Word: troilus
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Troilus is, in short, Shakespeare's most cerebral, most philosophical play. It takes its place right alongside the "disquisitory" plays of Shaw; in fact, if Shaw had been an Elizabethan, he would have written this work...
...other play of Shakespeare has a more strongly unified theme. Troilus puts is most clearly, in a characteristically double statement, when he says "that the will is infinite and the execution confined, that the desire is boundless and the act a slave to limit." It is the disparity between theory and practice, reason and emotion, ideals and shortcomings, order and disorder--Greeks and Trojans. And an undermining factor is Time--"envious and calumniating time," "injurious time...
Landau has not tried to present a tragedy. All the editors and commentators who place Troilus among the tragedies clearly have no idea what tragedy really is. Troilus is comedy, but very sour comedy. Kenneth Tynan recently seconded Orson Welles' view that Shakespeare was suffering from venereal disease during the period in which he wrote Hamiet, Troilus, and Measure for Measure. Such hypothesizing is dangerous; for that way madness lies. Yet it is true that these plays all present sexual relations as vile and tainted...
Within the spectrum of comedy, Troilus offers much latitude. From this production there emerges a satirical approach, which, though not quite consistently applied, is eminently workable. Carrie Nye's Cressida, first in a lovely gray gown with salmon stole and parasol and later in sultry red velvet, is a southern belle-wether of wantonness (I half expected to hear the Duke of Mantua singing "La donna e mobile" in the wings). And Hiram Sherman brings the suave relish of a Kentucky colonel to the role of Pandarus...
...Griethysen makes Troilus into an effete poseur who has obviously just read The Sorrows of Young Werther. The only trouble with this interpretation is that such a Troilus would never even have survived basic training after being drafted into the Trojan army...