Cressida's father is Calchas, a priest of Apdo. If Cressida's name is derived from the Iliad's Chryseis, her father's name must be derived from the name of Chryseis' father, Chryses. He too was a priest of Apollo.
Why "Calchas" from "Chryses"? Because there is also a Calchas in the Iliad. He is a skilled prophet or soothsayer on the Greek side, and can interpret the omens. It is he, for instance, who explained that the plague striking at the Greeks was the result of Agamemnon's refusal to surrender Chryseis to her father. Both Chryses and Calchas are thus involved in the demand that Agamemnon surrender Chryseis.
There is no hint in the Iliad that Calchas: anything but a Greek and certainly there is no confusion between him ad Chryses. In later stories, however, the confusion arises. Chryses the "Trojan priest of Apollo and Calchas the Greek soothsayer are combined ad the story arises that Calchas, a Trojan priest of Apollo, knowing through his prophetic arts that Troy must fall, deserts to the Greeks.
The story of the lost daughter is retained, though. Since Calchas/Chryses has now turned voluntarily to the Greeks to remain with them permanently, he can't be trying to retrieve a daughter from the Greeks. After all, he's there. He must, therefore, be trying to retrieve a daughter from the Trojan camp, a daughter he left behind in deserting to the Greeks. And it is this Trojan daughter, Cressida/Chryseis, whom Troilus loves.
Troilus is at once anxious to placate Pandarus, who, after all, remains the only bridge by which he can reach Cressida. Pandarus, however, pushing his advantage, rushes off, leaving Troilus behind to sing Cressida's praises, calling on Apollo (the god of poetry) to help him:
—Act I, scene i, 102-3
It is interesting that Apollo, the personification of male beauty, is so often tragically unsuccessful in his loves. Cassandra refused him, for instance, and Daphne (see page I-36) is an even more famous love.
Troilus' soliloquy ends when another Trojan warrior enters. He is in full armor, on his way to the battle, and is rather puzzled that Troilus is lingering in Troy. Troilus asks:
—Act I, scene i, line 11:
Aeneas, in the legends, is a son of none other than Venus, though hi father, Anchises, was a mortal man. Aeneas was not a Trojan exactly but a Dardanian; that is, the inhabitant of a district neighboring Troy proper He attempted to maintain neutrality in the war at first but the attacks c Achilles forced him to join forces with Priam and his sons.
None of this is in the Iliad. In the Iliad he is an ardent Trojan fighter second only to Hector. He is a darling of the gods and is saved by Venus and Apollo when about to be killed by Diomedes, and on another occasion by Neptune, when it is Achilles who is about to kill him.
Homer makes it quite plain that Aeneas is not fated to die in the general sack that destroys Troy (see page I-209). This was the basis of Vergil plot in the Aeneid, which deals with the wanderings of Aeneas after the destruction of Troy.
Because Aeneas was viewed as the ancestor of the Romans, he had to be treated with particular care by Western poets. The English had to 1 even more careful, for they aped the Romans in their search for a glorious beginning.
Several medieval chroniclers in England composed versions of a legendary past that traced the early Britons back to Troy. It seems, according them, that Aeneas had had a great-grandson, Brute, who, having inadvertently killed his father, fled Italy and finally landed in the northern island, which got its name of "Britain" from him.
There is absolutely nothing to it, of course, other than the accidental similarity between the common Roman name Brute or Brutus and the name of Britain. Nevertheless it gave the English a profound interest in the tale of Troy and a strong pro-Trojan sympathy. In particular, Aeneas must be, and is, idealized. In Troilus and Cressida he is gay, debonair, and the perfect medieval knight.
Aeneas tells Troilus that Paris has been wounded in a duel with Menelaus. (Such a duel is described in Book Three of the Iliad and it is after that duel, which Menelaus wins, that a truce is negotiated, a truce which is broken by Pandarus' arrow-see page I-79).
Troilus shrugs it off:
—Act I, scene i, lines 115-16
There was an accepted convention in Shakespearean England that a betrayed husband had horns; invisible ones, of course. This may be from a consideration of the sexual life of the polygamous stags, who fight each other for the possession of a harem of does. The deceived husband is, perhaps, likened to a defeated stag; hence his horns.
The husband whose wife had fooled him was universally viewed with amused contempt in Shakespeare's time. This attitude arose, perhaps, from the conventions of courtly love, (see page I-54) where the knight was, ideally, supposed to love the wife of another. In all such tales, the husband was the villain (witness the well-known romance of Tristan and Iseult) and the audience cheered when the horns were, so to speak, placed on his forehead.
The betrayed husband was therefore an inexhaustible theme for comedy and any mention of horns or horned animals, even any reference to foreheads, was the signal for laughter-and Shakespeare made the most of that.
Thus it is that Troilus scorns poor wronged Menelaus. To modern ears, which do not find adultery either as serious or as comic as the Elizabethans did, such jests fall flat.
The scene shifts to Cressida now. She enters with her servant, Alexander, looking after two women who have hastened by. She inquires who those were who passed and Alexander answers:
—Act I, scene ii, line 1b
Queen Hecuba (or Hecabe, in the Greek form) was the second wife of Priam. She bore him nineteen of his sixty-two children, including Hector, Paris, Troilus, and Cassandra of those mentioned so far. Because of her sufferings, she was a favorite character in tragic dramas devoted to the Trojan War and, indeed, in Hamlet Shakespeare makes use of this fact indirectly (see page II-115). Here, in Troilus and Cressida, however, she never appears onstage.
Apparently the two women are hastening to the walls to see the battle, for they fear it may be going poorly. After all, even Hector is perturbed, or as the servant says: