Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

by Isaac Asimov

  Since first I saw yourself and Diomed

  In llion, on your Greekish embassy.

  —Act IV, scene v, lines 213-15

  This represents a point of difference from the Iliad. Before the fighting began, the Greeks had sent Ulysses and Menelaus (not Diomedes) to Troy, under a flag of truce, to demand the return of Helen. This is referred to in Book Three of the Iliad.

  It is, however, very easy to associate Diomedes with Ulysses, for they often acted in concert in the legends about Troy. In the Iliad it is Ulysses and Diomedes who act in concert in Book Ten to kill Rhesus the Thracian.

  In later myths they are also joined. Thus, the two together sneak into Troy itself in order to steal the Palladium, an image of Minerva (Athena), who bore the alternate name of Pallas, after which the object, holy to her, was named. This was supposed to guard the city and it was not until it was stolen that the city became vulnerable.

  Tomorrow do I meet thee …

  As the fourth act ends, it would seem that a well-rounded climax is clearly being prepared. Troilus approaches Ulysses to ask where Calchas' tent might be located. Ulysses has shown that he admires Troilus and despises Cressida, and it is no great feat to guess that he will be the instrument whereby Troilus will learn of Cressida's infidelity.

  As for Achilles, Ulysses' plan has worked wonderfully. He is a new man and when Hector twits him for not fighting, he says:

  Dost thou entreat me, Hector?

  Tomorrow do I meet thee, jell as death;

  —Act IV, scene v, lines 267-68

  What, then, ought we to expect in the fifth act? Troilus will learn of Cressida's faithlessness, we can be sure, and will go raving out on the field to avenge himself on the Greeks. Perhaps he is to be killed by Diomedes, perhaps by Achilles-but he must die. Troilus dies, in the Greek legends that deal with him, before Achilles' spear, and of what dramatic value is it to survive under the conditions of the tragedy as outlined in this play?

  Achilles must also kill Hector, since that is an absolute necessity; all versions of the Troy legend agree there. In the Iliad Achilles returns to the fight only after Hector has killed Patroclus, but perhaps Shakespeare might not have needed that part of Homer's plot. After all, Shakespeare's presentation of Patroclus scarcely fits the notion of that effeminate as a doughty warrior. (Homer's presentation of Patroclus was quite different.) Shakespeare might well have felt it would be more satisfactory to have Ulysses' plan stand as the spring that set Achilles to fighting again.

  Then, Cressida must die too. Perhaps by her own hand out of contrition or perhaps, in shame, after being cast off by a disgusted, or sated, or callous Diomedes.

  Indeed, a century before Troilus and Cressida was written, a Scottish poet named Robert Henryson had written a continuation of Chaucer's tale and called it Testament of Cresseid. It was so close an imitation of Chaucer that for a while it was considered authentically Chaucerian and in 1532 was actually included in an edition of Chaucer's works.

  In the Testament Diomedes grows tired of Cressida and casts her off. Cressida rails against Venus and Cupid and is stricken by them with leprosy in punishment. Her face and body utterly altered by this loathsome disease, she begs by the roadside, and Troilus, magnificent on his horse, passes her and tosses her a coin, without recognizing her.

  It is a crude denouement, and a savage one, and we could hope that the gentle Shakespeare might never have felt tempted to adopt it, but it was popular and shows what an audience would like in the way of dramatic retribution.

  What does Shakespeare really do, then?

  Very little, really. The fifth act falls apart and Troilus and Cressida, which is tight enough and sensible enough through the first four acts, becomes a rather unsatisfactory play as a result of the fifth act. While it is not my intention in this book to make literary judgments, it appears that the fifth act is so poor that some critics have suggested that Shakespeare did not write it.

  We can imagine such a possibility. Suppose that Essex's execution had taken place while Shakespeare was writing Troilus and Cressida. He might have written the fourth act savagely, putting Cressida in her place, and then have found the whole thing too unpleasant to continue. If he abandoned the play, some other member of the actors' company of which Shakespeare was a member may have worked up an ending for the play; one that could not match what had gone before, naturally.

  Or perhaps we don't have to go that far. It is not absolutely essential to absolve Shakespeare of every inferior passage in his plays. He may have been the greatest writer who ever lived but he was still a man and not a god. He could still write hurriedly; he could still write halfheartedly. And with Essex's execution burning him, he may have botched the last act himself.

  .. a letter from Queen Hecuba

  Just as the fifth act begins there is a sudden retreat from the situation as it had been developed at the end of the fourth act. Suddenly Thersites delivers a letter to Achilles, who reads it and says:

  My sweet Patroclus, I am thwarted quite

  From my great purpose in tomorrow's battle.

  Here is a letter from Queen Hecuba,

  A token from her daughter, my fair love,

  Both taxing me and gaging me to keep

  An oath that I have sworn. 1 will not break it.

  —Act V, scene i, lines 38-43

  So all of Ulysses' careful planning, all his wisdom and slyness, go suddenly for nothing, and when Achilles is brought to battle it will be in Homer's fashion. In that case, why should Shakespeare have introduced Ulysses' plot at all? It is almost as though another hand, taking up the fifth act, having no idea as to what Shakespeare intended, fell back on Homer in default of anything else.

  … Ariachne's broken woof…

  Meanwhile Ulysses has guided Troilus to Calchas' tent, where the young man quickly sees that Cressida is false. The conversation is one long, shallow flirtation of Cressida with Diomedes. She even gives him as a token the very sleeve that Troilus had given her.

  The brokenhearted Troilus tries to chop logic and convince himself that he does not really see his Cressida; that there are two Cressidas. One is Diomedes' Cressida, a faithless, worthless woman; and the other, secure in his own mind, is his ideal Cressida, faithful and true. Yet he must admit that this separation is not real, that somehow the two are one:

  And yet the spacious breadth of this division

  Admits no orifex for a point as subtle

  As Ariachne's broken woof to enter.

  —Act V, scene ii, lines 147-49

  Arachne (not "Ariachne," a change Shakespeare makes to save the meter, apparently) was a Lydian woman so proud of her skill as a weaver that she challenged Minerva (Athena) herself to compete with her. In the competition, Arachne produced a tapestry into which those myths that were uncomplimentary to the gods were woven. When she was done, Minerva could find no fault with it and petulantly tore it to shreds. Arachne tried to hang herself, but Minerva, somewhat remorsefully, saved her life, changed the girl into a spider and the rope into a strand of spider web.

  Troilus is saying that not even the finest strand of a spider's web can really be fit between the two Cressidas he is trying to conjure up. He realizes that there is only one Cressida and that he has been betrayed.

  … The fierce Polydamas

  And now suddenly the play explodes into a battle scene, something which the Iliad is fiercely crammed with. It begins with Hector arming himself for the fray despite the pleas of his wife Andromache, his sister Cassandra, and his father Priam. Troilus, on the other hand, urges him into the battle with savage forcefulness, for he longs for revenge on Diomedes.

  The tide of battle goes against the Greeks to begin with and Agamemnon comes on stage to rally his men:

  Renew, renew! The fierce Polydamas

  Hath beat down Menon;

  —Act V, scene v, lines 6-7

  Polydamas appears briefly in the Iliad as a friend of Hector's, one who counsels moderation. In Book Twelve, when t
he Trojan fortunes are beginning to ride high, Polydamas cautions against cocksureness and predicts the end may be disaster. Trojans are winning victories because Achilles is not fighting, but what if he rejoins the battle?

  It is to him that Hector makes a famous rejoinder. In quite an un-Homeric mood, he derides all the omens, all the worries about whether birds are flying on the right or on the left, and says: "A divine message? The best divine message is: 'Defend your country!'."

  … Palamedes

  Menon, whom Polydamas has "beat down," does not appear in the Iliad, nor do most of the other names that Agamemnon calls out, recounting the tale of defeats in sonorous syllables.

  One name, however, perhaps by accident, is memorable, though he does not appear in the Iliad. Agamemnon speaks of:

  … Palamedes Sore hurt and bruised.

  —Act V, scene v, lines 13-14

  Palamedes appears in the later myths as a man almost as shrewd as Ulysses himself. When the heroes were gathering to go to Troy, Menelaus and Palamedes traveled to Ithaca to urge Ulysses to come. Ulysses had learned from an oracle that if he went he would not return for twenty years and then penniless and alone, so he pretended to be mad. He guided a plow along the seashore, sowing salt instead of seed. Palamedes watched the display cynically, and suddenly placed Ulysses' one-year-old son, Telemachus, in the path of the plow. Ulysses turned it aside and his pretense of madness was broken.

  Ulysses never forgave Palamedes and eventually engineered his death by having him framed for treason. This happened before the Iliad opens and there is no hint concerning it in Homer's tale.

  This speech of Agamemnon's reflects the situation in Book Fifteen of the Iliad. Achilles obdurately refuses to fight; a number of the Greek chieftains, including Agamemnon, Diomedes, and Ulysses, have been wounded, and the Trojan fortunes are at their peak. The Greeks have fallen back to their very ships and the Trojans, with Hector leading them on, are bringing the torches with which to set those ships on fire.

  Patroclus ta'en …

  But in the course of Agamemnon's cry, however, one significant phrase creeps in:

  Patroclus ta'en or slain.

  —Act V, scene v, line 13

  Thus, in four words, is masked the most dramatic portion of the Iliad. Achilles, having brutally rejected Agamemnon's offer of amends in Book Nine, forfeits the side of right and must, in his turn, begin to pay.

  That payment comes in Book Sixteen, when Patroclus, horror-stricken at the Greek defeat and at the imminent burning of their ships, begs Achilles to let him enter the fight. Achilles agrees. He allows Patroclus to wear Achilles' own armor, but warns him merely to drive the Trojans from the ships and not to attempt to assault the city.

  Patroclus does well. The Trojans are driven back, but the excitement of battle causes him to forget Achilles' advice. He pursues the fleeing Trojans, is stopped by Hector, and killed.

  … bear Patroclus' body…

  Agamemnon's remark that Patroclus is either taken or slain is soon settled in favor of the latter alternative. Nestor enters, saying:

  Go, bear Patroclus' body to Achilles,

  —Act V, scene v, line 17

  Again, in a few words, many dramatic deeds in the Iliad are slurred over. In Book Seventeen there is a gigantic struggle over Patroclus' body. Hector manages to strip the dead man of the armor of Achilles, but the Greeks save the body itself in a fight in which Menelaus and Ajax do particularly well. In the Iliad it is Menelaus who sends the message to Achilles, not Nestor, but then it is Nestor's son, Antilochus (who does not appear in Troilus and Cressida), who actually carries the message.

  … Great Achilles Events follow quickly. Ulysses comes onstage, crying:

  O courage, courage, princes! Great Achilles

  Is arming, weeping, cursing, vowing vengeance!

  Patroclus' wounds have roused his drowsy blood,

  —Act V, scene v, lines 30-32

  So it happens in the Iliad. Achilles, paid back for his intransigence, realizes too late that he has sulked in his tent too long. In the Iliad, however, he doesn't arm so quickly. He has no armor, for he had given it to Patroclus, who had lost it to Hector.

  A new set of armor must be forged for Achilles by Vulcan himself, something to which Book Eighteen of the Iliad is devoted. In Book Nineteen there is the formal reconciliation of Agamemnon and Achilles, and only then, in Book Twenty, does Achilles join the battle.

  .. . I'll hunt thee for thy hide

  In Books Twenty, Twenty-one, and Twenty-two, Achilles is at war, and none can stand before him. Indeed, in those three books, no Greek warrior but Achilles is mentioned. It is as though he, a single man, fights alone against the Trojans (with occasional help from one god or another) and defeats them.

  In Book Twenty-two, when the Trojan army has fled within the walls of Troy in fear of the raging Achilles, Hector at last comes out alone to meet him in the climactic battle of the Iliad. But the issue is never hi doubt.

  The onrush of Achilles daunts even Hector, and at the last moment he turns to flee, trying to find his way safe through one of the city gates. Achilles heads him off and three times they run completely round the city (which can only be village-size by modern standards).

  Only then does Hector turn, perforce, to face Achilles, and is killed!

  None of this can appear in Troilus and Cressida. The medieval poets, with their pro-Trojan/Roman prejudice, had to treat Hector much more gently, and Shakespeare inherits that attitude from them.

  He has the two champions fight indeed, but it is Achilles who has to fall back, weakening. Hector says, gallantly,

  Pause, if thou wilt.

  —Act V, scene vi, line 14

  And Achilles goes off, muttering that he is out of practice.

  Yet something must be done to account for the fact that Hector does indeed die at the hands of Achilles, so Shakespeare makes the former do a most un-Hectorish thing. Hector meets an unnamed Greek in rich armor and decides he wants it. When the Greek tries to run, Hector calls out:

  Wilt thou not, beast, abide?

  Why then, fly on, I'll hunt thee for thy hide.

  —Act V, scene vi, lines 30-31

  Nowhere in Homer, nor anywhere else in this play, does Hector give anyone reason to think he would ever call a foeman "beast" or take the attitude that war is a hunt, with other men playing the role of animals, and it is partly because of this that some critics doubt that Shakespeare wrote the last act. And yet it is necessary for Hector to do something of this sort, in order that he might earn the retribution that now falls upon him.

  … Troy, sink down

  Hector catches his prey and kills him. It is late in the day and Hector decides the day's fight is over. Perhaps he is helped to that decision by his eagerness to try on the new armor he has won. At any rate, he takes off his own armor, stands unprotected-and at that moment, Achilles and a contingent of his Myrmidons appear on the scene.

  Hector cries out that he is unarmed, but Achilles orders his men to kill, and then says, in grim satisfaction:

  So, Ilion, fall thou next! Come, Troy, sink down!

  Here lies thy heart, thy sinews, and thy bone.

  —Act V, scene viii, lines 11-12

  For Achilles to kill Hector in this way is unthinkable in a Homeric context and must strike any lover of the Iliad as simple sacrilege. But there it is-the medieval pro-Trojan, pro-Hector view.

  … wells and Niobes. ..

  Troilus bears the news of Hector's death to the Trojan army:

  Go in to Troy, and say there Hector's dead.

  There is a word will Priam turn to stone,

  Make wells and Niobes of the maids and wives,

  —Act V, scene x, lines 17-19

  Niobe was a Theban queen, a daughter of Tantalus (see page I-13), whose pride in her six sons and six daughters led her to boast herself the superior of the goddess Latona (Leto), who had only one of each. La-tona's children, however, happened to be Apollo and Diana.

/>   To avenge the taunt, Apollo and Diana shot down all twelve children, the twelfth in Niobe's arms. She wept continuously after that, day after day, until the gods, in pity, turned her to stone, with a spring of tears still bubbling out and trickling down.

  … no more to say

  This essentially ends the play. As Troilus says:

  Hector is dead; there is no more to say.

  —Act V, scene x, line 22

  To be sure, Troilus promises revenge on the Greeks and on Achilles particularly, but that is just talk. There can be no revenge. Troy must fall.

  Nor has Troilus revenge on Diomedes or Cressida. Diomedes still lives and still has Cressida.

  The fifth act is an ending of sorts, but it is not the ending toward which the first four acts were heading.

  5. The Life of Timon Of Athens

  Shakespeare wrote a narrative poem and three plays set in the legendary days of Greek history. He wrote only one play that was based- in a very tenuous way-in the days of Greece's greatest glory, the fifth century b.c.

  This century was the Golden Age of Athens, when she beat off giant Persia and built a naval empire, when she had great leaders like Themis-tocles, Aristides, and Pericles; great dramatists like Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes; great sculptors like Phidias; great scientists like Anaxagoras; great philosophers like Socrates and Plato.