Shakespeare's Symmetries by Ryan James E.;

Author:Ryan, James E.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Published: 2016-07-28T16:00:00+00:00

The preliminaries of this action are presented in the first two scenes of the play. In the opening scene the moony Troilus unarms because he has no “heart” for fighting (1.1.4); his love for Cressida preoccupies him; his battle is within. Pandarus upbraids him for his impatience, for not tarrying to have “a cake out of the wheat” (1.1.15), and leaves. Frustrated in his hopes for love, Troilus then departs for the field with Aeneas. In the second scene, Pandarus sings Troilus’s praises to Cressida by comparing him favorably to Hector, and Cressida admits in soliloquy that she loves Troilus. With the apparent exception of these two scenes, which I will return to, the love story is disposed in the shapely, symmetrical structure outlined above. Cressida’s betrayal, however, both in the structural balance of its position and in its staging, is emphasized, while the shoddy treatment of Cressida by Troilus is more diffused, occurring over the three central scenes. On the morning after, Troilus is already impatient to go and, learning of the deal for Cressida’s exchange, is so thoughtless or indifferent as to leave without telling her himself. In the short central scene he speaks hyperbolically and narcissistically of the sacrifice of his heart to Diomedes; and, finally, in his farewell to Cressida already doubts her fidelity, now indulging the misogynistic suspicions that he had earlier more tentatively expressed. The disposition of the narrative, that is to say, invites the traditional condemnation of Cressida as a false woman, while muting the part Troilus plays in undermining the relationship. As in the war plot, Shakespeare misleadingly invites a traditional judgment, here of Cressida’s character, and inclines us to overlook her final reformation.

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