[In the following essay, Flannery remarks that in Troilus and Cressida Shakespeare demonstrated his understanding of the politically subversive nature of poetry when he portrayed Achilles' insubordinate use of language.]

There was an article in the Chinese Communist Party newspaper, the People's Daily, not long ago, which is helpful in understanding the relationship between poetry and politics with particular reference to Shakespeare.¹ In the article, which, of course, expresses the authoritative views of the party leadership, the music of Beethoven and Schubert was blacklisted because of their “bourgeois and capitalist mentality,” and because their music did not “reflect the class spirit.” Beethoven's Sonata No. 17 was compared to one of Shakespeare's plays which, the article proclaimed, “only serves to disseminate the filthy nature of the bourgeoisie.” Acceptable music or poetry, the piece continued, would glorify “the Red sun of Chairman Mao Tse-Tung and the Chinese Communist Party in the heart of the Chinese People.” Every form of art “must be an instrument of the class struggle.”

No serious person would characterize the mind and poetic genius of Shakespeare as “bourgeois” in the sense of the People's Daily or in any sense. The Chinese leadership is right, however, in deeming Shakespeare's poetry a deadly enemy of the Chinese regime. The political order maintained in China depends for its very existence upon the inculcation, “in the heart of the Chinese people,” of a certain understanding of man, a comprehensive understanding of his internal make-up and his external relations, with other men and the world around him. This understanding must govern the lives of Chinese citizens, telling them what is good and what is bad, what is noble and what is despicable. And it must speak to their hearts, to govern their actions. But Shakespeare's poetry also reflects a comprehensive view of the soul of man and man's place in the universe. And in Shakespeare's universe there is no proper place for the class struggle. He is, indeed, the poet of “nature,” not the poet of “history.” Let the poetry of nature spring up “in the heart of the Chinese people,” and the march of history must come to a dramatic halt.

Every political regime corresponds in some way with a certain view of man's place in the universe; and all great poetry reflects a view of the whole of man's life. Both universes, or views of the whole, are conjured up “in the heart” of their audience, an audience that is naturally made up of citizens. It is here, in their respective views of the whole, conjured up in the hearts of citizens, that poetry and politics meet.

That Shakespeare had considered this relationship between poetry and politics, and in much the same terms, I will try to show in my discussion of Act I, Scene 3 of Troilus and Cressida. I will then speculate briefly on the relationship that exists between the poetry of Troilus and Cressida and the human or political realm to which it is addressed.

Act I, Scene 3 is of course our introduction to the warring Greeks, who are holding council. When we first meet the “princes orgillous,” encamped upon the Dardan plain, they no longer have a stomach for the war. They have lost the courage and resolution which carried them to Troy in their famous cause. The first utterance of the Great Agamemnon seeks the cause of this malaise: “Princes, / What grief hath set the jaundice on your cheeks?” (I.iii. 1-2).²

It is fittingly the wise Ulysses who addresses Agamemnon's concern, discovering and expounding the nature and causes of that fever whereof all the Grecian power is sick. The nature and substance of this sickness is, of course, the famed “neglection of degree,” degree “which is the ladder to all high designs” (102, 127). Ulysses' great speech on degree has rightly been a favorite subject of critical interpretation over the centuries. Its political philosophy, imagery, and metaphysics have been traced by respected scholars, with varying degrees of success, not only to the obvious Chaucer and Homer, but, persuasively, to the Ecclesiastical Polity of Richard Hooker, Sir Thomas Elyot's The Governour, to Boethius, and, perhaps more hopefully than convincingly, to Plato himself.

To prove that Shakespeare drew on many or all of these sources in writing this passage does not tell us anything conclusive about the substance of Shakespeare's thought, any more than Thomas Jefferson should be considered a strict Lockean because he drew on the Treatises of Government in writing the Declaration of Independence. We should always be hesitant to take any single speech as fully representative of Shakespeare's final considered opinion on a matter. But that the substance of this passage should in depth and comprehension be comparable to such ostensibly serious works by such ostensibly serious men should be an added reason to take the passage seriously, certainly a reason not to consider the passage mere “rant,” as at least one worthy critic has done, or as a mere “epitome of contemporary commonplaces” as another critic views it.

I leave aside the speech proper for the moment to consider the immediately succeeding passages. In these, having already expounded the nature of the profound malady afflicting the Grecian warriors, Ulysses turns to the causes of this sickness. These passages are less often honored with the close scrutiny of the critic, as they are obviously of less universal significance than the famous speech on Degree. But they tell us a great deal about the meaning of the preceding speech and, at the same time, about Shakespeare's understanding of the relation of poetry to politics.

We learn in these passages that the source of the political sickness that has undermined the great endeavor of the Greeks, the cause of that neglection of degree that “by a pace goes backward in a purpose / It hath to climb” (128-129), is nothing other than poetry itself, specifically, dramatic poetry. As Ulysses tells us, Patroclus, “with ridiculous and awkward action / (Which, slanderer, he imitation calls)” (149-150), pageants the Greek chieftains for the amusement of the Great Achilles. And further, “Like a strutting player whose conceit / Lies in his hamstring” (153-154), Patroclus acts out the greatness of Agamemnon and the old age of venerable Nestor, with such ridicule as to make Achilles burst in pleasure of his spleen. And Patroclus' imitations, or slanders, are not limited to the greatness of Agamemnon or the old age of Nestor. He presents a comprehensive imitation of the individual souls and collective purposes of the Greek camp. Again, to quote Ulysses,

All our abilities, gifts, natures, shapes,
Severals and generals of grace exact,
Achievements, plots, orders, preventions,
Excitements to the field, or speech for truce,
Success or loss, what is or is not, serves
As stuff for these two to make paradoxes.

(179-184)

Shakespeare's Patroclus, momentarily assuming the classic role of the dramatic poet, imitates the whole Greek universe for the pleasure of Achilles. The paradoxes of Patroclus, paradoxically, find great favor in the “opinion” of the Greek camp. In the words of the venerable Nestor, “… in imitation of these twain, / Who, … opinion crowns / With an imperial voice, many are infect” (185-187). The sickness of the whole Greek camp can thus be said to derive directly from an imitation of Patroclus' scandalous imitation. There is an epidemic of scurrilous poetry in the Greek camp, poetry in the service of the imperial voice of opinion, that so reflects on the natures, virtues and stations of the Greek chieftains that the political order that depends on reverence for them is falling into factions.

What is the nature of that poetry that, in Ulysses' mind, makes it so destructive of the “high designs” of the Greeks? He tells us in lines 197-210, where his disquisition on degree properly comes to an end. The contagious flaw inherent in the poetry that infects the Greek camp is that it esteems the virtues of Achilles as the highest of all virtues. Falling prey to the communicable charm of this poetry, the whole camp places the virtues of the warrior above all others. Specifically, the Greeks

Count wisdom as no member of the war,
… and esteem no act
But that of hand. …
So that, the ram that batters down the wall,
For the great swing and rudeness of his poise,
They place before his hand that made the engine,
Or those that with the fineness of their souls
By reason guide his execution.

It is because this degree is neglected, the degree placing the “still and mental parts”—reason—above mere physical power—“the ram that batters down the wall”—that the Grecian “enterprise is sick” or literally suffering a political disorder.

Every political community, like the Greek camp, establishes some “degree” by which men are distinguished from one another for the purposes of rule; when this degree is shaken, chaos or disorder threatens. But in this scene Shakespeare clearly has in mind the question: “What is it that makes any such degree ‘stand in authentic place’?” The answer given by Ulysses is, the recognition of the pre-eminence of “the still and mental parts” of man to all others, particularly to “the great swing and rudeness” of an Achilles. If this measure of distinction among men—this “degree”—is neglected, the argument runs, man is reduced to the level of beasts, for there is no sure ground to distinguish him from them. But this is precisely what the poetry infecting the Grecian camp does deny, leading unconsciously but inevitably to the conclusion, so aptly put by old Nestor, that “Achilles' horse / Makes many Thetis' sons” (211-212). It is when this degree is suffocate, that that universal chaos ensues, wherein,

… everything includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey
And last eat up himself.

(119-124)

The particular sickness of the Greek camp is the failure of the Greek warriors to recognize the “degree” which is the ordering principle of the Greek polity. Recognition ultimately must mean viewing the ordering principle of that particular polity as reflecting the order of the cosmos itself, or the will of the gods. The scurrilous poetry of Patroclus and his imitators undermines that view by making “paradoxes” of all that “is or is not” for the Greeks. So much Ulysses tells us. But Ulysses' analysis of the causes of this sickness does not provide the political “remedy” sought by Agamemnon. According to Ulysses, as I have said, the decisive distinction among men, the distinction according to which one man rightly may rule another, is founded on the degree of wisdom possessed, a distinction in “the still and mental parts” of men, in the “fineness of their souls.” This is hardly less revolutionary than the scurril jests of Patroclus, to a political order in which the basis of “degrees” among men is the authority of the gods. But this is the final formal argument made by Ulysses to defend such an order against the self-consuming poetry which threatens chaos in the Greek camp and would reduce Achilles, and all the other Greeks, to the level of Achilles' horse, or worse.

Having allowed Ulysses to make this argument, Shakespeare immediately shows us, not by argument but by action, that the conclusion arrived at is somehow not politically applicable. Consider: Ulysses' famous argument has just been concluded pithily by old Nestor when the stage is interrupted by a trumpet blast. Enter Aeneas from Troy. Aeneas has a message for the Great Agamemnon and, after some courtly formalities, which are not without a point, he asks—speaking of course to Agamemnon himself—“How may / A stranger to those most imperial looks / Know them from eyes of other mortals?”

Agamemnon. How?
Aeneas. Ay.
I ask that I might waken reverence,
And on the cheek be ready with a blush
Modest as morning when she coldly eyes
The Youthful Phoebus.
Which is that god in office, guiding men?
Which is the high and mighty Agamemnon?

(I.iii.223-232)

The mocking tone of this address is not lost on Agamemnon, who turns to his fellow chieftains saying, “This Troyan scorns us, or the men of Troy / Are ceremonious courtiers” (233-234). Nor should the irony of Aeneas' query be lost on the audience. Imagine Aeneas on stage staring the high and mighty Agamemnon square in the face, speaking directly to him and asking “Where is the divine Agamemnon, how am I to distinguish him from other mere mortals?” And all the divine Agamemnon, for all his glory, can reply is a lame—if imperious—“How?” It is a good question, one which he never answers. Of course, there is no recognizable mark of nature or divinity to distinguish Agamemnon from the other mere mortals over whom his sceptre holds sway. There is no apparent natural or divine ground to justify a blush of reverence on Aeneas' cheek. In fact, it would seem that the most obvious, if not the most satisfactory, mark of distinction among men, especially in a warring camp of Greeks, is precisely the one recognized by the factious elements in the camp—the “act of hand,” the great swing and rudeness of an Achilles. The implication of Aeneas' puzzlement, in light of the discourse which precedes it, is that Agamemnon's position as ruler over the Greeks, the degree that sets him apart from those over whom he rules, and before which men should blush with reverence, though it claims the authority of the gods, is, in fact, purely a product of convention. This convention has been called into question by the infectious poetry which raises the natural, if insufficient, claim of Achilles or of physical power in general.

But more to the point: Suppose that Agamemnon possessed that “fineness of soul” proclaimed by Ulysses to be the only natural basis of rule. Would this be any more apparent to Aeneas, or to any Greek or Trojan, than the supposed touch of divinity in Agamemnon, which is not visible at all? No. The fineness of their souls may be Ulysses' and nature's final measure of degrees among men; this final degree, standing in authentic place, may be the ladder to all high designs; neglection of this degree may by a pace go backward in any purpose it has to climb; perhaps Ulysses would go so far as to say that this degree may somehow be the soul of the political community; but this degree is no more acceptable than the divinity of Agamemnon as the actual ordering principle of the Greek camp, or of any other body politic.

To return then to the relation of poetry to politics. An imitation of a slanderous imitation of the political universe of the Greeks has undermined both the actual ordering principle or degree of the Grecian camp, which is the divine authority of Agamemnon, and the true or natural ordering principle among men, consisting in the degrees of fineness of their souls. The nexus in the relation of poetry to politics, as it is reflected in this scene, is the view of the political universe, of the degrees within individual souls and the corresponding degrees in the external relations among the citizens, implicit in both politics and poetry. Poetry infects the body politic when it introduces into it an alien and hostile substance, a view of the political universe which is incompatible with that view which breathes life into the civil authority and reverence into the citizens. The disease is introduced into the body politic through the over-indulgence of the “spleen” of the citizens and the natural susceptibility of the imperial voice of opinion. Perhaps Ulysses would say that it becomes mortal when it cuts the body politic off altogether from its soul.

It is impossible to think that Shakespeare could have been unconscious of the parallel between the “imitation” of the political universe of the Greek camp by Patroclus and his imitators, and that which he himself was preparing for his own audience. In fact, quite the opposite must be the case. Shakespeare could not but have been acutely conscious that his imitation of the Greek and Trojan universes bore an inherent relation to the individual souls and collective lives of his audience and to whatever “high designs” his audience might affect. Just as the scurrilous poetry of Patroclus played upon the spleen and opinion of the Greek camp, Shakespeare plays upon the passions and sentiments of his audience.

The best efforts of earnest scholars leave us still unsure of the more immediate “political” purposes of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, that is, of those idiosyncrasies peculiar to Shakespeare's contemporary audience, to which some specific passages of the play might, in whole or in part, be addressed. And we are not much the worse for that. We do, however, know with certainty that Troilus and Cressida contains some immortal verse, poetry with a significance not just for Shakespeare's time or some transient purpose of that time, but for all time and for the highest purposes. It seems best, then, to understand the play as it is addressed to men of all times, particularly as it bears upon any high design affected by them. This is the Grecian camp to which the best of Shakespeare's poetry is ultimately addressed.

How then does Troilus and Cressida affect the high designs of this universal camp of Greeks? For there can be no doubt that opinion has crowned its author with an “imperial voice,” and that with imitation of him, of one sort or another, many are infect. Do all our abilities, gifts, natures, shapes, achievements, plots, orders, and preventions merely serve as stuff for the great poet to make paradoxes? And if so, what does this mean for our Helens and our wars?

The effect of a given work of drama on its audience is inseparably linked with its form. To oversimplify, tragedy incites admiration and tears; comedy incites ridicule and laughter. From the first, however, publishers and critics have been hard pressed to say what form of drama Troilus and Cressida is. The textual history of the play foreshadows the centuries of critical confusion that have followed its first publication.

In the quarto edition of 1609 the title page refers to “The Historie” of Troilus and Cressida. But there was a second issue of this quarto text to which was added an epistle describing the play as a comedy. In the Folio of 1623, the play is titled “The Tragedie” of Troilus and Cressida. Yet it is not placed properly with the tragedies, but in a nameless position between the tragedies and the histories. Later critics have tried, with limited success, to resolve this dilemma by placing the play in a new category altogether, naming it a “problem play” or a “comical satire.” Clearly, the play does not fit comfortably into any traditional dramatic mold.

It has been possible for this confusion over the form of the play to persist through the centuries because of the confusing dramatic effect the play has consistently had on each generation of its viewers and readers. It is the common, if not universal, reaction to Troilus and Cressida, to feel that it is dramatically fragmented, that it lacks dramatic unity and completeness, and that as a result it is somehow dissatisfying or perplexing, even unpleasant. We must give due attention to this common effect of the play on the sentiments of its audience. It is an injustice not infrequently inflicted upon poetry, to reduce it prosaically to its supposed elements or philosophic implications, and to call this “understanding” it. When one ceases to be sensible of the laughter and tears and the whole range of subtler human passions brought to life in good poetry, one ceases to be capable of understanding it. It may be as impossible to understand poetry by “transcending” its pathos as to understand moderation and courage while being a glutton and a coward.

The confusion of the sentiments which is the common reaction to this play occurs in part, I think, because the play arouses in the audience passions and sentiments the grounds for which are contradictory. Everyone has tasted the bitter ridicule of Thersites which flavors virtually every character and every action of the play. Where Thersites is not at work, there is Pandarus, or Shakespeare himself, directly casting upon Homer's heroes and their heroic endeavor a shadow of ridicule and disgust. From the midst of all this ridicule, however, rise numerous instances of apparently unsullied nobility for which the audience is irresistibly moved to admiration. Yet neither admiration nor ridicule is dramatically resolved into the other. To be sure, the play is in part a debunking of the Homeric heroes; but it also debunks the debunkers. Dramatically, at least, a certain portion of heroism is left intact, if in doubt, at the end. The minute textual support demanded of such an argument is impossible to give here. But I will offer one example of what I think to be the contradictory sentiments aroused and left in contradiction by the play. In Act IV, Scene 5, Ulysses identifies Troilus for Agamemnon. Drawing on a private account given him by Aeneas, Ulysses describes Troilus as

… a true knight,
Not yet mature, yet matchless, firm of word,
Speaking in deeds and deedless in his tongue;
Not soon provok'd, nor being provok'd, soon calm'd,
His heart and hand both open and both free;
For what he has, he gives; what thinks, he shews;
Yet gives he not till judgment guide his bounty,
Nor dignifies an impair thought with breath;
Manly as Hector, but more dangerous. …

(96-104)

The description is not without its ironies, but in the main the audience is here made to sense—to believe—the integrity, magnanimity, courage, judgment, and self-control attributed to Troilus by Ulysses. We feel that this is generally an authoritative account of the true Troilus, and we admire his virtues. But the play began by showing us the changeable nature of Troilus, who at one moment could not fight upon the argument of Helen, and at the next was off to the wars with Aeneas. And it ends showing him rapt in revenge, which we know to be at once characteristic of him and one of the primary destructive forces in the play, in as much as it is “deaf as an adder” to the voice of reason. Ulysses' attributions are partly untrue and partly overshadowed by the tragic flaws of Troilus. In addition they are diluted by the railings of Thersites for whom Troilus is a doting young Trojan ass who is willing to risk his arm for a sleeve. Still, this expression of Troilus' virtues does not completely lose its force over the sentiments of the audience. Our admiration is not dispelled, it is only unsettled. There are many passages in the play which convey a similar sense of self-sufficient nobility or virtue. This sense is not destroyed, even by all the railings of Thersites. It lingers, even to the end, but with a sense of doubt as to the grounds on which it stands. The audience is made to harbor simultaneously in its breast, the mockery of the empty heroism of the play, and the distaste for that mockery because it seems to destroy the grounds for the true heroism that the play allows us to believe is possible. Troilus himself senses a like dichotomy of soul and desperately wishes to resolve it in favor of all that is beautiful and noble:

… there is a credence in my heart,
An esperance so obstinately strong
That doth invert that test of eyes and ears,
As if those organs had deceptious functions,
Created only to calumniate.

(V.ii. 128-132)

It is doubtful whether he succeeds. It is also doubtful that the play would endorse his success even if he were to achieve it. The play offers little comfort for the innocently noble. But it offers no comfort for the mockers of that nobility, and in this view cannot be better summed up than in the words of a great modern poet:

Come let us mock at the great …
Come let us mock at the wise …
Come let us mock at the good …
Mock mockers after that
That would not lift a hand maybe
To help good, wise or great
To bar that foul storm out, for we
Traffic in mockery.

One only wonders whether the author of Troilus and Cressida, when speaking about the mockers of the good, great and wise, would have spoken in the first person.

This explanation of the nature of the dramatic confusion or perplexity of Troilus and Cressida does not depart much from common opinion on the matter. However, many have been inspired by their dramatic confusion to seek the causes of the incoherence or fragmentation experienced in the play. And here common opinion is on less sure ground. Some argue that the “incompleteness” or lack of conclusion that one senses in the play results from Shakespeare's having “lost interest” in the play before he finished it; others argue that he did not finish it at all, but left it to some less skilled hand. Some blame the dramatic incoherence of the play on the supposed fact that Shakespeare was rewriting a play already in existence; still others claim that the “material” on which Shakespeare drew (meaning the diverse accounts of the Troy legend) was impossible to weave together into a dramatic unity. All of these explanations are alike in seeking the cause of the apparent incoherence of the play elsewhere than in the art of the author. It is as impossible to disprove as to prove them. But there is another more interesting and more fruitful explanation suggested also by common opinion.

It is almost as frequently said that Troilus and Cressida is “intellectual,” “analytic,” or “philosophic,” as it is said that it lacks dramatic unity or coherence. And surely there is something to this, if we recall the Greek council scene and Ulysses' degree speech, its Trojan counterpart in Act II, Scene 2, and the great dialogue between Ulysses and Achilles in Act III, Scene 3. I am not concerned with whether, as some have maintained, Ulysses' speech on degree is drawn from Plato's Republic, or the Achilles-Ulysses dialogue is taken directly or indirectly from First Alcibiades, or with Hector's anomalous reference to Aristotle. The point is that all these passages, while they play a part in the drama, also evince a concern for the truth of their respective arguments, independent of the effect of that truth on the action of the play. Indeed, it is worth noting that in each case the effect of the argument on the action of the play is emphatically nothing.

We have seen in the case of Ulysses that the conclusion of his argument on degree does not solve the political problem facing the Greeks. In the Trojan council, Hector no sooner concludes his exposition on political morality than he dismisses his apparently true conclusions, with an abruptness that cannot but give pause, and follows the dictates of an empty honor. Achilles is temporarily moved by the arguments of Ulysses in their dialogue (though it is well to remember that it is not the profundity of those arguments that moves Achilles, but their success in eliciting his envy of Ajax). But in the end the arguments come to nothing when challenged by Achilles' previous engagement with Polyxena. If the arguments of these passages do not contribute to the action of the play, they nonetheless affect our understanding of it. And by their very detachment from the action they encourage us to consider their truth for its own sake. In this sense, they seem to be more philosophic than poetic, at least if we can say that philosophy aims more at discovering the truth, poetry at moving the passions.

It does seem to be the special province of the poet to have a deep sense of the human passions and sentiments and of the reigning opinions of his times. He plays upon them deftly, with utmost precision, instinctively sensing what image, word or phrase, what nuance of character or juxtaposition of scene, will stir elation, hope, anger, dread, or sorrow in the breasts of his fellows. When he takes his eye off this anticipated reaction of his audience, his poetry may be expected to suffer. Though he may hit upon a phrase truer in itself, it will not strike home as truly as it might. Though he follows a flawless train of logic, he may seem to discourse inconsequentially—not, to be sure, to that god among men, the philosopher, but poetry, in its nature, is not written for an audience of philosophers. Indeed, deception, which, in being opposed to truth, must be presumed to be anathema to a philosopher, is the very “bark” and “convoy” of the poet, carrying him unerringly to his intended effect. One might say, then, that by keeping his eye on the truth of his arguments, Shakespeare took his eye off the anticipated reaction of his audience; by seeking consistency of thought, he sacrificed the appearance of consistency in the drama. Or, perhaps, in seeking to inform our understandings, he failed to direct our passions and sentiments. It seems to be a prerequisite of good poetry that the poet himself should feel the passions he imitates, as Shakespeare surely does in some of the passages of Troilus and Cressida. But overall the play manifests the detachment of its author from the passions portrayed in it, a detachment similar to that of the philosophic passages cited above from the drama of the play.

From this point of view the dramatic confusion of the play comes to light as an accident of Shakespeare's preoccupation with the truth of his arguments as opposed to the appearance of truth. But one might say instead that the dramatic inconsistencies of the play are consistent with the truths sought in it, and that the discordant passions portrayed in the play and excited by it in the audience are harmonized, if not dramatically, then intellectually or philosophically. Such a reading of the play as a whole is suggested in both the council scenes, where reason and truth respectively put the unruly passions of Greeks and Trojans in their proper perspective. But just as in these scenes reason and truth prove incapable of actually governing the unruly, destructive passions guiding the political fortunes of both Greeks and Trojans, so in the play as a whole these passions prevail over the drama.

Philosophy puts the passions in perspective, but reason and truth are also put in perspective by the drama. They cannot be depended upon to govern the political life of men. That life will continue to be governed by such passions and sentiments as we see still ruling at the end of the play, passions swayed perhaps by poetry, through the spleen and the susceptible opinion of men, but not, as the play repeatedly shows us, by the truths of the intellect addressed to the understanding. The fineness of men's souls, to the extent that this consists in that reason which apprehends the truths of the intellect, does not govern the fates of political communities.

Also from the point of view of reason, both laughter and tears, ridicule and admiration, may seem insufficient, incomplete responses to the political or human universe, each reflecting perhaps a part of the truth about it, but in that very fact necessarily being blind to the rest of the truth. From this point of view, poetry itself, whatever form it might take, whatever passions it may elicit, might be incapable of representing the human or political world in its fullness. Each attempt of poetry to do so must end in the arousal of one passion or another, the implicit grounds of which reflect at best a partial truth, and therefore a partial falsehood, about the soul of man and his place in the universe.

Troilus and Cressida displays the contradictory or chaotic tendencies—the insufficiencies—of the passions governing the political life of man, and of the passions associated with poetry of any form. It suggests a resolution of this chaos, but it appears to be a resolution that is neither political nor poetic.

Notes

1. Quoted in the Los Angeles Times, January 15, 1974.

2. All quotations are from The Tragedy of Troilus and Cressida (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965).