Word: troilus
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...world of policy, but they envision a world of gods. The tragedy is that reputation and love are irreconcilable in the world. To ask for honor is to ask for death. This is the hero's fate. To ask for love is to ask for life in another worid. Troilus and Cressida -a bitter, earlier, centrifugal labor-examined whether a man can act honorably in the name of love. Antony and Cleopatra explores how the soldier in love is liable to betray himself as a soldier and how the hero in love is at war with himself. The reconciliation...
...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...
...problem" of inconsistency of character, which arises particularly in Cressida's and Pandarus' case, was dealt with by Barton in sexual terms. Cressida was initially innocent yet boundlessly lustful, and her night with Troilus initiated her into a physicality which dictated her subsequent falseness. Pandarus was a glib, leering yet friendly uncle, whose skill in sexual innuendo helped him to live a vicarious sexual life through those around...
...short a debased sexuality, which for Shakespeare is a major thematic concern, was raised, unnecessarily I think, to a dominant position. Doubtless it is no accident that Troilus and Cressida describe their love largely in terms of food imagery, that Thirsites condemns, triumphantly, wars and lechery. But to single out for so much emphasis this one element does harm, I think, by narrowing Shakespeare's intents...