Troilus and Cressida

I've recently finished reading the Shakespeare play Troilus and Cressida. My thoughts:

Firstly, it lacked a little bit of, ..well, poetry. It was one of these plays that didn't quite have the charm that more well-known plays such as The Tempest or Much Ado About Nothing, have. It didn't feel truly great. That said, as ever, it was very enjoyable. Likewise, partly due to the lack of poetic floweriness, it was very easy to follow. The text wasn't opaque, so it was an easy read.

What mainly stood out to me was how the Trojans are portrayed more as the good guys (it's about the Trojan War - did I say that?). Hector is the noble hero. The Greeks are a bit sneaky. Though it's not especially imbalanced in its portrayal of the two camps.

The relationship between Troilus and Cressida is a bit Romeo and Juliet, though here, the idealism of love is truly doused by Cressida's earthly betrayal. There's very much a, 'women are weak and will stray,' type vibe. The online right, 'how to pick-up women' crowd would love it. Especially given how, in the wider context of the play, Menelaus is just a straight up and constantly mocked cuck. In fact, it's kind of funny how in vogue the term cuck is now, considering how the concept is so common to Shakespeare too. I remember as a child having to have the term cuckold explained to me precisely because it had cropped up in a Shakespeare play.

Other Things

A few more things of note. One being an anachronism. There's a reference to Aristotle in the play. Hector compares Paris and Troilus to, 'young men, whom Aristotle thought unfit to hear moral philosophy.'

According to our modern timeline, the Trojan War occurred a good long while before the era of Aristotle. Clearly Shakespeare (and his audiences) weren't aware of this - or were, but didn't care about the accuracy. Of course, people familiar with my blogging will know that I'm open to, and interested in, the idea that our current version of history isn't entirely correct. So these things always seem noteworthy to me.

The other thing I made note of were some references to the earth. I've speculated before that the earth being round was a fashionable idea in the Elizabethan era. Hence the Globe theatre, and all the artistic depictions of people with globes. (Again, I do wonder about the established historical narrative.) Anyway, there were a few metaphors referencing the earth. I'll note two, not with any particular point to make, more just because they interested me.

Troilus speaks:

As true as steel, as plantage to the moon,

As sun to day, as turtle to her mate,

As iron to adamant, as Earth to th' center

The idea of the earth being the centre.

Later in the play Cressida speaks:

Do to this body what extremes you can,

But the strong base and building of my love

Is as the very center of the Earth,

Drawing all things to it.

Again, the earth as central, but here with a sense of gravity too. Though you could argue that that's there in the first passage too somewhat, coupled with the idea of iron being magnetic.

I'll leave it there.