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All the Bloody Shakespeare - Troilus and Cressida

 Troilus and Cressida


Falling down a hole with your legs chopped off feels like reading this play.


Close friends get to call it TC. It’s a bit of a weird title for the play because the eponymous lovers barely get a look in on the thing. Their entire story is this, Troilus falls in love with Cressida, then sees her flirting with Diomedes and gets hurt feelings. That’s literally the whole thing, let’s try not to think about it. Troilus isn't even on the side we're supposed to sympathise with.

You can see some obvious influence from Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, and a huge influence from Seneca’s Trojan Women (yes, I can justify this statement, come at me). And what comes out is something not quite as good as either. However, the most obvious influence that Shakespeare draws on is Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.

The play starts out with a lot of exposition, and I do mean a lot! We’re talking three acts almost entirely given over to background information, political posturing and a few clumsy gags performed by Jar Jar Theristes. The Greeks and the Troyans (Shakespeare doesn’t know the correct word is Trojans, what an idiot!) have been at war for ages and it’s getting really old. Yoda isn’t in it but there are some of the greatest heroes and fighters in the history of the world gathered together at the brink of a great battle: Hector, Achilles, Ajax, Ulysses (that one is on Seneca), Aeneas, Priam and Menelaus (who isn’t mad but is in fact Spartan). And what way to better use these action heroes than to have them engaging in extended discussions and reading letters. The Greeks want the Greeks to win and the Troyans want the Troyans to win and because they’re so equally matched, it’s a bit of a stalemate. The narrative favours the Greeks so you can think of them as The Rebels, but it’s a very stupid war so morality doesn’t come into it much.

What isn’t helping is that the Greek’s best fighter Achilles is more interested in staying in his tent with his “friend” Patroclus than he is in winning the war. There is no direct statement that Achilles and Patroclus are lovers, but they get a better love story than Troilus and Cressida do. They sulk, they hide away and when Patroclus is killed by Hector, Achilles goes on a rampage and brings us to the best part of the play, Act Five.
It is a love that dare not speak its name.

Act Five is a riot. Literally. Shakespeare packs as much action as he can into the last section of the play, presumably in the assumption that if you end on a high note - the big fight then everything will be okay. It is the exact same strategy George Lucas picked when writing the Phantom Menace - endless politics and bureaucracy then a bit of Darth Maul to perk it all up. If Shakespeare .had been paying attention when he watched the prequels he might have avoided falling into the same trap (or he might at least have added a podrace to break it up a bit). In this section Hector is taking the place of Darth Maul - in that he is the best fighter and hands down the most interesting character. Much like the Phantom Menace it is not a fair fight. Hector has finished fighting for the day and is just getting into his pyjamas when Achilles and his gang of merry rampagers surround him and stab him up. This is much less heroic than the usual one on one portrayal of this fight in which Achilles comes off as heroic, there is no remedption for the Achilles character - he starts out a whiny turd and he wins his battle as a whiny turd. Which, for a heroic epic is not particularly gratifying. It would be like having the hero of Phantom Menace lose when fighting two on one and then pulling a "sand in the eyes" trick. It's just not a satisfying ending. It certainly doesn't justify all of the boring

So what becomes of Troillus and his beloved Cressida? They are, after all, supposed to be what the play is about it. Well, not much. When she leaves him for Diomedes he gets a bit sad. It's rubbish, this whole play is rubbish and a waste of your time. There is no other circumstance under which you will hear me say this but you would be better off watching the Phantom Menace. I hated this play so much, that I haven't been able to read another of his plays for sixth months.

2/5 - It's not a tragedy, it's not funny, it's not interesting. Get it together Shakey.
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