“This is, and is not, Cressid!” – Shakespeare’s ‘Troilus and Cressida’

Introduction

Troilus is a puzzling, challenging play, which repays study.  It has been infrequently performed, until recent years.

Troilus is hard to classify in terms of genre.  It is sui generis.  It can be termed a “problem play”.  It has elements of harsh comedy but also tragedy: in terms of the Trojan cause, the death of Hector is tragic.  There are internal moral and political debates, and exchanges of insults.  The war itself is a stop-start affair, interrupted by truces; the real fighting comes at the end. 

It is a very long play, as it has well over 3,000 lines.  There are two plots:  a war one (over 2,000 lines) and a love one (over 1,000 lines).

The characters

There are several famous male characters, on both the Greek and Trojan sides.  They are “heroes” that come down from Ancient Greek mythology.  But it is striking that their status is diminished in Shakespeare’s version.  Agamemnon, Ajax, Nestor and Achilles come across as selfish, pompous, arrogant and lacking in insight – unheroic, indeed.  

Achilles is playful, early in the play, and cruel, later.  He withdraws from the fighting, not because of a quarrel with Agamemnon (as in the Iliad) but because of his love for the Trojan princess Polyxena (as in the medieval sources).  He takes advantage of Hector’s temporary vulnerability to kill him.

Ulysses is clever and crafty, and he has a command of rhetoric as a tool to persuade his hearers: see his speeches on Degree [I.3] and Time [III.3].  He is kind to Troilus but harsh in his judgement of Cressida (see below).

Hector is inclined to mercy, but he can be stubborn, and he occasionally shows flawed judgement.  He rejects the demands of his wife Andromache, his sister Cassandra and his father Priam not to fight [V.3].  He prioritises his “honour”.  (Cf Iliad VI.)  Earlier, he places the “honour” associated with keeping Helen in Troy above the morality and practicality of returning her to her husband Menelaus (and ending the war) [II.2].

Troilus is young and immature, but brave in battle.  Ulysses calls him “Manly as Hector, but more dangerous” [IV.5, 104] (more dangerous because less inclined to mercy).  In love with Cressida (or infatuated with her), Troilus is bashful and hesitant.  His language is vague, flowery and dreamy.  He calls Cressida (like he does Helen) a “pearl” [I.102].  He seems unrealistic in his expectations of a love affair.  (His rival Diomedes, by contrast, is confident, blunt and explicit.)

Thersites is derogatory about everybody; and he reduces the “argument” of the war to “a whore and a cuckold” (referring to Helen and Menelaus” [II.2.71f].

Pandarus is a broker who appears to derive vicarious pleasure from the Troilus-Cressida relationship.  (Cressida actually calls him a “bawd” [I.2.281]).  Despite the services he has rendered, he is later dismissed by Troilus as a “broker-lackey”, deserving of “ignomy [ignominy] and shame” [V.10].  And in his own soliloquy (which ends the play), he not only complains of his own “diseases” but offers to “bequeath” them to the audience” [line 57].

Cressida is susceptible to overtures from strong young men.  She can be persuaded into one relationship, then out of that one into a new one.  At the same time, she appears more realistic about the potential durability of a relationship than the idealistic Troilus. 

The other female characters are: Cassandra, Andromache and Helen.  The first two are caring, insightful people, but they lack power.  Cassandra, in accordance with tradition, is never believed.  Helen is called by Troilus “a pearl” of great price [II.2, 82].  But, in the only scene in which she appears [Act III, Scene 1], she comes across as playful and unserious – and, indeed, overvalued.

The war plot 

As in the Iliad, the war plot climaxes in the killing of Patroclus by Hector and the revenge killing of Hector by Achilles.  Troilus is left to try to take on Hector’s mantle.  By the end of the play, Helen is still with Paris.  The war appears to be an exercise in futility.

The love plot

This involves the eponymous hero and heroine Troilus and Cressida, Pandarus the go-between, the Greek warrior Diomedes, and the lady’s father, Calchas.  Over one thousand lines are devoted to it.  Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde is a major source.   

When Pandarus brings Troilus and Cressida together, Cressida readily tells Troilus that she already loves him.  Before being ushered by Pandarus to bed [III.2], they both swear everlasting faithfulness to each other.  (Cf Chaucer, Books 1-3.)  These promises will be severely tested.

Meanwhile, Calchas (Cressida’s father, who has defected to the other side) persuades the Greek leaders (in return for services rendered) to let Cressida be conveyed to him from Troy, in exchange for Antenor, their prisoner of war [III.3].  The lovers and Pandarus receive the news the very morning after their night of lovemaking.  The lovers make their protests, reassert their love for each other, and exchange articles of clothing as keepsakes, but cannot resist the decision.

This pace is speeded up, in comparison with Chaucer, Books 4-5.  Contrast the leisurely narration of the epic mode and the accelerated pace characteristic of drama.  This affects the spectator’s or reader’s perception of the nature of Cressida.

Two very theatrical scenes soon follow.  (They are not paralleled in Chaucer.)  In IV.5, when Cressida is led into the Greek camp (by Diomedes), she is kissed in turn by a series of Greek leaders – Agamemnon, Nestor, Achilles and Patroclus.  They tease her, and she answers back, wittily.  What is going on here?  Penguin editor R A Foakes offers this interpretation:

“Hitherto silent, Cressida now joins in the ironic and bawdy wordplay, recalling her liveliness in talking with Pandarus in I.2, and rapidly adapting to her new companions. ”

[Penguin edition (1987), Commentary, page 208]

Ulysses accuses her of being “wanton” and “sluttish” [lines 56 and 62].  Surprisingly, perhaps, he agrees to Troilus’s request to smuggle him into the Greek camp to see Cressida. 

Act V Scene 2 gives us multiple observers: Thersites watches Ulysses watching Troilus watching Diomedes wooing Cressida.  The lady already calls Diomedes “my sweet guardian” [line 8].  Diomedes presses his suit.  Cressida is ambivalent; but she does give away a love token received from Troilus himself.  In her last words in the play (a monologue), she confesses that her heart follows her eye, and that now her eye is looking at her new lover.  She accuses herself of “turpitude” [line 114].

Troilus is devastated by this revelation.  He cannot believe his eyes and ears.  Mentally, he divides Cressida into two characters – the one he knew in Troy (loyal to him) and the one he has just seen in the Greek camp (loyal to Diomedes and false to himself).  “This is, and is not, Cressid!,” he says [line 149].  (His intellectual wrestling match with reality is vaguely reminiscent of that engaged in by Chaucer’s Troilus.)  Later, Cressida does take the trouble to write to Troilus, but he dismisses her letter as “Words, words, words, no matter from the heart” [V.3.107], and he tears it up. By now he is preoccupied with the fighting.

At the end of the play, all three lovers – Troilus, Cressida and Diomedes – remain alive.  Does this spell a happy ending for the last two?  We do not know.

Misogyny

To what extent can Cressida be blamed for her behaviour?  One can argue that she lives in a male-dominated society (both in Troy and the Greek camp), and that women are relatively powerless.  Perhaps she really does need a “guardian”, especially when away from home – even in addition to her father.  Moreover, it is the men around her who initiate actions – Pandarus, Troilus, Calchas, Diomedes, and the warriors who kiss her: she reacts.

R A Foakes sums up Cressida’s position very aptly:

“Cressida [is] a girl cast adrift in Troy with only her uncle, a humorous and immoral old bawd, for protection, a girl who becomes a piece of merchandise in the barter of war, to be traded for Antenor….[Act IV Scene 5] dramatizes the extent to which women are the playthings of warrior princes.…In Troilus and Cressida, women areweak and oppressed.”

[Penguin edition (1987), Introduction, pages 16f].

Conclusion

There are no true heroes in this play with which the reader or audience member can identify.  The writing is unflattering to the characters: we are somewhat alienated from them.  The motives for war are questionable.  Against a background of war it is hard to start and to maintain a love relationship.  The characters are unable to learn from experience.  The future looks bleak, especially for the Trojans.   All these factors (I would argue) make Troilus difficult to stage in such a way as to hold an audience’s interest.   Does acting the characters out turn them into caricatures?  It may be more suitable for a reader to study it, at leisure, in order to appreciate the philosophical arguments and the rhetoric of the great speeches.

Editions of Troilus and Cressida consulted:

Palmer, K (1982), London: Routledge, ‘Arden 2’

Foakes, RA (1987), London: Penguin (references above are to this text)

Bevington, D (1998), Walton-on-Thames: Thomas Nelson, ‘Arden 3’

and

Hyland, P (1989), Troilus and Cressida, London: Penguin, ‘Penguin Critical Studies’.

Comparisons between Boccaccio’s ‘Filostrato’ and Chaucer’s ‘Troilus and Criseyde’

Introduction

The story of Troilus and Cressida is one of the great stories of love, in the same league as (for example), Hector and Andromache, Odysseus and Penelope, Dido and Aeneas, Pyramus and Thisbe, Baucis and Philemon, Romeo and Juliet, and (a true one) Abelard and Héloïse.

The story of this couple commences as a spin-off from versions of the famous Trojan War, first told by Homer in the 1^st millennium BC and taken up by Dictys and Dares in the 1^st millennium CE.  In the 12^th century CE, Benoît de Sainte-Maure wrote a long epic poem, interspersing accounts of battles with loves stories, of which that of Troilus and Briseida (and Diomède) is one.  This was translated into Latin prose by Guido delle Colonne.

Benoît covered only the departure of Briseida from Troy to the Greek camp, and her taking up with the Greek warrior Diomède instead of Troilus.  It was Giovanni Boccaccio who (drawing upon Benoît and/or Guido) added the story of the love of Troilus and Briseida (here renamed Criseida) before she was sent away (as well as the demise of the relationship), in his verse romance Filostrato (circa 1325).

The Filostrato was the main source for Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (circa 1385); but Chaucer also drew upon other writers and on his own imagination.  Below I give indications as to what Chaucer added to Boccaccio’s version and what he changed.

Filostrato has 5,704 lines; Troilus and Criseyde has 8,239 lines.

The main characters

Criseida/Criseyde is a young Trojan widow.  Troiolo/Troilus is a young Trojan Warrior.  Pandaro/Pandarus is the cousin/uncle of Criseida/Criseyde, and he acts as the go-between Troiolo/Troilus and her.  Calcàs/Calchas is the father of Criseida/Criseyde, who has defected to the Greek side – to the embarrassment of his daughter.  Diomede is a Greek warrior.

The main thread of the story – rise and fall.

RISE (COMEDY)

Troiolo/Troilus falls in love with Criseida/Criseyde.  Pandaro/Pandarus becomes his confidant and acts as go-between him and the lady.  The lady and the warrior commence a love affair.  They keep it secret.  (This is covered in Books 1-3 of both poems.)

FALL (TRAGEDY)

Without consulting her, Calcàs/Calchas arranges for his daughter to be moved to the Greek camp, in exchange for the Trojan prisoner of war Antenore/Antenor.  Criseida/Criseyde promises Troiolo/Troilus to escape and to return to Troy after ten days.   However, she never appears.  Instead, she is wooed by Diomede, and she switches her allegiance to him.  Troiolo/Troilus seeks revenge upon Diomede in battle, without success.  Eventually, he is killed by Achilles.  (This is covered by Books 4-9 of Filostrato and by Books 4-5 of Troilus.)

SOME OF THE DIFFERENCES – FEATURES OF FILOSTRATO    

• Giovanni Boccaccio dedicates his poemto the lady he loves, who he misses.  He compares himself, as a lover, with Troiolo. (In the Proem and Part 9.)
• Troiolo goes to Criseida’s house at night by appointment.  (Part 3.)
• Troiolo dreams of a boar ravishing Criseida – to her delight.  He interprets the boar as Diomede, and he suspects Criseida of falling in love with him.  (Part 7.)
• Troiolo’s brother Deifobo finds about Troiolo’s love and tells other eminent Trojans, including his sister Cassandra.  She teases him about his relationship with Criseida.  (Part 7.)
• The narrator concludes by warning men to beware the fickleness of young women.  (Part 8.)

SOME OF THE DIFFERENCES – FEATURES OF TROILUS AND CRISEYDE

• The narrator calls upon the Fury Tisiphone to help him tell the story of the “double sorrow” of Troilus.  He wishes all lovers well, and calls upon those lucky in love to sympathise with those who are unlucky.  (In the Proem, Book 1.)
• When Pandarus goes to see Criseyde at home, he finds her reading the Thebaid of Statius (the story of which roughly reflects that of the Trojan War itself).  (Book 2.)
• Troilus rides past Criseyde’s house twice – once from battle, the second time at Pandarus’s suggestion.  (Book 2.)
• At night in bed, Criseyde hears a nightingale sing a song of love.  She dreams of an eagle opening her body and exchanging her own heart for Troilus’s.  (Book 2.)
• Pandarus contrives a meeting in private between Troilus and Criseyde, in the house of Deiphebus, one of Troilus’s brothers.  (Book 2.)
• Pandarus brings the pair together in his own house. The couple converse, kiss and embrace.  Eventually, Pandarus pushes Troilus into bed with Criseyde and leaves.  This is the beginning of their love affair.  (Book 3.)
• When Troilus hears the news about Criseyde’s enforced move to the Greek camp, he wonders whether the impending crisis is predestined and inevitable, whether God has foreseen it, and whether what God foresees is bound to happen.  He is inclined to doubt that free will exists.  (This line of thought is derived from the Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius.)  (Book 4.)
• Troilus dreams of Criseyde kissing a wild boar.  Troilus asks his sister Cassandra to interpret his dream.  She explains that the boar in the dream is Diomede, and Criseyde and he are lovers.  Troilus rejects this interpretation.  (Book 5.)
• After his death, Troilus’s soul rises through the heavens: he has a new perspective on the world, and he laughs to himself.  (Borrowed from the fate of Arcita in Boccaccio’s own Teseida, Book XI.)  (Book 5.)
• Finally, the narrator praises the Christian God, and recommends the love of God over carnal love on earth.  (Book 5.)

Additional Comments

(i) The notes on Troilus take no account either of the verbosity or of the ingenuity of Pandarus, the go-between.  He remains ever helpful to Troilus in the course of the first three books, but he is helpless in the last two.

(ii) Chaucer manages to inject pathos into his description of Troilus’s situation.  It is noteworthy, though, that the lady and her second lover both survive to the end, whereas Troiolo/Troilus is killed (in one line of verse!).

(iii) There are hints in both poems that the lady is to be blamed for deserting her Trojan lover for her Greek one.  However, it should be conceded that as a single woman she is vulnerable, both in Troy and later in the Greek camp.  She has limited freedom: she has to make the best of the situation she finds herself in.

(iv) Chaucer’s version has a solemn, serious ending.  Throughout his works, one can see a combination of humour (even bawdiness) and piety, as for example at the end of the Canterbury Tales (in The Parson’s Tale and Chaucer’s Retraction).

(v) Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida (circa 1601) allots fewer lines to the love story than to the war story; and the characters of Cressida and Pandarus are somewhat coarsened.  (An evaluation to follow.)

Love against a background of war: the story of Troilus, Briseida and Diomedes, in Le Roman de Troie by Benoît de Sainte-Maure

INTRODUCTION

The story of Troilus and Cressida is one of the great stories of love, separation and loss that has come down to us across the centuries.

Drawing upon the first millennium CE Latin accounts of the Trojan War by Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius, rather than on Homer’s Iliad, Benoît de Sainte-Maure composed his own very long (over 30,000 verse lines) Roman de Troie, in what we now call Old French, around 1165 CE. 

The Roman de Troie has been translated into English prose by Glyn S Burgess and Douglas Kelly, and published (in 2017) by D S Brewer (Woodbridge, Suffolk).  The translation has 475 pages.  It contains an introduction, a glossary of technical terms, appendices, indexes, and a bibliography.  It is comprehensive and illuminating.  It is invaluable to a student of the literature of the period, as the original Old French is opaque (quite different from modern French in many ways).

WAR AND LOVE

Benoît attributes the causes of the war to the legacy of earlier conflicts, and also a succession of abductions of women by rapacious men.  But he breaks up his account of the causes, the progress of the war, and its sequelae, with love stories (arguably, the most interesting parts), namely those of: (i) Jason and Medea, (ii) Paris and Helen, (iii) Achilles and Polyxena, and (iv) Troilus, Briseida and Diomedes.

The indirect influence of Homer’s Iliad can be detected in the Roman de Troie.  But there are also significant changes.  See for example the third love story mentioned above.  Here, Achilles does not suspend his participation in the war because of any argument with Agamemnon (cf Iliad Book I); (nor does he return in haste because of his hatred of Hector over the death of his friend Patroclus, who dies early on in Benoît’s account); he does so because of his love for the Trojan princess Polyxena, and his consequent desire for a peace settlement, in order to win her.  (In the event, he is lured into an ambush and killed.)

The fourth love story takes up about a thousand lines of the whole story (interspersed between lines 13065 and 20340).  The action can be summarised as follows.  Calchas (aka Calcas), a prophet, and the father of Briseida, defects from Troy to the Greek camp, under the influence of an oracle.  But he leaves his daughter Briseida behind in Troy.  She is in love with Troilus.  Calchas requests that Briseida be sent to him: King Priam accedes to this request.  The wishes of Briseida and Troilus in the matter are not consulted.  The Greek warrior Diomedes (aka Diomède) then woos Briseida persistently and at first unsuccessfully.  Diomedes seizes Troilus’s horse in battle and gives it to Briseida.  She gives him her (detachable) sleeve, which he can wear in battle.  Furious with Briseida, Troilus wounds Diomedes heavily, and he scornfully warns him that Briseida may not be faithful to him, either.  Briseida feels sorry for Diomedes; she confesses her love for him, despite her affection for Troilus.  Then she disappears from the narrative.  Much later, Troilus is killed by Achilles in battle (cf Virgil, Aeneid I, lines 474-8); Diomedes survives the war and goes home to his wife.

THE EMOTIONAL FACTORS

1 Troilus and Briseida are both distressed and angry at their involuntary separation.  They promise to be constant to each other.

2 When Briseida arrives in the Greek camp, she deals with Diomedes’ immediate overtures to her firmly but tactfully, pointing out that she will be “alone, without other ladies” [Burgess & Kelly, page 209], and that she must have regard to her reputation. 

3 Briseida proceeds to upbraid her father over his disloyalty to his home city.  He replies by saying that he is only obeying the “will of the gods”; and he claims that he is saving her from the forthcoming conquest and destruction of Troy.

4 Briseida soon begins to settle down in the Greek camp:

“Before she had reached the fourth evening, she would not have felt like returning to the city, or have any wish to do so.” [Burgess & Kelly, page 211]

5 Diomedes becomes obsessed with Briseida; he is said to be in her “snare”; he doubts whether he will ever “possess” her.  He confesses his love to her; she thinks that she has some power over him; she gives him “the sleeve from her right arm…for him to use as a banner” [B & K, page 228]; he is “filled with joy”.  But as for Troilus, his love for Briseida is “quashed”.

6 When Diomedes is so gravely wounded in battle that he is at risk of dying, Briseida realises that she loves him and lets this be known publicly.  However she accuses herself of acting “wrongly and ignominiously”, saying:

“I have betrayed my beloved Troilus….My heart should have been so attached to Troilus and so secure in him that I would have heeded no other man.” [B & K, page 289] 

She adds that she will be the subject of gossip in Troy and that she “shall suffer scorn for ever”.

In conclusion, then, Briseida faces up to grim reality.  She still feels rather alone: “here among the Greeks I had no counsel, no friend or confidant.” [B & K, page 290]  She makes her choice, constrained as she is by circumstances:

“And what good does it do me to repent what I have done?  In this affair no recovery is possible.  I shall therefore be faithful to this Greek, who is indeed a fine and worthy vassal.  I have already given so much of my heart to Diomedes; because of him I have acted as I did.  This would not have happened in this way if I were still in Troy.”  [B & K, pages 289f]

One can argue that Briseida is not entirely blameworthy for her predicament; she has regrets and misgivings; she has insight; her choice can be regarded as rational.

Tatyana Moran praises Benoît’s characterisation of Briseida:

“Benoît’s Briseida is in her complexity one of the most astonishing characters of mediaeval literature.  Though created in order to embody the unreliableness, the faithfulness and the heartlessness of women, she is both more and less than all that; she is no mere personification of vice but a human being, full of contradiction, driven by her instincts yet conscious of her failings, disconcerting and rather charming.” [Moran T, page 20*]

MISOGYNY

1 Benoît praises Briseida’s physical beauty but condemns her personality. His judgement is reflected in that of his male characters: Troilus, Diomedes and King Priam.  Moreover, Benoît is pretty damning about women in general (see below).

2 Priam regards Briseida as tainted by association with her treacherous father:

“If it were not the case that the maiden was worthy and noble, sensible and beautiful, she would be burned and dismembered because of her father.  Let her be off on her way.” [Burgess & Kelly, page 202]

3 Just as Briseida is setting out for Troy, Benoît predicts that she will be easily and quickly distracted by the prospect of a new relationship:

“A woman will never be perplexed for too long.  Provided she can find an alternative, her sighs will be short-lived.  Woman’s grief is of short duration.  If one eye sheds tears, the other is smiling.  Their hearts change very quickly.  The wisest woman is quite foolish.” [Burgess & Kelly, page 207]

4 Benoît reports that Briseida takes advantage of the sight of Diomedes’ love-sickness:

“Thanks to his sighs, she perceived clearly that he was totally smitten with her, and that was why she was three times harsher with him.  This is a constant feature in a woman’s character.  If she recognizes that you love her and are distraught on her account, she will always treat you with arrogance.” [B & K, page 226]

5 As Troilus wounds Diomedes in battle, he takes the opportunity to accuse Briseida of “short-lived fidelity”, “treachery”, “injustice” and “betrayal” [B & K, page 287].  Without any justification, he suggests that Diomedes will have to be “extremely vigilant”, lest Briseida (having learnt to enjoy sex) should entertain in her bed not only Diomedes himself but also “transient guests” – for payment.

The translators add a note [no 132]:

“Troilus seems to believe that Briseida is prostituting herself, and the “transient guests” would be her clients.  Robert Henryson will follow up on this surmise in his late-medieval Scottish poem The Testament of Cresseid, in which Cresseid ends her life as a prostitute.” [Page 287]

In conclusion, Briseida is treated very badly by men, in word and in deed.  Diomedes provides her with a safe haven, in a way; but the text implies strongly that he is out for what he can get (sexually) with Briseida.

BENOÎT’S INFLUENCE ON LATER WRITERS

Benoît’s fourth love storygave rise to numerous adaptations and elaborations.  Its influence (direct or indirect) can be traced in various later works, notably: (i) Giovanni Boccaccio’s Filostrato (circa 1335), (ii) Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (circa 1385), (iii) Robert Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid (late 15^th century), and (iv) and William Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida (circa 1602). 

Benoît does not cover Troilus’s wooing of Briseida: he begins with the separation of the lovers, moves on to her meeting with Diomedes, and finishes with the lady’s eventual switch of allegiance (rather to Benoît’s disgust).  Boccaccio introduces the account of the earlier wooing, and treats it, indeed, at length.  He also creates the character of Pandarus (aka Pandaro), who brings the lovers together.  Chaucer treats the affair at even greater length and brings in new perspectives (for example, from the philosophy of The Consolation of Philosophy of Boëthius).  Shakespeare spends about two-thirds of his play on the war: the scope available for the coverage of the love triangle is therefore limited.

The expression of misogyny is less strident in Filostrato and in Troilus and Criseyde.  (But see the assessment of Burgess and Kelly, below.)  However, Henryson is wholly negative about Cresseid in his Testament.  Misogyny is prominent in the attitude of many male characters in Troilus and Cressida: see, for example, the welcome that the Greek leaders give to Cressida when she is handed over to them in Act 4, Scene 5 – they all want to kiss her, at first meeting.

In the later writers’ works, Troilus is saddened rather than enraged:

“Faced with his lady’s betrayal, Boccaccio’s Troilo [sic] persists in defending her virtue; Chaucer’s Troylus [sic] tries to find oblivion in feats of arms; Shakespeare’s hero feels the world crumbling under his feet; while Benoît’s gallant, whose pride is more wounded than his heart, revenges himself not only by fighting Diomède but by poisoning his mind against Briseida, who, he is certain, will betray her new lover just as she had betrayed his predecessor.'” [Moran T, page 19*]

In the Introduction to their translation, Burgess and Kelly have a section on ‘Women in War’ [pages 26-28].  Firstly they remind the reader that:

“The common lot of non-combatant women [all, other than Penthesilea] is rape and slaughter, or, for the ‘privileged few’ who are of high birth, abduction and life as a concubine.” [Page 26]

Then they comment on Briseida as follows:

“Briseida…adapts to her fate [as concubine], albeit less willingly and more slowly and thoughtfully than does Helen [with Paris]…. [Moreover, Briseida’s] case is special because it does not fit the misogynist version of her love for Diomedes that both Boccaccio and Chaucer relate, claiming, like Benoît, that she would find a new love only a few days after leaving Troilus….She finally accepts Diomede’s love after almost two years….” [Pages 27f]

CONCLUSION

Benoît’s stated purpose in writing Le Roman de Troie was to tell the story of the Trojan War to readers and listeners who did not know the pre-existing accounts in Latin.  (Note that the Ancient Greek Iliad only became available in Western Europe much later.)   Benoît succeeded in his purpose.

Obviously, Le Roman de Troie is very long.  The translators count 23 battles in all in the course of the main war.   The casualties are innumerable.  Unsurprisingly, there is much repetition in the descriptions of the combats and killings.  The account is varied by the inclusion of truces, negotiations and love affairs.  Material was created that proved useful to later, greater writers (see above).

The Roman, then, is of interest to specialists rather than to the general public.

*Reference

Moran, T (1968), ‘The Growth of the Troilus and Cressida Legend and Benoît de Sainte-Maure’, in Litera: Journal of Language, Literature and Cultural Studies, Volume 0, Issue 9, 9 – 24.

Retrieved via https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/iulitera/issue/1243/14593 10.04.23

D.R.H.

10 April 2023

True Women and False Men

Virgil’s epic imitation [of Homer] borders at times on plagiarism….Virgil’s Aeneid [relates] the deeds and fate of the Roman hero pius Aeneas – Aeneas the pious, the virtuous, dutiful, in thrall to the imperial destiny of his country [and] a paragon of fascism.  [Caroline Alexander, The War That Killed Achilles, Faber & Faber, 2009, Preface]

At school in the 1960s I studied Latin but not Greek.  I remember reading parts of Book II (about the destruction of Troy) and Book IV (about Aeneas’s stay with Queen Dido in Carthage).  I grappled with the Latin text, to understand it and to be able to translate it into English.  This was hard!  I bought a copy of the prose translation by W F Jackson Knight, first published by Penguin in 1956 and still on sale.  This was rather free and did not follow the Latin, line by line and word for word, as it was aimed at the general Anglophone reader.

I kept Jackson Knight’s book for many years till, a few years ago, it fell apart.  By now I had access, on-line, both to the original and to other translations, for example, John Dryden’s.  About the same time, I bought a copy of Book I in Latin (with notes) to study how the Aeneid started off.  (It has to do with the storm and the Trojans’ arrival in Carthage.)  I worked through it.  (It was still hard.)

My overall view of the work is that Books I, II, IV and VI are the most interesting.  But I do have reservations about Book VI (the visit to the Underworld): (i) it is a pale imitation of Homer’s Odyssey, Book XI; and (ii) it contains an over-adulatory speech by Anchises (father of Aeneas) that predicts the imperial greatness of Rome, culminating in the reign of Emperor Augustus (Virgil’s contemporary).  Hence the acerbic comment by Caroline Alexander, above.

However, this theme, in Book VI, may have influenced John Milton in his composition of Books XI and XII of Paradise Lost, where the Archangel Michael tells Adam, at length, about the future of the human race, through the Old Testament era down to the coming of the Messiah.  (Anchises promises a Roman Empire on earth; Michael promises Salvation.)

 

Among other places where one can find evidence of the influence of the Aeneid, in 2^nd millennium CE English literature, I wish to concentrate on works by Geoffrey Chaucer, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare.

 

Chaucer

 

Chaucer provides us with two stories based upon the Aeneid: firstly in the House of Fame, Book I, and secondly in the Legend of Dido, within the Legend of Good Women.  They are characterised by omissions and embellishments and changes of emphasis.  The influence of Ovid is also apparent.  In particular, Books I, II and IV take preference, in which the tragedy of Queen Dido is central, not the mission of Aeneas.

 

The House of Fame version begins where the Aeneid begins, in lines very close to the original:

 

   I wol now synge, yif I kan,

The armes and also the man

That first cam, through his destinee,

Fugityf of Troy contree,

In Itayle, with ful moche pyne

Unto the strondes of Lavyne.  [143-8]

 

After this, Chaucer exercises a free hand.

 

With reference to events in Italy [lines 451-67], the Riverside Chaucer editor, J M Fyler, comments, “Chaucer’s summary of the last six books of the Aeneid is remarkably brief” [page 981].  But I am not surprised, given where Chaucer’s interest really lies.

 

Next, the Legend of Good Women contains a series of nine stories, based on classical sources – for example, from Virgil and Ovid – but heavily adapted.  According to the Prologue, the poet is accused of undermining his laws (which govern courtly love) and leading his followers astray:

 

     …You’re among my deadly enemies….

To put it plainly, everybody knows

That by translating The Romance of the Rose,

    Which is all heresy against my law,

You’ve made people from my rule withdraw….

Have you not put in English too the book

Of Troilus, whom Cressida forsook,

Thus demonstrating women’s perfidy?

But all the same, this question answer me:

Why won’t you write of women’s uprightness

Now that you’ve written of their wickedness? [‘G’ 248, 253-257, 264-9]

 

[Translated by Brian Stone, in his Geoffrey Chaucer – Love Visions, Penguin, 1983]

 

To make amends, the poet is ordered to write stories about faithful women.  In some of the nine stories that follow, the infidelity and cruelty of men (including Aeneas) is contrasted with the faithfulness and generosity of the high-status women (such as Dido) to whom they turn for help in their hour of need.

 

In the Legend of Dido, Aeneas, indeed, is the lucky guest and recipient of the queen’s lavish present giving, while she acts the happy hostess and generous benefactress:

   This Eneas is come to paradys

Out of the swolow of helle, and thus in joye

Remembreth hym of his estat in Troye.  [1103ff]

 

   Thus is this queen in plesaunce and in joye,

With all these newe lusty folk of Troye.  [1150f]

 

The pair become increasingly intimate.

 

When Aeneas eventually admits to Dido that he must, after all, proceed to Italy,  she reminds him of his marriage vow:

    “Is that in ernest?” quod she, “Wole ye so?

Have ye nat sworn to wyve me to take?

Allas, what woman wole ye of me make?

I am a gentil woman and a queen.

Ye wole nat from youre wif thus foule fleen?”

That I was born, allas!  What shall I do?”  [1303-8]

 

But her pleas are uttered in vain.

 

Chaucer skilfully conveys the pathos of the situation.

 

Both summaries are well worth a look, either in the original or in translation.

 

Marlowe

 

Marlowe made quite a few translations from Latin: Lucan’s Pharsalia, Book I, (about the Roman civil war) and Ovid’s Amores (poems about sexual love, in elegiac couplets).  Moreover, one of his plays is called: Dido, Queen of Carthage. (Seldom performed.)  It represents a creative reworking of Books I, II and IV.  The basic story remains the same.  As is to be expected, there are also numerous detail differences between the epic and the play.  The latter includes, for example, a tense dialogue between Juno, who hates the Trojans, and Venus, Aeneas’s own mother (Act 3 Scene 2, in J B Steane’s Penguin edition, 1969).

 

In Act 2 Scene 1, Aeneas tells the story of the destruction of Troy, at Dido’s bidding.  His account commences with the words “A woeful tale bids Dido to unfold,” which reflects the first line of Virgil’s Book II.  The 53 lines which begin with “At last came Pyrrhus, fell and full of ire” are mirrored in the speech of the actors and the eponymous hero in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Act 2 Scene 2).

 

By Act 5 Scene 1, we see that Aeneas has settled into Carthage comfortably – too comfortably.  “Triumph, my mates!  Our travels are at an end,” he says [line 1].  But Hermes a.k.a. Mercury turns up and orders him to go straight to Italy.  He has over-committed himself to Dido.  Now he abandons her.  Dido’s last words, in response, are these:

 

  Now, Dido, with these relics burn thyself,

And make Aeneas famous through the world

For perjury and slaughter of a queen….

Live, false Aeneas!  Truest Dido dies.  [Act 5 Scene 1, 292-4, 312]

 

To conclude: all these takes on the Aeneid are a good read.

 

Shakespeare

 

And now for quite a different take on Virgil’s account of the end of the Trojan War, to be found in Book II of the Aeneid.

 

Just as Chaucer wrote a story about the tragedy of the Roman lady Lucrece [Lucretia], raped by Tarquin, in the fifth story of the Legend of Good Women, so did Shakespeare.  The latter allows himself a much bigger canvas: Chaucer’s story amounts to 206 lines, while Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucrece comes to 1,855.

 

After the rape, the disconsolate Lucrece is left all alone with her thoughts, throughout the night.  She lacks comfort, but seeks it.  And then, in a truly remarkable passage – an “ecphrasis” or “excursus” – Lucrece turns to a painting of the Trojan War, which includes a portrayal of many of the participants, such as “sly” Ulysses, “grave” Nestor, “despairing” Hecuba, Priam, dying from his wounds, and “perjured” Sinon (of Wooden Horse notoriety).

 

Lucrece makes a connection between Sinon’s gross deceit and Tarquin’s:

 

       For even as subtle Sinon here is painted,

So sober-sad, so weary, and so mild

(As if with grief or travail he had fainted),

To me came Tarquin armèd to beguild

With inward vice.  As Priam him did cherish,

So did I Tarquin; so my Troy did perish.  [1541-7]

 

The “enraged” Lucrece wishes to take revenge on Tarquin indirectly, by striking at the painted Sinon, but she realises that this is useless:

 

         She tears the senseless Sinon with her nails,

Comparing him to that unhappy* guest

Whose deed hath made herself herself detest.

At last she smilingly with this gives o’er:

‘Fool, fool!’ quoth she, ‘his wound will not be sore.’  [1564-8]

 

(*According to John Roe, Cambridge editor of The Poems (2006), this means “bearing misfortune”, here.)

 

Shakespeare’s achievement here is truly remarkable.  The pathos of Lucrece’s plight is heightened by the new dimension introduced.

 

So, here we see how the themes of the Trojan War and Aeneas’s liaison with Dido, linked together by Virgil, bore fruit in imaginative adaptations by later poets.