Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-r5zm4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-16T22:05:27.782Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Text of Cressida and Every Ticklish Reader: Troilus and Cressida, The Greek Camp Scene

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2007

Stanley Wells
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Get access

Summary

It is perhaps because Troilus and Cressida raises the question of women’s sexual identity that it was scarcely performed for three hundred years. I am going to discuss ways in which Shakespeare’s Cressida has been construed by recent critics, producers, and actresses, and how these interpretations might affect the understanding of the play by an audience in the 1980s. Until the 1970s most interpretations manifested precisely that coercive dominance of a particular set of cultural values which is the theme of the play. This was especially marked with respect to what G. Wilson Knight called ‘the pivot incident of the play’: Cressida’s arrival at the Greek army camp. My discussion will centre on this scene, to show how it is a key to the significance of one of the main questions posed by the play: whether a person’s nature or identity is determined by the valuation set on that person by others. This question forms part of the general platonic scepticism which the play develops with regard to the possibility of anything’s having absolute value or identity in a world subject to the digestive effects of time and human judgement. Within the world of the play Cressida is unable to maintain a sense of her own integrity. Similarly, in the course of changes in Western society, the character of Cressida in the text of the play has been subject to changing readings and widely divergent performances. This has inevitably affected the comprehension of the whole play.

Type
Chapter
Information
Shakespeare Survey , pp. 63 - 76
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×