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Troilus and Cressida (Shakespeare Project Lecture) (Patreon)

Published:
2024-01-18 21:04:12
Imported:
2026-06
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  • Troilus Book Club Lecture.mp3

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Content

Our journey through the works of William Shakespeare continues with Troilus and Cressida.

We’re discussing problem plays, satire, the War of the Poets, Chapman, Chaucer, Homer, heroism, nihilism, words vs deeds, the abyss of inwardness, and much more.

Timestamps:

  • 0:00 Shakespeare’s problem plays
  • 3:00 closet drama vs performance
  • 7:00 Shakespeare’s midlife crisis
  • 8:00 Will’s last Elizabethan play
  • 9:00 Troilus & Cressida as satire
  • 10:00 on the War of the Poets
  • 13:00 ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’
  • 16:00 Will as more poet or playwright?
  • 18:00 George Chapman as Rival Poet
  • 19:00 Chapman’s translation of Homer
  • 21:00 Shakespeare vs Chapman
  • 22:00 on looking up difficult words
  • 23:00 prologue of Troilus & Cressida
  • 25:00 Shakespeare vs Chaucer
  • 27:00 the difficulty of Chaucer
  • 29:00 Shakespeare vs Homer
  • 31:00 where is the sense of heroism?
  • 33:00 Agamemnon vs Achilles
  • 35:00 on honour and reputation
  • 37:00 character & heroic deeds
  • 39:00 what makes a homeric hero?
  • 40:00 words vs deeds in Shakespeare
  • 42:00 Shakespeare the nihilist
  • 43:00 deeds as alms for oblivion
  • 45:00 an abyss of inwardness
  • 50:00 characters of Troilus & Cressida
  • 51:00 parodying chivalric poetry
  • 52:00 infinite will as monstrosity in love
  • 53:00 waiting for the lover’s union
  • 55:00 appreciating my one-passage
  • 57:00 ‘men prize the thing unguided’
  • 1:00:00 my evaluation of the play
  • 1:02:00 what did you make of this play?

Recommended Resources:

  • Recommended Edition: The Arden edition continues to make a superb choice as the introduction and footnotes are especially illuminating for this play.
  • The Phoenix and the Turtle: Shakespeare wrote this allegorical poem around the same time he penned this play. It's challenging, but can be appreciated in a single sitting. If you haven't read it already, you can find it in the Arden edition of Shakespeare's poems here and also online here.
  • Source Appreciation: If you would like a further taste of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, there is a superb reading of an extract in modern translation from Dr Iain McGilchrist here. And if you would like to further appreciate Shakespeare's lampooning of George Chapman, you can find his translation of Homer's Iliad here.
  • Acting Workshop: In 1979, the Royal Shakespeare Company filmed an acting class with great thespians like Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, which ran through Troilus and Cressida. You can view this here.
  • Audio Dramatisation: It can be useful to read and listen to this play simultaneously. And this audio dramatisation, performed by the Marlowe Society, is very good.
  • Our Journey Thus Far: If you want to jump into any specific play, you can check out the works we've enjoyed thus far as part of our read-through here.

Questions for You:

1) Do you find the term 'problem play' to be a useful description?

2) Do you agree with Harold Bloom that this is Shakespeare's most difficult play?

3) What line, passage, idea, or character most resonated with you? And what is your personal grading for Troilus and Cressida?

Happy reading, Bardolators!

Files

Previews only

Comments

Theresa

I will be reading along with an Audible I have credit on. I find the language difficult and hearing it acted out is helpful.

RoseAndThorn

I’ve always been intimidated by James Joyce so I chose Eveline to get to know his writing and , wow, did it leave a big punch. I’ve been in a similar situation wanting to escape and leave home. But I feared what her choice would be and I was heartbroken over it. I loved this line …”All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart.”

Susan Kelley

Question: I found the pdf of the chronology of the plays. Is there a schedule for the reading? I am starting Measure for Measure as that is up next, but I don’t know how much I time I have before the next one. Thank you!

Jeff

I'm very excited i joined back on Audible, they have a whole lot of the Arkangel recordings free for members, this is thee way i guess for me to really for the first time taste the great bard!! I'll follow along of course on the kindle.

mariah schneider

I'm glad I finally got through this one. I'll give it a low C. It may not help that I'm also reading the Iliad at the moment, so I don't care for the way most of the characters come across in the play.

Caleb

Finished EOE early and so picked this up before we read Master and Margarita. I've read the Illiad several times (many years ago) and find the premise intriguing. We'll see...it's been a long time since I've tackled Shakespeare.

Kelly R.

I listened to an audio from the Shakespeare network on YouTube while I read the Arden edition. I’ve read and watched a handful of Shakespearean plays in recent years including AMND, Twelfth Night and Macbeth, and way before that R&J. This was my first as part of HLBC though and I was a little concerned about jumping in here. I do agree that this isn’t a neat play to categorize and there are a few lengthy speeches. But I was actually (pleasantly) surprised by how much the Greeks were satirized and how bawdy it was! I really enjoyed it and I suppose I just took it at face value as light entertainment rather than trying to make it too “deep” or insightful. I definitely benefitted from familiarity with Greek/Roman mythology and the Iliad so it was apparent just how much liberty Shakespeare took with the Greek personalities and how some events unfolded. I wasn’t sympathetic to the characters…and given that T&c were more like a subplot maybe the title is just misleading to many people. I give it a B- because it was still entertaining. The satire was just so beyond I can’t take it that seriously.

Ylva

Great lecture, Benjamin, as always. Thank you 😊 This is a play that made me question my intellect. I recognised the Bard’s voice, and I could follow the thread, but during my first reading, I gained very little joy from it, and though I underlined a great deal, the poetry didn’t feel like it formed a red thread. However, as Thomas so nicely describes this process, I finished this play and felt more motivated to crack this nut than disheartened about a weak first impression. There’s something in the lines of Troilus and Cressida that spoke to me during this first read, elusive as it was, though the more I hear and read about this play, the more I feel that it’s a typical example for rereading and rereading and rereading being the key to some works. Closer reading of Shakespeare? Sign me up. What made me laugh very quickly was the realisation how much Shakespeare pulls genre conceptions by their pigtails. As someone who easily gets bored by patterns being repeated for patterns’ sake, I can only salute to Shakespeare twisting pretty much any expectations in this play around. As I wrote in a review, Troilus and Cressida seems to have a focus on history and myth in there, disguised as not-quite tragedy—or the other way around. It certainly has poetry in a glorious style that gives me goosebumps just reading extracts, while I wonder at the same time if the all characters are nothing but hot air, even while they speak these amazing lines. Furthermore, the play brims with wit, and has a good dash of interaction between characters that I somehow want to label as romantic partners, perhaps even the classic star-crossed lovers…but even this label doesn't seem to entirely fit once the story unfolds. I personally can't help but love Shakespeare for all of this. So yes. This is a play that I want to reread. One that I want to go into knowing what will happen during its course, so I can look at the characters and delight in how "big words, little action or proof" they are. Because, indeed, they actually seem more infatuated with hearing their own voice than what they proclaim they stand up for. In a high-stakes setting as this one, it shows beautifully how ridiculous we humans sometimes are, how so convinced of ourselves and our "words, words, mere words" that we miss out of checking in with our actions (or lack thereof) which suggest, as Cressida tells us: "Th'effect doth operate another way." As so many of Shakespeare’s works, it feels like a warm nudge of a play, one that meets us on level ground, like a well-meaning, humorous friend at a pub, and it doesn't fail in making me smile, regardless of my first impressions and my struggles with pushing through to its essence. I’m not sure how much closer studying will bring me to burn for this play like I already do for others (I don’t know how often I’ve been in Hamlet or Julius Caesar within this last month alone) but I want to befriend it better and am optimistic about the possibility of the very same. Initial rating: C- Rating upon giving it a think: More like a B- with great potential for improvement. “Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart; Th’effect doth operate another way.”

Alex

I've just finished this, and not listened to the lecture yet, but I absolutely hated this one. I'm not sure if it's because we're reading Homer at the moment and can't help but see it through the lens of The Iliad, but I just didn't get what Shakespeare was trying to do or say here. My other issue is similar to the movie Troy - the same story beats as The Iliad, but the characters are nothing like their namesakes.