SOURCE: Slights, Camille. “The Parallel Structure of Troilus and Cressida.” Shakespeare Quarterly 25, no. 1 (winter 1974): 42-51.

[In the following essay, Slights examines the distinctive structure of Troilus and Cressida, and concludes that through the effects of the play's paralleling of scenes and the love and war plots, Shakespeare created what may be called a tragic satire.]

More than any other play in the canon, Troilus and Cressida has been the subject of apparently limitless disagreement. Critical controversies surround almost every aspect of the play. Did Shakespeare portray the Trojans more favorably than the Greeks? Is Troilus a sensualist deceiving himself with the posturings of an outworn code of amour courtois or an idealist in a corrupt world, an embodiment of human striving for perfect love and honor? Is the play Shakespeare's experiment with the new genre of comic satire or is it an attempt at tragedy? Why is the conclusion of the play so inconclusive, ending neither in death nor in triumph for Troilus? Does Troilus and Cressida satirize decadent medieval values or does it reflect Shakespeare's disgust with love and honor, idealism and sensuality, reason and emotion? Is the play a statement of despair of all values—an image of chaos—or is it an indictment of abuses and corruptions of enduring values?

All of these questions, the problems of character, of genre, of the conclusion of the play, and of its moral vision, are ultimately asking about Shakespeare's attitude toward his material in Troilus and Cressida. In spite of critics who propose to settle these problems once and for all, readers, audiences, directors, and actors will continue to find in the complexity of the play justification for a variety of emphases and approaches, as doubtless Shakespeare's contemporaries did. I do not intend to provide a definitive solution to all critical problems. My thesis is that we can agree on the basic tone of Troilus and Cessida if we attend carefully to the distinctive design of the play. The deliberate paralleling of characters, scenes, and ideas provides a subtle, but clear and dramatically effective guide to audience response.¹ Shakespeare abides our questions because he did not neglect to furnish us with their answers. The shape of the play defines its meaning and controls its tone.

The play opens with parallel scenes between Pandarus and Troilus and between Pandarus and Cressida. In the first scene we meet the lovesick Troilus and hear him extol Cressida's charms to Pandarus in good Petrarchan fashion. In the next scene we meet the “pearl” of Troilus' eulogy capably exchanging bawdy jokes with her servant and Pandarus. By placing together scenes which are similar in form but contrasting in tone, Shakespeare created a basically satiric situation. As O. J. Campbell has pointed out, the vehicle of Shakespeare's satire—Troilus' Petrarchan clichés—is a common topic in contemporary satire.² Shakespeare's method, however, differs significantly from that of the comic satirists Campbell relates it to. Jonson's Poetaster, for example, satirizes pretentious diction and rhetoric as Shakespeare does, but in Jonson there is overt satiric commentary on the language. In Shakespeare, there is no such commentary, with the result that many critics, who ignore the satiric impact of the antithetically parallel scenes, are baffled by the diction of Troilus and Cressida.³ The technique of parallelism, moreover, directs the satire toward Cressida's coquetry as well as toward Troilus' pretensions. Troilus and Pandarus raise expectations about Cressida which are frustrated by the following scene, which in turn makes us recall the first scene from an ironic perspective. The portrayal of a Cressida who would lie upon her back to defend her belly mocks Troilus' description of her as “too stubborn-chaste” to be won, and, conversely, the weak, womanish Troilus of I.i. renders ridiculous Pandarus' description of him in I.ii. as a warrior with bloodied sword and hacked helmet more fearful than Hector.⁴

As the play develops, this pattern of expectation and recall functions in more complex ways. In scene three Shakespeare begins a series of council scenes in which the characters philosophize, speculate about values, and discuss ends and means. These scenes constitute one of the dominant parallel patterns in the dramatic design, enlarging the scope of the satire and providing the intellectual and ethical context of the characters' behavior. In the first of these council scenes, we witness the Greek leaders conferring about their mutual problems with ceremonial dignity. Agamemnon, trying to boost the morale of his companions, asserts that the failure of their design is not shameful but the testing of true value by experience and time. Nestor echoes Agamemnon, arguing that “valour's show and valour's worth divide / In storms of fortune” (I.iii.46-47). Ulysses, instead of discovering value in resignation to their plight, analyzes its cause. The Greek army, he argues, is weak and ineffectual because of a failure of leadership. Reason and justice cannot prevail in a disordered state. The disdain for degree among the leaders themselves has infected the whole camp with “an envious fever / Of pale and bloodless emulation” (I.iii.133-34). The Greek leaders analyze their situation in terms of traditional moral values, but, just as the dignity of Troilus' emotion in I.i. is lowered by the triteness of his elevated language, so their pretension to wisdom is undercut by the pomposity and magniloquence of their involuted syntax and Latinate diction. The satire of the Greeks becomes more pointed in a short scene between Ulysses and Nestor after Aeneas has delivered Hector's challenge. The general council in which Ulysses so eloquently denounces Achilles' contempt for degree and praises the harmonious order of good over evil and reason over force dwindles into the clandestine scheming of Ulysses and Nestor. They talk not about reason and justice but about how to control popular opinion by fixing the lottery to select Ajax. Nestor makes clear their contempt for their own heroes, whose weaknesses they hope to manipulate:

Two curs shall tame each other: pride alone
Must tarre the mastiffs on, as 'twere their bone.

(I.iii.390-91)

Although their bombast and cynical scheming render the Greek leaders rather absurd and contemptible, the action of the play in no way invalidates their stated values. Cressida's behavior, in fact, demonstrates the truth of Agamemnon's contention that “in the wind and tempest of [fortune's] frown, / Distinction with a broad and powerful fan, / Puffing at all, winnows the light away” (I.iii.26-28). The love plot demonstrates the need for “persistive constancy” under misfortune in human relationships, and the war plot justifies Ulysses' exposition of the moral chaos which results from neglect of the degree that binds the universe in an ordered design. The dramatic effect, then, of the contrast between the public and private council is to illuminate the discrepancy between word and deed, between Ulysses' rational understanding of value and the love of power politics which seems actually to motivate him.

The public and private councils of the Greek leaders are followed by a council of war among Thersites, Ajax, Achilles, and Patroclus. Again, the irony of the parallelism is double-edged. This scene demonstrates the accuracy of Ulysses' description of the dissension in the Greek camp, but it also points up the undercurrent of absurdity running through the earlier scene. When Ulysses complains of Achilles' “mocking our designs,” he is describing accurately Shakespeare's dramatic method. The contrast between the elaborate complimentary addresses of Ulysses (“Thou great commander, nerve and bone of Greece, / Heart of our numbers, soul and only spirit”; “And thou most reverend for thy stretched out life”) and the scurrilous epithets which Ajax and Thersites hurl at each other (“Your whoreson cur,”; “thou stool for a witch!”; “Thou scurvy-valiant ass!”) emphasizes the pomposity of the first as well as the ugly sordidness of the second. The parallelism in form between the two scenes emphasizes their difference in tone and at the same time it suggests that, despite their difference in style, the two groups of characters are very much alike in action. Their common cynicism, moreover, is expressed through the continuity of imagery in the two scenes. When Ulysses' description of the “fever that keeps Troy on foot” is echoed in Thersites' “botchy core” of running boils and Nestor's “mastiffs” are echoed in Ajax's frustrated cries of “dog” and “whoreson cur,” the audience is made to see not only that the Greek forces are morally diseased but also that the men who diagnose these ills most acutely are themselves infected.

The Trojan Council Scene follows a similar pattern. It begins with a dignified discussion among the leaders of questions of value rising from their participation in the war, is interrupted by an outsider, ends with a decision to act through the forthcoming duel between Hector and a Greek hero, and is followed by an abusive discussion of the war among Thersites, Patroclus, and Achilles. Although the Trojan council is clearly designed to parallel the Greek council, it follows a very different path from theory to action. While the Greeks repeated clichés in self-consciously formal rhetoric, the Trojans speak more simply out of their personal experience with the war. The Greeks accepted traditional values unanimously and unquestioningly. The Trojans debate heatedly the nature of value itself. Troilus, in his impetuous contempt for “reason and respect” as a cowardly disguise for fear, contrasts with Ulysses, presenting an antithesis to the Greek's calm, persuasive rationality in argument and to his deviousness in action. Troilus' argument that value is created by personal commitment and that previous actions have committed Troy to Helen's defense illuminates the superficiality of Agamemnon's praise of constancy as well as Troilus' own relationship with Cressida. Constancy in a worthless cause, as Hector tells Troilus, proves to be not virtue, but “mad idolatry.”

At first Hector seems to be free of the smug complacency of the Greeks and of Troilus' self-infatuated irrationality. He raises the basic moral issue in terms of specific, relevant action: the Trojans should let Helen go because their cause is based on a false scheme of values—Helen is worthless to them. He opposes Troilus' solipsistic conception of value by appealing to a conception of moral law similar to that of Ulysses. Natural law establishes right and wrong beyond any human will, and the state should support the natural order by restraining the “raging appetites” of corrupt emotions. The scene reaches its climax, however, with Hector's abrupt reversal. After explaining clearly that the “moral laws / Of nature and of nations” demand the return of Helen and the end of the war, he decides to lead the Trojans into battle “For 'tis a cause that hath no mean dependence / Upon our joint and several dignities” (II.ii.192-93). The spectacle of Hector capitulating to Troilus' idea of honor thus provides an interesting parallel with the conclusion of the Greek council. The scenes do not contrast two schemes of value; they are complementary dramatizations of the failure of men to live up to their values. The Greeks, following Ulysses, dramatize action detached from value; the Trojans, led by Hector, portray the debasement of value through emotion. The Greeks speak wisely but without personal commitment, and their actions belie their wise words. The Trojans act as they speak, but they use words to deny the dictates of their reason and to justify the folly of their deeds. In both we see man's reciprocal relationship with his political environment. The corruption of its members weakens the state, and corrupt political action corrupts individual men. In the next scene, Thersites' scathing commentary on the war exposes the futility of his own burning hatred and summarizes the self-deception which unites Greek and Trojan:

Here is such patchery, such juggling and such knavery! All the argument is a whore and a cuckold—a good quarrel to draw emulous factions and bleed to death upon.

(II.iii.70-73)

By introducing the Greek and Trojan leaders in parallel councils of war, Shakespeare enables the audience to see distinctions in the ways people pervert moral values without obscuring the fundamental assumption that men are capable of discerning values which give significance to their lives. No character serves as an adequate spokesman for Shakespeare in these discussions of human value, but the complexity and depth of the debate preclude the simple interpretation of Troilus and Cressida as a satire on the outworn codes of courtly love and chivalry. These scenes are not Shakespeare's speculations on the bankruptcy of all values; they are dramatic actions in which fictional characters with distinctive strengths and weaknesses all betray their own truths. Thus, Shakespeare used the technique of parallelism to provide dramatic contrasts and variety within a unified imaginative vision. In the world of Troilus and Cressida, men are motivated by selfish appetites for sex and power, yet pride themselves on the beauty of their emotions and the subtlety of their wisdom. The play presents a pageant of lust and pride against a background of devouring time. Both Greeks and Trojans guide themselves by their appetites instead of their reason and in the process destroy the value of their own lives. In both the love plot and the war plot

… appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat up himself.

(I.iii.121-24)

In the first two acts the appetite which carries with it its own ruin is revealed primarily through the juxtaposition of antithetically parallel scenes. Parallel form also connects scenes which are separated in the largely chronological presentation of the narrative line. For example, Ulysses' flattery of Ajax in II.iii. parallels his more complex wooing of Achilles in III.iii., and both are verbal duels which culminate in the anticlimactic physical duel in IV.v. As more complex patterns emerge, the technique of parallelism allows a gradual darkening of tone. The series of parallel love scenes, for example, suggests the pervasiveness of man's subjection of reason to lust while simultaneously demanding from the audience an increasingly compassionate response to the ravages of appetite.

We meet the famous lovers Helen and Paris in a broadly satiric scene where Helen, whose face launched ten thousand ships, becomes plain Nell, outdoing even Pandarus with salacious jests. Pandarus' smirking licentiousness connects the vulgarity of Paris and Helen in Act III scene one with the new lovers Troilus and Cressida in the next scene and forestalls any tender lyricism in the consummation of their love affair. To reinforce the parallel between Helen's infidelity and Cressida's, Pandarus unwittingly prophesies the outcome of this union: “let all constant men be Troiluses, and all false women Cressids, and all brokers-between Pandars!” (III.ii.201-3) and sends the lovers to bed with a satiric address to the audience: “And Cupid grant to all tongue-tied maidens here / Bed, chamber, pandar, to provide this gear!” (III.ii.209-10).

The satiric comedy of this scene is, however, only part of its function. Cressida is not the stock comic figure of a slut, but an understandable if limited woman dominated by fear. She is not coyly seeking declarations of love from Troilus when she says:

Blind fear, that seeing reason leads, finds safer footing than blind reason stumbling without fear: to fear the worst oft cures the worse.

(III.ii.70-72)

She is explaining clearly the psychology of a timid, prudent person. Her tragedy is that she seeks security in love but fears the vulnerability which love necessarily involves. With real self-awareness she explains to Troilus her paradoxical desire for and fear of love:

I have a kind of self resides with you,
But an unkind self that itself will leave
To be another's fool.

(III.ii.147-49)

The divided self which will make her incapable of constancy under stress certainly is not heroic, but neither does it make her a monster of promiscuity and fickleness. The self-perpetuating insecurity which tortures her is too real and too prevalent a human problem for easy mockery.

Troilus also demands sympathy as well as ridicule. His desire to “wallow in the lily beds / Prepared for the deserver!” is absurd, but Shakespeare does not allow us to laugh from a sense of superiority long. Troilus himself recognizes the monstrosity of the language of love and asks us to look more deeply into the cause of lovers' vows to “weep seas, live in fire, eat rocks, tame tigers.” While Cressida is unable to come to terms with the insecurity of the human condition, Troilus fears its banality and imperfection:

This is the monstrosity in love, lady—that the will is infinite and the execution confined; that the desire is boundless and the act a slave to limit.

(III.ii.79-81)

Thus, while the design of the Troth-Plighting Scene focuses attention on the similarity of the two pairs of lovers, the parallelism is not repetition. If Shakespeare's Paris and Helen are primarily travesties of romantic tradition, his doting Troilus and unfaithful Cressida are presented with greater complexity and sympathy. Pandarus' presence on stage reinforces the comparison and taints the air of romance, but he does not act as a satiric commentator in the sense that Jonson's Crites does. Pandarus is too limited to act as Shakespeare's spokesman, and the obvious impercipience of his response functions to keep the audience from making the same mistake of reducing the self-defeating irrationality of Troilus and Cressida to a dirty joke. Troilus' attempt to transform sex into love is just as true a part of human experience as Pandarus' recognition that for all Troilus' fancy talk his object is to go to bed with Cressida. If Cressida's protestations of undying loyalty remind us of her imminent betrayal, Troilus' remind us that his name does become synonymous with constancy.

The scene between Cressida and Diomedes in Act V continues the pattern of parallel scenes of increasingly somber tone. Cressida's union with Diomedes punctuated by Thersites' obscene observations is a horrible parody of her union with Troilus presided over by Pandarus. The satire is no longer that of comic incongruity and self-deception. Cressida's falseness is clear to everyone, including herself. Thersites' incomprehension of Troilus' pain and the sadistic pleasure that he takes in translating Cressida's admission that

The error of our eye directs our mind;
What error leads must err—O, then conclude
Minds swayed by eyes are full of turpitude.

(V.ii.110-12)

into “‘My mind is now turned whore’” parallel Pandarus' role in the earlier union with Troilus. Shakespeare forces his audience beyond sentimentality and amused disgust toward emotional and intellectual understanding.

The most obvious instance of structural parallelism in Troilus and Cressida is the double plotting. The war story and the love story are not closely linked narratively, but the design of their presentation unifies them in tone and theme. All of the main characters have plans that they discuss and try to execute. Not only do all of their plans fail—and fail ironically—Shakespeare carefully arranged scenes and characters so that we see that they must inevitably fail because the values they are based on are rotten at the core. The two schemes which tie together the various attempts to win love, success, or honor are Pandarus' to effect the union of Troilus and Cressida, and Ulysses' to goad Achilles into action. In Acts I and II they set their plans in motion. In Act III the designs of these two indefatigable plotters achieve temporary success while their tawdriness becomes more apparent. Troilus and Cressida become lovers, but their vows of fidelity remind us of the fragility of Troilus' values created out of his own will. Theirs is a love based on desperation and delusion not on faith and wisdom. Ulysses' plan to use Hector's challenge to bring the arrogant Achilles into line proceeds more gradually.

In Act III, scene three, the feigned indifference of the Greek chieftains succeeds in disturbing Achilles' complacency. Achilles exposes his petty self-absorption. He is motivated by lust and pride and equates value simply with the external gifts of fortune. Ulysses, however, demonstrates an evil which is more insidious because more subtle. Again he formulates eloquently certain truths of human experience: the fickleness and ephemeralness of the applause of common opinion and the discrepancy between common opinion and real worth. The whole force of his argument though is to persuade Achilles to equate value with reputation and to increase the passions of envy and emulation among Greek leaders rather than to cure them. He demonstrates shrewdness and real insight into human nature, but the gap between thought and action he showed in the Council Scene has degenerated into conscious hypocrisy and deception. He speaks of the harmonious design of creation, but the basis for his treatment of other men is contempt, not respect. He speaks of “Love, friendship, charity” but seems to be motivated by a taste for political intrigue. The result of his attempt to manipulate Achilles through pride is ironically equivocal. He succeeds in arousing envy and talk of fighting Hector, but the only concrete result is Achilles' “woman's longing, / An appetite” to invite the unarmed Hector to his tent.

In Acts IV and V the discussions of goals and purposes culminate in external events. The two plots which achieve temporary success in Act III are frustrated in Act IV. Ironically, as defeat begins to overtake the main characters in both the personal events of the love story and the public events of the war plot, the dramatic focus shifts from human weakness and evil to strengths and merits. The aubade of Troilus and Cressida is almost farcical, but the audience's reaction to the lighthearted, bawdy banter is qualified by the knowledge that Paris is even then conducting Diomedes there. Cressida, who plays the game of love so shrewdly, is helpless in the game of war. Her hysterical outbursts are not admirable, but her physical helplessness arouses pity. Troilus receives the news of the impact of the war on his personal life with mature, restrained dignity, and his speech on parting from Cressida, in contrast to his vapid love poetry in the first act, is genuinely moving:

Injurious Time now with a robber's haste
Crams his rich thievery up, he knows not how:
As many farewells as be stars in heaven,
With distinct breath and consigned kisses to them,
He fumbles up into a loose adieu,
And scants us with a single famished kiss,
Distasted with the salt of broken tears.

(IV.iv.42-48)

While Pandarus' plot to join Troilus and Cressida is frustrated through the pitiless machinations of war, Ulysses' plot to arouse Achilles by means of the duel between Ajax and Hector is frustrated by Hector's personal magnanimity and reluctance to fight with one of his own blood. Achilles finally enters the battle in Act V, not because of Ulysses' scheme but because of his rage over the death of Patroclus.

The chaotic battlefield of the last act is the vanishing point at which the parallel war and love plots intersect. The characters all demonstrate that they lack values which can withstand the tests of reason and time. Troilus' forced recognition of Cressida's unworthiness is the direct consequence of his denial of any objective grounds for human values. From the heroic expectations of the armed Prologue, the war has degenerated into the gallant Hector's pursuit of glittering armor which hides a putrified core, the chivalrous Troilus' wild search for a lost horse, and the heroic Achilles' treacherous murder of Hector. The chaotic battles for worthless objects are symbolic parallels of the earlier internal struggles and private and public debates. Throughout the play the characters talk and debate, but they make no reasoned decisions which substantially alter their behavior. The self-destructive, furious, and inconclusive final scenes of the play are the inevitable consequence of their failure to do so.

The debate scenes of the first three acts are, then, paralleled in the conclusion of the play by scenes of overt action which expose completely the self-deceptions, confused values, and inevitable defeat of all the aspirations to greatness. The parallel design creates an overwhelming sense of waste when, reviewing previous expectations in the light of present actions, we find that all the best has been lost. The love story of Troilus and Cressida ends with Cressida's degrading alliance with a lover even more cynical than she and with Troilus' disillusionment and bitterness. The war story ends with the brutal murder of Hector—the loss of hope for Troy and the final degradation of Greek martial heroism. Honor has turned to egoism, courage to treachery, sensitivity to self-pity, and love to hate. This balancing of purpose and frustration, of ethical speculation and corruption, creates a dramatic mode partly satiric, partly tragic. While the ironic exposure of human vice and stupidity is the matter of satire, the inevitable defeat of human purpose is of the very essence of tragedy. Troilus and Cressida mocks human designs in a carefully structured form that prevents the audience from responding with full emotional identification or with total contempt, but demands instead a delicate balance of derision and sympathy.

The course of Troilus' love coincides almost exactly with Robert Burton's description of love-melancholy:

If it rage, it is no more Love, but burning Lust, a Disease, Phrensy, Madness, Hell. … 'Tis no virtuous habit this, but a vehement perturbation of the mind, … manfully rash, womanly timid, furiously headlong. … It subverts kingdoms, overthrows cities, towns, families.⁵

Troilus is, in turn, womanish, mad, rash, headlong, and frenzied; and Troy, of course, is among those cities overthrown by lust. The unworthy loves of Troilus, Paris, and Achilles disarm them and also cause the brutal, senseless violence of the war. Although Burton called love-melancholy a “Comical subject,” Shakespeare's treatment of it is not funny. We are aware of the absurdity of a man who in Act I asks Apollo “What Cressid is …” (O.i.101) and in Act V, after ample evidence, still cannot accept the truth and can only agonize, “This is, and is not, Cressid!” (ii.146). We understand the incongruity of Troilus' insistence that things are as they are valued and his misery on discovering that Cressida does not in fact live up to his evaluation of her. But Troilus' self-deception and inconsistency are not comic. His commitment, constancy, and courage are admirable. His attempt to create value through an act of will is too deep in his nature, his suffering is too intense, and his error too common for us to laugh at his absurdity. He has learned, moreover, the bitter cost of his idea of honor, and Hector's death elicits from him a new awareness of suffering other than his own: “Hector is gone: / Who shall tell Priam so, or Hecuba?” (V.x.14-15).

The sense of wasted human effort which Troilus and Cressida creates is not, however, the simultaneous waste of good and evil which A. C. Bradley has acutely formulated as the final power of a Shakespearean tragedy.⁶ In Troilus and Cressida evil perseveres. Troilus gains no self-knowledge. Still unable to understand Hector's warning that “pleasure and revenge / Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice / Of any true decision” (II.ii.171-73), he exits swearing “Hope of revenge shall hide our inward woe” (V.x.31). In contrast to the bitter losses suffered by Hector and Troilus, the characters with no values beyond immediate personal pleasure—Cressida, Diomedes, and Achilles—disappear from the play successful and unrepentant.

At this point in his career Shakespeare was interested in more than mastering established dramatic forms such as the traditional history play or the Jonsonian comic satire. In preparation for the great tragedies which were to follow, he was experimenting with new ways to shape his audience's reactions, to make subtle distinctions, and to combine intellectual clarity and emotional involvement. He found in the parallel design of Troilus and Cessida a way to present a vision of absurdity and frustration and to prevent the audience from responding either with sentimentality or with cynical amusement.⁷ He created a play which is neither comedy nor tragedy but tragic satire. In Troilus and Cressida Shakespeare exposed sin and folly in a world of fools and knaves, but the fools suffer most and the knaves control the world in the end. Such a conclusion is not a cynical comment on established values, but it is a bitter comment on human beings. The world of the play is not meaningless, but it is a world with little hope. Troilus and Cressida is a product of what Northrop Frye has called “the sardonic vision,” a mixture of hatred and gaiety. “The sardonic vision is the seamy side of the tragic vision. … Satire at its most concentrated is tragedy robbed of all its dignity.”⁸ In Troilus and Cressida the satiric acid is strongly concentrated; we see man stripped naked and lashed by the satirist's whip, and, because we too are men, we are deeply sorry for the victims at whom we sometimes laugh.

Notes

1. Helpful discussions of parallel structure in Troilus and Cressida are Harold S. Wilson, On the Design of Shakespearean Tragedy (Toronto, 1957), chap. 5, and J. C. Oates, “The Ambiguity of Troilus and Cressida,” SQ [Shakespeare Quarterly,] XVII (1966), 141-50. Both critics conclude, mistakenly I think, that the parallel form negates all values in the play.

2. O. J. Campbell, Comical Satire and Shakespeare's “Troilus and Cressida” (San Marino, Calif., 1938) and Shakespeare's Satire (London, 1943).

3. For a more detailed discussion of the satiric effect of the language see T. McAlindon, “Language, Style, and Meaning in Troilus and Cressida,” PMLA [Publications of the Modern Language Association], LXXXIV (1969), 29-43.

4. My quotations throughout are from Troilus and Cressida, New Cambridge Shakespeare, ed. Alice Walker (Cambridge, 1957).

5. Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. Floyd Dell and Paul Jordan-Smith (New York, 1948), p. 651.

6. A. C. Bradley, Shakespearan Tragedy, 2d ed. (London, 1964), pp. 5-39.

7. “Cynical amusement” and “ironic amusement” are the terms used by Campbell and Wilson respectively for the appropriate audience response to the conclusion of the play.

8. Northrop Frye, “The Nature of Satire,” University of Toronto Quarterly, XIV (1944), 85-86.