Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

by Isaac Asimov

In Mycenaean times, a people we now call the Phrygians were in control of western Asia Minor. They still dominated the area in the supposed time in which Homer lived, three and a half centuries after the Trojan War, so he could speak of them familiarly. Their power was not destroyed till about 700 b.c. when the nomadic Cimmerians from the regions north of the Black Sea invaded Asia Minor and wreaked widespread destruction. The name "Phrygia" was still applied to a region of west central Asia Minor throughout ancient times, however.

  The chances are that the Trojans (although pictured in the Iliad as being in no way different from the Greeks in language, customs, or religion) were Phrygians.

  Shakespeare's mention of 69 ships is an extremely modest underestimate of the legendary number. The Iliad lists the numbers of ships brought by each Greek contingent in Book Two and the total comes to 1186. Christopher Marlowe in his play Dr. Faustus is closer to Homer, by far, when he has Faustus cry out at seeing the shade of the beautiful woman who, according to legend, brought on the war, "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships-"

  The ravished Helen. ..

  The basic cause of the expedition was undoubtedly most unromantic. Troy controlled the narrow waters between the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea and was, therefore, master of an important trade route. By charging tolls for passage, they grew rich, and this made the city a valuable prize for any freebooting expedition.

  Not only did Troy's wealth form a tempting target, but the Mycenaeans were being prodded from behind. New tribes of Greeks from the north, relatively uncivilized ones called Dorians, were making their pressure felt. Conditions at home were less settled than they had been and the urge to take part in piratical expeditions overseas increased.

  Indeed, the time of the Trojan War was one of great turmoil throughout the civilized world and it was not only Troy that was suffering harm from sea raiders. Other raiders ravaged the coast of Egypt and Canaan, for instance. Certain contingents of these raiders settled down on the Canaan-ite coast and became the Philistines, who strongly influenced Israelite history.

  By Homer's time a much more trivial, but much more romantic, cause had been given for the expedition. Shakespeare gives it briefly here. The Greeks, he says, have sworn

  To ransack Troy, within whose strong immures

  The ravished Helen, Menelaus" queen,

  With wanton Paris sleeps-and that's the quarrel.

  —Prologue, lines 8-10

  In ancient times piratical raids were common. Ships would come ashore and armed men would suddenly snatch up cattle and people, then sail away again. If the people captured (and intended for the slave-market) included any of prominent family, reprisal raids might be carried through. The immediate cause of the Trojan War could well have been such a raid, of which the Trojans may have been guilty or which it siuited the Greeks to say that the Trojans were guilty.

  With time, the details of the abduction were adorned and elaborated with complicated myth, and this particular one has become world-famous. I'll give it briefly.

  At a certain wedding (involving a bride and groom who will appear later in this chapter) all the gods and goddesses had been invited-with one exception. Eris, the Goddess of Discord, had been overlooked. She appeared unbidden and in anger tossed a golden apple (the "Apple of Discord") among the guests. It bore the label "To the Fairest."

  At once three goddesses claimed it: Juno (Hera), the wife of Jupiter (Zeus); Minerva (Athena), the Goddess of Wisdom; and Venus (Aphrodite), the Goddess of Beauty.

  The goddesses agreed to accept the decision of Paris, a Trojan prince, and each goddess tried her best to bribe him. Juno offered him power, Minerva offered him wisdom, and Venus offered him the fairest woman in the world for his bride. He chose Venus, which was probably the honest choice in any case.

  There was a complication, though. The fairest woman in the world was Helen, who was already married to Menelaus, King of Sparta.

  Guided by Venus, Paris arrived as a guest in Sparta, was royally treated by Menelaus, and then, when Menelaus was off on state affairs, Paris seized the opportunity to abduct the willing Helen (Paris was very handsome) and carry her off to Troy.

  Menelaus was rightly angry over this and the result was the Greek expedition against Troy.

  To Tenedos …

  The journey of the Greek fleet is followed:

  To Tenedos they come,

  And the deep-drawing barks do there disgorge

  Their warlike fraughtage. Now on Dardan plains

  The fresh and yet unbruised Greeks do pitch

  Their brave pavilions.

  —Prologue, lines 11-15

  Tenedos is a small island about four miles off the shore of Asia Minor, near Troy.

  Troy itself is several miles inland and the plain between itself and the sea is the "Dardan plain." Dardania is a name for a section of the Trojan coast. The name is derived, according to the myth, from Dardanus, a son of Jupiter. A grandson of Dardanus was Tros, from whose name Troy was derived.

  Having brought the Greeks to Troy, the Prologue now warns the audience that the play will not start at the beginning:

  … our play

  Leaps o'er the vaunt and firstlings of those broils,

  Beginning in the middle,

  —Prologue, lines 26-28

  … Troilus, alas …

  Yet though the play begins in the middle of a war, it does not begin with martial scenes or even with martial speeches. It begins with a rather sickly speech of love.

  The fault lies not in Homer but in medieval distortions of the tale. In Shakespeare's time the most popular version of the tale of Troy was a twelfth-century French romance, written by Benoit de Sainte-Maure, called Roman de Troie. Even that wasn't based on Homer directly, but on works written in late Roman times which were themselves altered versions of the original account.

  The Roman de Troie was written when the devices of courtly love (see page I-54) were taking France by storm, so that Homer's vigorously masculine tale became prettified with the addition of an artificial love story. It was the love story, rather than the Homeric background, that interested later writers such as Boccaccio in Italy and Chaucer in England, and through them, Shakespeare.

  The first scene of Troilus and Cressida is in Troy. A young Trojan warrior comes on the scene, sulky and petulant because he is being frustrated in love. He is taking off his armor and won't fight, saying:

  Each Troyan that is master of his heart,

  Let him to field; Troilus, alas, hath none

  —Act I, scene i, lines 4-5

  As the name of the play tells us, the action is to revolve to a large extent about Troilus, but who is he?

  In Homer's Iliad he is dead before the action starts, and he receives exactly one mention. Toward the very end of the book, when the aged King of Troy is making ready to go to the Greek camp to try to ransom the dead body of his most heroic son, he berates his remaining sons, saying,[In my quotations from the Iliad, I am making use of the recent translation by Robert Graves, The Anger of Achilles (Doubleday, 1959). ] "Your dead brothers were the best soldiers in my dominions. Mestor, Troilus the Chariot-Fighter, and Hector, a very god among men-yes, his aspect was rather divine than human-fallen and gone, and mere dregs left me."

  That is all; nothing more..

  The later poets and commentators filled in the gap, though, and invented various tales concerning Troilus that agreed in only one respect: he was eventually killed by Achilles, the greatest of the Greek warriors.

  Since Troilus is heroic and since his tale is not told (and therefore fixed) by Homer, there is room left for addition in medieval fashion, when the medieval writers took their turn. It was Troilus to whom the tale of courtly love was affixed.

  I'll not meddle…

  With Troilus is an older man, Pandarus, who listens impatiently to the young hero's sighs. Apparently he has been doing his best to bring the love affair to a happy conclusion. Now he pretends to lose patience, saying:

  Wel
l, I have told you enough of this.

  For my part, I'll not meddle nor make no farther.

  —Act I, scene i, lines 13-14

  Who is Pandarus? In the Iliad there is indeed a character by this name. He is pictured as an expert archer and appears in Homer's tale on two separate occasions.

  His first appearance is in Book Four of the Iliad. A truce has been declared between the armies and for a moment it seems as though the war may end in a compromise with Helen returned and Troy left standing. Pandarus, however, treacherously shoots an arrow at Menelaus and wounds him. The war goes on.

  Pandarus makes a second appearance in Book Five. He shoots an arrow at Diomedes, one of the major Greek heroes, and wounds him slightly. A little later, he encounters the enraged Greek at close range and is himself killed. Exit Pandarus.

  Shakespeare's Pandarus has no more in common with this other one than the name. In Troilus and Cressida Pandarus is a genial old man, very interested in sex-a kind of voyeur, in fact-and so unashamed in his vicarious delight over the whole matter that he has given the word "pander" to the English language.

  To be sure, it is not Shakespeare who is entirely responsible for this change. Pandarus appears as Pandaro in a short poem ("Filostrato") about this love affair published by the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio in 1338. In "Filostrato" Pandaro is the cousin of the girl whom Troilus loves.

  The English poet Chaucer (see page I-54) published in 1385 Troilus and Criseyde, a much longer work, based on "Filostrato." In it Pandaro, the girl's cousin, became Pandare, the girl's uncle.

  It was Shakespeare next who, using Chaucer's poem as a main source, wrote Troilus and Cressida and changed Pandare to Pandarus.

  … fair Cressid.. .

  Bumblingly, Pandarus urges patience on Troilus, and Troilus retorts that he is already superhumanly patient. He says:

  At Priam's royal table do I sit,

  And when fair Cressid comes into my thoughts-

  —Act I, scene i, lines 31-32

  Priam is King of Troy, the figure of a royal patriarch. He has, all told, fifty sons and twelve daughters by various wives, and Troilus is one of the sons. When the Greek expedition arrived before the walls of Troy, Priam was too old to fight, but he was still in full authority as king.

  As for "fair Cressid," who is she? She is Pandarus' niece in the play and it is she with whom Troilus is in love, but where does she come from? She is not mentioned, not once, in the Iliad.

  Yet, even so, we can trace her origin from the very first book of the Iliad. In that first book, Homer relates the cause of a quarrel between Agamemnon, the commander in chief of the Greek forces, and the greatest warrior in those forces, Achilles.

  The army, it seems, has conducted a raid, carried off captives, and divided the loot. Agamemnon's share included a girl named Chryseis, while Achilles' share included another girl named Briseis. (The similarity in names is unfortunate and is a sure source of confusion.)

  It turns out that Chryseis is the daughter of Chryses, a priest of Apollo. The priest comes to the camp to retrieve his daughter but when he is brusquely turned away by Agamemnon, Apollo (answering his priest's prayer) sends plague into the Greek camp. As a result, Achilles urges Agamemnon to return Chryseis and Agamemnon pettishly insists that, in that case, he will appropriate Briseis in return.

  The quarrel flares and Achilles, in a rage, declares he will retire to his tent. He and his warriors will fight no more on behalf of this miserable leader. (And surely, our sympathies are all with the wronged Achilles at the start.)

  The argument rests entirely on a matter of prestige. Agamemnon's view is that his prerogative as commander in chief is unassailable. Achilles insists that the commander in chief cannot hide behind his office while committing an injustice. The matter of the girls is a trifling symbol of the clash between central authority and individual rights. Homer does not introduce the thought that Agamemnon might be in love with Chryseis or Achilles with Briseis; certainly not in the medieval sense.

  Later writers, however, more romantic than Homer and far less able, cannot resist stressing the love story, and make Achilles in love with Briseis.

  In Benoit's medieval Roman de Troie, another factor is brought in to further complicate the matter and make the love tale even more interesting. The Trojan prince Troilus is also in love with Briseis, so that now there is a triangle of men, Agamemnon, Achilles, and Troilus, all competing for her.

  Benoit distorts the name, and "Briseis" becomes "Briseide." Since it is almost impossible to avoid confusing "Briseis" with "Chryseis," "Briseide" easily becomes "Criseide." Hence Chaucer wrote of Troilus and Criseyde; and by a further small change Shakespeare wrote of Troilus and Cressida.

  … Hector or my father.. .

  Poor Troilus also complains that he must hide his aching heart and conceal the fact that he is hopelessly in love:

  Lest Hector or my father should perceive me

  —Act I, scene i, line 38

  Hector was Priam's oldest son, his father's surrogate in the field, the commander in chief of the Trojan armies. He is the best and greatest warrior on the Trojan side, second only to Achilles as a fighter. He is one of the most attractive personalities in the Iliad and is the picture of patriotism.

  The bias in his favor is far more pronounced in medieval versions of the tale, since the Trojans were supposed to be the ancestors of the Romans, and Rome always had a "good press" in the Middle Ages. Such a bias may also be expected in Shakespeare's play and it is there. Shakespeare consistently pictures Hector as braver and better than Achilles, for instance.

  Why Troilus should be so reluctant to let Priam or Hector know of his love is not made clear in the play. One might argue that it was a time to fight and not to love and that father and older brother would object to having young Troilus moon away his time when the city was in such peril. More likely, however, courtly love is, by convention, supposed to be barred by tremendous hurdles; barriers of law or caste, parental disapproval, royal disfavor, and so on. Troilus must not be allowed to have it too easy, therefore.

  … somewhat darker than Helen's

  As for Pandarus, it is his task at the moment to keep Troilus' love in flame by a skillful praising of Cressida, saying:

  An her hair were not somewhat darker than Helen's

  —Act I, scene i, lines 43-44

  He does not go on and really, the implication that Cressida might almost be compared with Helen can only be considered humorous.

  Ever since the tale of the Trojan War has been extant, Helen has been considered beauty incarnate and beyond comparison. Notice, though, the implication that darker hair is, in itself, a blot on beauty (see page I-436).

  … Cassandra's wit…

  Pandarus continues to praise Cressida. Having compared her physical attributes with Helen's, in bumbling style, he searches for a way of praising her mind. He says:

  … I would somebody had heard

  her talk yesterday, as I did. I will not

  dispraise your sister Cassandra's wit, but-

  —Act I, scene i, lines 47-49

  Cassandra was one of Priam's daughters Ad the most tragic of them. She was beloved by Apollo and had promise to yield to him if he would give her the gift of prophecy. When he had granted her that favor she nevertheless remained obdurate. The divine gift could not be withdrawn, but in revenge Apollo decreed that no one would ever believe her true prophecies. In other words, people believed her mad.

  The comparison, then, with Cassandra in natter of wit is but another bumble, calculated, perhaps, to draw a laugh from the more knowing in the audience.

  … behind her father …

  Troilus continues to bemoan his fate, obvious to Pandaras' wheedling. The go-between therefore tries the other extreme. Violently, he disowns the whole business and washes his hands of i He will do nothing further for Troilus and says:

  She's a fool to stay behind her father.

  Let her to the Greeks, and so

&
nbsp; I'll tell her the next time I see her.

  —Act I, scene i, lines 83-85

  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.

  … thy Daphne's love