Hosts of superstitions naturally arose concerning these Geniuses. It would warn the person it guarded of imminent death, for instance, as Troilus says here.
Cressida is brought to the Greek camp, where she is suddenly a different person. She has been flirtatious and a little hypocritical with Troilus, teasing and a little ribald with Pandarus, but nothing so bad. In the Greek camp, however, she is suddenly a gay wanton, joking with the Greek leaders and eager to kiss them all-even Nestor.
Only the clear-eyed Ulysses refuses, insulting her openly, and saying to Nestor after she leaves:
—Act IV, scene v, lines 54-57
Without warning, Cressida is pictured as an utterly worthless woman.
Why so sudden a change? Surely there must have been room to express Cressida's side of the matter in at least one speech. She is torn away from home, and from love at the very moment of that love's height, with only her father at her side, frightened, uncertain, weak. Chaucer, in his version, presents Cressida's dilemma far more sympathetically and lets us pity her in her fall. Shakespeare only lets us despise her.
Might we speculate that Shakespeare is being savage to Cressida and showing her in the worst possible fashion because he wishes to make a point outside the play?
The play seems to have been performed first in 1602, and Shakespeare may have been writing it in 1600-1. Is there a possibility, then, that Shakespeare was influenced by a dramatic event that took place in the time when he was writing the play?
Shakespeare's patron, Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton (see page I-3), with whom Shakespeare may have been on the closest possible terms, was himself a member of the faction of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex.
About the time that Shakespeare was beginning his career as a dramatist, Essex had become the favorite and lover of Queen Elizabeth I (who was thirty-three years older than he was).
Essex longed for a successful military career, though the sensible Queen saw that although he might be suitable for a lover, he was not suitable for a general. In 1596, however, he finally persuaded her to allow him to lead an expedition to Spain (with which England was still carrying on a desultory war, a war of which the defeat of the Armada in 1588 had been the high point). Southampton accompanied him on this expedition.
The expedition had a certain success, for the city of Cadiz was seized and sacked. Elizabeth I did not consider the results of the expedition to have been worth its expense, however-she was always a most careful lady with a shilling-and Essex did not receive the credit that he (and his faction, including Southampton and, presumably, Shakespeare) felt he deserved.
Essex, however, became more of a war hawk than ever, having tasted the delights of victory. In 1599 he talked the reluctant Elizabeth (who by now was beginning to feel he was becoming entirely too ambitious to be a safe subject) into letting him lead an expedition into Ireland to put down a rebellion there. Again Southampton left with him, but this time Elizabeth called him back, to his deep discomfiture.
The Essex faction had high hopes for the Irish adventure, and Shakespeare, writing Henry V while Essex was in Ireland, refers to the expedition most flatteringly in the chorus that precedes Act V of that play (see page II-508).
The expedition, however, proved a complete fiasco and Essex returned to England in absolute fury at what he, and his faction, believed to be the machinations of the anti-Essex group at the English court. It seemed to them that they had deliberately intrigued against Essex to prevent him from achieving military renown.
In desperation, Essex began to plot rebellion. Southampton arranged to have Shakespeare's play Richard 11 revived. It dealt with the deposition of an English monarch (see page II-304) and Elizabeth did not miss the point. Both Southampton and Essex were arrested, tried for treason, and convicted in February 1601. Essex was, indeed, executed on February 25, but Southampton's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and, after Elizabeth's death in 1603, he was released.
It is tempting to think that Shakespeare wrote Troilus and Cressida under the deep shadow of the misfortunes of Essex and Southampton.
To him, the expedition against Troy may have seemed very much like Essex's expeditions against Cadiz and, later, against Ireland. These expeditions were fought for what seemed to Shakespeare, perhaps, to be a most ungrateful and worthless woman who was oblivious to the sufferings of her faithful servants and whom he may have envisioned as amusing herself with Essex's rival, Sir Walter Raleigh, while the faithful Essex was suffering in the field. Could this be why Shakespeare draws Helen as so contemptible (see page I-111)?
The factions that disrupted the Greek effort on the fields of Troy were magnified by Shakespeare, perhaps as a bitter satire on the factions at the English court that had, in the view of the Essex faction, stabbed Essex in the back.
And Cressida, of course, would then be another aspect of Elizabeth- that false woman who had betrayed her lover and sent him to the gallows. Could Shakespeare have been working on the fourth act just when the execution of Essex came to pass (with Southampton still in prison)? Could he have turned to his pen for revenge on Cressida, making no effort whatever to explain her or excuse her? Did he want her defection to be as bare and as disgraceful as possible so that Ulysses' "Fie, fie upon her!" might reflect as strongly as possible upon the Queen?
At last we are ready for the duel between Hector and Ajax. Since Ajax is a relative of Hector's (here again is the confusion between Ajax and Teucer) it is agreed that the fight is not to be to the death.
While they prepare, Agamemnon asks the name of a sad Trojan on the other side. Ulysses answers:
—Act IV, scene v, lines 96-97
It is Troilus being described here, in the very highest terms. The praise has nothing directly to do with the play, and one cannot help but wonder if Shakespeare intends it to refer to the betrayed and executed Essex; if it is his epitaph for that rash person.
This is an example, by the way, of the curious way in which in Troilus and Cressida the combatants on either side don't seem to know each other until they are introduced, although they have presumably been fighting each other for years.
This is true in the Iliad as well. In Book Three of that poem, when Paris and Menelaus are getting ready for their duel, Priam and his councilors sit on the wall and view the Greek army. Helen is there too, and Priam has her identify several of the Greek champions: Agamemnon, Ulysses, Ajax. Surely after nine years of war Priam ought to know these people. Perhaps the war was much shorter in the earliest legends (and, for all we know, in truth) but grew longer to accommodate the numerous tales added to the primitive story by later poets-and perhaps Homer's tale was tailored to correspond, unavoidably leaving inconsistencies as a result.
The duel between Ajax and Hector is fought and ends in a draw and in a graceful speech by the chivalrous Hector, as does the similar duel in Book Seven of the Iliad (where, however, Hector clearly gets the worse of the exchanges).
Ajax, who is not very good at speaking, manages to express his disappointment at not having beaten Hector definitely.