiritual adoration (even if, like Helen, it is not unfaithful) can never be equivalent to the purity of energy wasted. Shakespeare shows in this darkest and least satisfying of his tragedies the modern, ironic, nihilistic spectacle of man diminished, not exalted. There is no question of the play’s being related to tragedy; calling it one of the “dark comedies” is to distort it seriously. This is tragedy of a special sort—the “tragedy” the basis of which is the impossibility of conventional tragedy.
[…]
Like Othello, […] Troilus is a man who is unaccountable in terms of the world that has made him: he is a “given,” an innocence that is introduced only in order to be disillusioned and destroyed.
Cynical depiction of immorality and disillusionment
(Wikipedia)
The play’s puzzling and intriguing nature has meant that Troilus and Cressida has rarely been popular on stage, and neither during Shakespeare’s own lifetime nor between 1734 and 1898 is there any recorded performance of the play. […] The play was also condemned by the Victorians for its explicit sexual references (though the sex, while explicitly and importantly present, is portrayed satirically and highly negatively). It was not staged in its original form until the early 20th century, but since then, it has become increasingly popular, especially after the First World War, owing to its cynical depiction of immorality and disillusionment. Because certain aspects of the play, such as the breaking of one’s public oaths during a protracted wartime and the decay of morality among Cressida and the Greeks resonated strongly with a discontented public, the play was staged with greater frequency during and after this period.
I. Preface (1609) to Troilus and Cressida
(Original text)
950022
——
Alpha
18650 = A never Writer to an ever Reader NEWES.
Omega
1754 = Vale – Goodbye
20404
10347 = Our Ever-living Poet
10058 = Troilus and Cressida
-1 = Monad/Braine/Reason Asleep
20404
——
16240 = Eternall reader, you have heere a new play,
13010 = never stal’d with the Stage,
23708 = never clapper-clawd with the palmes of the vulger,
16660 = and yet passing full of the palme comicall;
13201 = for it is a birth of your braine,
21808 = that never undertooke any thing commicall, vainely:
17249 = And were but the vaine names of commedies
25742 = changde for the titles of Commodities, or of Playes for Pleas;
35317 = you should see all those grand censors, that now stile them such vanities,
21808 = flock to them for the maine grace of their gravities:
27399 = especially this authors Commedies, that are so fram’d to the life,
17105 = that they serve for the most common
20281 = Commentaries of all the actions of our lives,
23403 = shewing such a dexteritie and power of witte,
30902 = that the most displeased with Playes, are pleasd with his Commedies.
21167 = And all such dull and heavy-witted worldlings,
20251 = as were never capable of the witte of a Commedie,
23426 = comming by report of them to his representations,
30076 = have found that witte there that they never found in themselves,
19072 = and have parted better-wittied then they came:
16531 = feeling an edge of witte set upon them,
22250 = more then ever they dreamd they had braine to grinde it on.
18999 = So much and such savored salt of witte
27095 = is in his Commedies, that they seeme (for their height of pleasure)
21928 = to be borne in that sea that brought forth Venus.
22553 = Amongst all there is none more witty then this:
16867 = And had I time I would comment upon it,
29490 = though I know it needs not, (for so much as will make you thinke
28055 = your testerne well bestowd) but for so much worth,
18241 = as even poore I know to be stuft in it.
11685 = It deserves such a labour,
22731 = as well as the best Commedy in Terence or Plautus.
15269 = And beleeve this, That when hee is gone,
24766 = and his Commedies out of sale, you will scramble for them,
17673 = and set up a new English Inquisition.
30450 = Take this for a warning, and at the perrill of your pleasures losse,
22291 = and Judgements, refuse not, nor like this the lesse
28183 = for not being sullied, with the smoaky breath of the multitude;
24849 = but thanke fortune for the scape it hath made amongst you.
21313 = Since by the grand possessors wills, I beleeve,
22266 = you should have prayd for them rather then beene prayd.
14729 = And so I leave all such to bee prayd for
30720 = (for the states of their wits healths) that will not praise it.
A new play – A birth of your braine
(Platonic ION – Biblical Myth)
1 = Monad – Braine/Reason Awake
1654 = ION – Eternall Reader
5829 = Simon bar Iona – Blessed art thou… Matt. 16:17
– 5975 = Simon Peter – Get thee behind mee, Satan… Matt. 16:23
950022
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The “jewels“ of Shakespeare‘s verse
(John Dryden – Wikipedia)
In the Restoration, it was rewritten by John Dryden¹, who stated that he intended to uncover the „jewels“ of Shakespeare’s verse, hidden beneath a „heap of rubbish“ (not only some „ungrammatical“ and indecorous expressions, but also much of the plot). … Dryden’s largest change … was in the character of Cressida, who in his play is loyal to Troilus throughout.
——
¹John Dryden; 19 August [O.S. 9 August] 1631 – 12 May [O.S. 1 May] 1700) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who was made Poet Laureate in 1668.
He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden. Walter Scott called him „Glorious John.“
***
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Gunnar Tómasson
