I found an audio recording of this play at the library then followed along with the script. I think I just wanted to experience something, especially by Shakespeare, that not many other people have. I was *absolutely blown away* by this play, for all the reasons you cite and more. I love and agree with most of your analysis; he makes a lot of delicious burgers out of all these sacred cows. I disagree about the ending, though. I think it's brilliant. Thersites may as well say f-you then spit on the ground just before the lights go out. Shakespeare seems to be telling us 'haha - you really wasted your time watching this play, losers!' because there's no satisfying conclusion. It fizzles but that makes me want to dig deeper to understand why that is. I think the ending speaks more loudly about a different waste of time - that of living in the mythologies we create about love, honor, fidelity, war and so much more. By having everyone essentially walk away, we're left holding the bag and finally have a moment to see what's inside it. I've read/heard/watched just over half of Shakespeare's plays. Troilus & Cressida is now comfortably #1 on my list, just above King Lear. I've been thinking and writing about it for a week, my interest undiminished. I keep coming back to it. That's the mark of a great piece of art, in my book. You pay for it once; you get to enjoy it forever. Again, appreciate your clear analysis!
Wow, I'm glad you got so much out of the play! :) It's always great when a work can hit you that hard. I'm not sure I'd put it at #1 for me personally, but I do think it's sorely underappreciated. :)
Oh! And the Iliad also feels, to me, to end in a strange spot. It ends after hector is killed and Priam offers Achilles gifts for his son’s body and Hector is returned to Troy for a burial. So, it makes sense that Shakespeare’s play ends before that honor between foes is completed.
@@TH3F4LC0Nx Obviously the Troy movie is very Hollywood of the time of its creation. The whole "drama of the Gods" in the Iliad will be new to you, but honestly some of the chapters describing all the peeps that came out for the war make the whaling chapters in Moby Dick seem riveting. LOL!
@@ItsTooLatetoApologize I've had copies of both The Iliad and The Odyssey on my shelf for years, lol. Tried reading The Odyssey and I jumped ship, (pun intended!). 😅
@@TH3F4LC0Nx To be fair, any boat Odysseus is on, everyone would be better jumping off of. Guy's got the worst luck and he's pissed off every god that exists. LOL!
I have a confession to make: I can't stand Shakespeare. I haven't touched it since high school, where all the trauma originated. I could never get past the language to enjoy the story. Things never clicked for me. I remember trying to watch Macbeth with Michael Fassbender, thinking a film would make it more palatable, but I couldn't even finish that. I can tell you're really passionate about his work, though. If I were to, say, hypothetically try Shakesepeare again, which of his works would you say is the most accessible?
Oh, I can *totally* understand the "trauma" of high school Shakespeare! 😅 Why they wanna torment kids with works they can't grasp at that age is beyond me. And that Michael Fassbender Macbeth was honestly pretty bad, I thought. Too in love with its own visuals and couldn't even hear like half the dialogue, lol. But if you want one Shakespeare work to read that's accessible, powerful, and illustrates why he's so important, I would with no hesitation recommend Coriolanus. The language can be tricky, yes, although perhaps a tad less so than others of his works, and it's genuinely kinda eerie just how relevant that work still is to today. The ending admittedly isn't as strong as it could have been, but nonetheless, that's the one I'd pick. I actually have a video that I plan on putting out next week about it, if you want a more in depth discussion of it. But Coriolanus is my rec, hands down. 😊
I agree that it feels very modern or postmodern with the picking apart of traditional male valour. But I disagree when it comes to the depiction of love. This is not love. Cressida has a whole monologue early in the play after her uncle encourages her to embrace a relationship with Troilus. She wondered if after the prince has “had her” if he will forget about her and he will move on to another. After she has given herself to Troilus, she is given by her uncle to the Greeks for a trade, and Troilus doesn’t do anything to save her from this fate. He does nothing. Perhaps if she hadn’t spent the night with him he may have fought harder for her just like we imagine the men in the Iliad fought, but Shakespeare flips that on it’s head also. Cressida is now a spoil of war and at the same level as a slave or servant and Troilus has her promise to stay true to him. How on Earth can she possibly do that when all the men who should have been loyal to her (her uncle and her lover) have handed her over to her enemies and she is now a slave? What honor does she owe when the honor owed her was ignored? Troilus goes to see her in the Greek’s camp to see if she has been faithful to him, as if she has such agency anymore. And what he sees is a woman trying to not be r@ped but Troilus sees this as betrayal which is so naive it may speak to those that see the Iliad and war in general as noble and romantic. The romanticizing of both love and war is a foolish endeavour. I see this play as Shakespeare’s war on romanticism. Great video.
Ooh, very good points! I ain't gonna lie though, I was flying by the seat of my pants a lil bit when reading this, (as I often am when reading any work of this age 😂), so the nuances of Cressida's plight may have escaped me. 🤣 But I'm def with you on this being Shakespeare's critique of the romanticizing of war. I would say this makes an interesting contrast with, say, Henry V, which really goes all out with the glorification of war, what with the iconic St. Crispin's Day speech and all. Troilus and Cressida isn't as uplifting, but it's realer and rawer, I'd say. 🙂
@@TH3F4LC0Nx and I find an interesting juxtaposition between Helen and Cressida. Helen was “stollen” from Menelaus but in the only scene she is in she seems very at home with the Trojans and a bit carefree about the whole 10year war. And she gets a lot of flack for this but she is in enemy territory as well just as Cressida will find herself later. Helen may very well be just trying to make the most of a bad situation as Cressida is later. And where Helen is the woman who’s face launched a thousand ships is seen as this physical beauty and perfection but is never seen as human. But we see Cressida’s humanity and her uncle and lover’s willing betrayal of her. No one goes to war for her. And might I add that Cressida must have been very valuable to be traded one for one for a Trojan general. It’s a fascinating play to think about. The Trojan war was often said to be a war for love; the reality as Shakespeare shows is that love and war are not the romantic notions we are fed.
I found an audio recording of this play at the library then followed along with the script. I think I just wanted to experience something, especially by Shakespeare, that not many other people have.
I was *absolutely blown away* by this play, for all the reasons you cite and more. I love and agree with most of your analysis; he makes a lot of delicious burgers out of all these sacred cows.
I disagree about the ending, though. I think it's brilliant. Thersites may as well say f-you then spit on the ground just before the lights go out. Shakespeare seems to be telling us 'haha - you really wasted your time watching this play, losers!' because there's no satisfying conclusion. It fizzles but that makes me want to dig deeper to understand why that is. I think the ending speaks more loudly about a different waste of time - that of living in the mythologies we create about love, honor, fidelity, war and so much more. By having everyone essentially walk away, we're left holding the bag and finally have a moment to see what's inside it.
I've read/heard/watched just over half of Shakespeare's plays. Troilus & Cressida is now comfortably #1 on my list, just above King Lear. I've been thinking and writing about it for a week, my interest undiminished. I keep coming back to it. That's the mark of a great piece of art, in my book. You pay for it once; you get to enjoy it forever.
Again, appreciate your clear analysis!
Wow, I'm glad you got so much out of the play! :) It's always great when a work can hit you that hard. I'm not sure I'd put it at #1 for me personally, but I do think it's sorely underappreciated. :)
Oh! And the Iliad also feels, to me, to end in a strange spot. It ends after hector is killed and Priam offers Achilles gifts for his son’s body and Hector is returned to Troy for a burial. So, it makes sense that Shakespeare’s play ends before that honor between foes is completed.
I really gotta read The Iliad. I mean, I liked the Troy movie well enough... 😂
@@TH3F4LC0Nx Obviously the Troy movie is very Hollywood of the time of its creation. The whole "drama of the Gods" in the Iliad will be new to you, but honestly some of the chapters describing all the peeps that came out for the war make the whaling chapters in Moby Dick seem riveting. LOL!
@@ItsTooLatetoApologize I've had copies of both The Iliad and The Odyssey on my shelf for years, lol. Tried reading The Odyssey and I jumped ship, (pun intended!). 😅
@@TH3F4LC0Nx To be fair, any boat Odysseus is on, everyone would be better jumping off of. Guy's got the worst luck and he's pissed off every god that exists. LOL!
I have a confession to make: I can't stand Shakespeare. I haven't touched it since high school, where all the trauma originated. I could never get past the language to enjoy the story. Things never clicked for me. I remember trying to watch Macbeth with Michael Fassbender, thinking a film would make it more palatable, but I couldn't even finish that. I can tell you're really passionate about his work, though.
If I were to, say, hypothetically try Shakesepeare again, which of his works would you say is the most accessible?
Oh, I can *totally* understand the "trauma" of high school Shakespeare! 😅 Why they wanna torment kids with works they can't grasp at that age is beyond me. And that Michael Fassbender Macbeth was honestly pretty bad, I thought. Too in love with its own visuals and couldn't even hear like half the dialogue, lol.
But if you want one Shakespeare work to read that's accessible, powerful, and illustrates why he's so important, I would with no hesitation recommend Coriolanus. The language can be tricky, yes, although perhaps a tad less so than others of his works, and it's genuinely kinda eerie just how relevant that work still is to today. The ending admittedly isn't as strong as it could have been, but nonetheless, that's the one I'd pick. I actually have a video that I plan on putting out next week about it, if you want a more in depth discussion of it. But Coriolanus is my rec, hands down. 😊
@@TH3F4LC0Nx great, thanks! Looking forward to the video.
I agree that it feels very modern or postmodern with the picking apart of traditional male valour. But I disagree when it comes to the depiction of love. This is not love. Cressida has a whole monologue early in the play after her uncle encourages her to embrace a relationship with Troilus. She wondered if after the prince has “had her” if he will forget about her and he will move on to another. After she has given herself to Troilus, she is given by her uncle to the Greeks for a trade, and Troilus doesn’t do anything to save her from this fate. He does nothing. Perhaps if she hadn’t spent the night with him he may have fought harder for her just like we imagine the men in the Iliad fought, but Shakespeare flips that on it’s head also. Cressida is now a spoil of war and at the same level as a slave or servant and Troilus has her promise to stay true to him. How on Earth can she possibly do that when all the men who should have been loyal to her (her uncle and her lover) have handed her over to her enemies and she is now a slave? What honor does she owe when the honor owed her was ignored? Troilus goes to see her in the Greek’s camp to see if she has been faithful to him, as if she has such agency anymore. And what he sees is a woman trying to not be r@ped but Troilus sees this as betrayal which is so naive it may speak to those that see the Iliad and war in general as noble and romantic. The romanticizing of both love and war is a foolish endeavour. I see this play as Shakespeare’s war on romanticism. Great video.
Ooh, very good points! I ain't gonna lie though, I was flying by the seat of my pants a lil bit when reading this, (as I often am when reading any work of this age 😂), so the nuances of Cressida's plight may have escaped me. 🤣 But I'm def with you on this being Shakespeare's critique of the romanticizing of war. I would say this makes an interesting contrast with, say, Henry V, which really goes all out with the glorification of war, what with the iconic St. Crispin's Day speech and all. Troilus and Cressida isn't as uplifting, but it's realer and rawer, I'd say. 🙂
@@TH3F4LC0Nx and I find an interesting juxtaposition between Helen and Cressida. Helen was “stollen” from Menelaus but in the only scene she is in she seems very at home with the Trojans and a bit carefree about the whole 10year war. And she gets a lot of flack for this but she is in enemy territory as well just as Cressida will find herself later. Helen may very well be just trying to make the most of a bad situation as Cressida is later. And where Helen is the woman who’s face launched a thousand ships is seen as this physical beauty and perfection but is never seen as human. But we see Cressida’s humanity and her uncle and lover’s willing betrayal of her. No one goes to war for her. And might I add that Cressida must have been very valuable to be traded one for one for a Trojan general. It’s a fascinating play to think about. The Trojan war was often said to be a war for love; the reality as Shakespeare shows is that love and war are not the romantic notions we are fed.
@@ItsTooLatetoApologize Really great insights! :D I really like what you said about no one going to war for Cressida. 😔
@@TH3F4LC0Nx poor, Cressida, indeed. It’s nice to chat with someone else who’s read it. 😀
Loved Henry V too.