Troilus and Cressida Analysis

So, the play goes down during the seventh year of the Trojan War. You know, that epic war that gave us the model of Western "heroism" and a ton of great literature (like Homer's Iliad and Virgil's...

If you want to figure out this play's genre, don't even think about trying to pin it down to one specific category. Trust us. It's impossible because Troilus and Cressida is a mishmash of tragedy,...

If this play were a person, we'd tell you it has a lot of mood swings. One minute Shakespeare's cracking (mostly dirty) jokes and the next minute, the play is all doom and gloom. Ultimately, though...

Most of Shakespeare's plays are written in a verse (poetry) style called iambic pentameter. Sounds kind of scary, so let's break it down. An "iamb" is an unaccented syllable followed by an accented...

So, you may have guessed from the title that this play is all about the love between... a guy named Troilus and a girl named Cressida. Especially if you've ever heard of Chaucer's famous poem about...

This play begins in the middle of a war and (spoiler alert) ends in the middle of a war. Pretty depressing, really. When Hector is slaughtered by Achilles and his Myrmidons (and then dragged throu...

Nobody ever accused a Shakespeare play of being "easy." Here's a breakdown of the issues in Troilus and Cressida that students tend to have a tough time with. Don't worry, Shmoopers, you can handl...

Make Love Not WarTroilus wants to hook up with Cressida, not fight in some dumb war that's been dragging on for the last seven years. Problem is, Cressida's been playing hard to get. Meanwhile, th...

Anticipation StageAs Troilus salivates over Cressida, he can't stop thinking about how A-MA-ZING a steamy hook-up would be. The first time we meet him, the guy tells us he's so eager to be with h...

As big-shot Shakespeare scholar Marjorie Garber says, Troilus blows off the Trojan War while he tries to get Cressida into bed. Meanwhile, the Trojan military leaders want to get the great warrio...

A lot of people think Shakespeare's the guy who wrote this famous line about Helen of Troy: "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?" He's not. That line comes from Doctor Faustus, a pla...

Yep. This is one of Shakespeare's most sex-charged plays. It's all about a steamy love affair gone wrong during the Trojan War, which, by the way, is being fought because Paris has been getting it...

The Trojan WarHelen of TroyParisHectorAchillesGeoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde (c.1380s) Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey (c. 8th-6th century B.C.)William Caxton, Recuyell of the Historyes...