Word: played
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...symbols were hoisted to the play's masthead to further the effectiveness of the play. The first, a bull's head, was huge, elegant, and topped by two unmistakably symbolic horns. Whatever its mythological associations or its connotations of potency, it caught aptly the implications of Menelaus's and Troilus's cuckoldry...
Professor Seltzer begins his introduction to the American Signet edition of the play, "The modern student of Troilus and Cressida -reader, spectator, and actor-is faced with complex problems of staging, character, and moral ideas." One suspects he wrote this before his attempted production; at any rate, its truth cannot be faulted...
...avoid superfluities and thrust directly to the play's center, presented a bare stage and Greeks and Trojans in loincloths. For a number of the players this no doubt meant some fairly regular workouts in the company gym. But, if in externals the production was sparse simplicity, in its emotional effect it pounded home a message-pounded it home with a sledge-hammer heaviness, until the greater part of the audience looked wearily up from holes in the floor, and a number of old ladies had left...
...doubt any play which singles out for condemnation war and debasement of love is highly topical. As Seltber says, the play is complex, but it is still fair to call it an indictment of "wars and lechery...
Thirsites' cynical viewpoint remains consistently the same, and the structure of the play as it evolves becomes more and more an argument for support of his overview. Shakespeare gives the last lines of the play to Pandarus, who refers to the time when he will make out his will...