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The Origins of Troilus and Cressida: Stage, Quarto, and Folio

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Robert Kimbrough
Robert Kimbrough*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison 6
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Extract

Scholars and critics are wont to say that not even the editors of the First Folio knew what to make of Troilus and Cressida. Although the assertion has almost no validity, it is a comforting, protective one to repeat: comforting, for no play by Shakespeare has received such diverse interpretation; protective, for the statement absolves one from re-examining the basic bibliographical facts of the play. Diversity in Shakespearean interpretation is certainly desirable, yet that which surrounds Troilus and Cressida has become confusing and contradictory1 because the play is approached from assumptions of historical fact which are themselves widely diverse. Without a firm knowledge of origins, no critic—scholarly, literary, historical, or “new”—can generate the kind of imaginative assurance that is necessary in order to say something significant and lasting about the form and content of a Shakespearean play. Since so very little is known about Troilus and Cressida in its contemporary setting, an attempt to reconstruct the facts of its origins is all the more important. In this article, then, I shall initially review the known facts of the play on stage and in print, then propose that new facts be accepted along with the old in an account of origins which is conservative yet comprehensive. Generally I hope to establish a firm basis for further historical investigation and deeper critical understanding of Troilus and Cressida; specifically I hope in the last three sections to dispel three widely-held misconceptions: that the play failed or was not played publicly, that one of the Inns of Court commissioned the play, and that the editors of the First Folio were aesthetically uncertain concerning its place in that work.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 77 , Issue 3 , June 1962 , pp. 194 - 199
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1962

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References

Note 1 in page 194 See, for example, only the most recent commentaries on the play: E. Davis, “Troilus and Cressida,” English Studies in Africa, i (March 1958), 10–26; F. H. Langman, ibid., i (September 1958), 226–229; M. Van W. Smith, ibid., ii (March 1959), 136–143; E. Davis, ibid., iii (March 1960), 100–101; Albert Gérard, “Meaning and Structure in Troilus and Cressida,” ES, xl (1959), 144–157; A. S. Knowland, “Troilus and Cressida,” SQ, x (Summer 1959), 353–365; Brian Morris, “The Tragic Structure of Troilus and Cressida,” SQ, x (Autumn 1959), 481–492; and Richard C. Harrier, “Troilus Divided,” Studies in English Renaissance Drama, ed. J. W. Bennett, et al., New York, 1959.

Note 2 in page 194 W. W. Greg, A Bibliography of the English Printed Drama (4 vols., London, 1939–59), i, 18.

Note 3 in page 194 W. W. Greg, A Bibliography of the English Printed Drama, i, 25.

Note 4 in page 194 Troilus and Cressida: First Quarto, 1609 (collotype facsimile prepared by W. W. Greg, London, 1952), sig. A. All references to the Quarto are based on Greg's edition, which will be designated simply “Quarto”; I shall not retain the long s or ligatures.

Note 5 in page 194 Quarto, sig. ¶.

Note 6 in page 194 Quarto, sig. ¶2. I believe that “your” is a colloquial use of the pronoun as a demonstrative, here indicating Shakespeare. See E. A. Abbott, A Shakespearian Grammar (London, 1875), p. 148.

Note 7 in page 195 W. W. Greg, The Shakespeare First Folio (Oxford, 1955), pp. 338–350, 445–459, may be considered as the source for all the information in this section which I have not specifically noted. Greg, of course, did not claim originality on all points, his stated purpose being to provide a useful survey of facts and problems. The most recent textual scholarship (which Greg included) has been Philip Williams, “The ‘Second Issue’ of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, 1609,” Studies in Bibliography, ii (1949), 25–33; Williams, “Shake-peare's Troilus and Cressida: The Relationship of Quarto and Folio,” ibid., ii (1950), 131–143; and Alice Walker, “The Textual Problem of ‘Troilus and Cressida’,” MLR, xlv (October 1950), 459–464.

Note 8 in page 195 W. W. Greg, The Editorial Problem in Shakespeare (Oxford, 1951), p. 113.

Note 9 in page 195 W. W. Greg, The Shakespeare First Folio, p. 347.

Note 10 in page 195 T. W. Baldwin, A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: Troilus and Cressida, ed. H. N. Hillebrand and T. W. Baldwin (Philadelphia, 1953), pp. 357–358.

Note 11 in page 195 The Library (5th series), xv (March 1960), 8–20.

Note 12 in page 195 Thomas Middleton (New York, 1958), p. 10. See also p. 159, and R. C. Bald, “The Chronology of Middleton's Plays,” MLR, xxxii (January 1937), 36.

Note 13 in page 195 Barker, Middleton, p. 10.

Note 14 in page 195 All quotations from Shakespeare are from The Complete Works, ed. G. L. Kittredge, Boston, 1936.

Note 15 in page 196 Vol. iii, Works, ed. A. H. Bullen (8 vols., London, 1885), v.iii.192-201.

Note 16 in page 196 Leslie Hotson, Shakespeare's Sonnets Dated (New York, 1949), pp. 37–56, by process of elimination, identifies Troilus and Cressida with Love's Labour's Won on the theory that none of Shakespeare's plays is lost; hence, he would date the play before Meres's list of 1598. T. W. Baldwin, Shaks-pere's Love's Labor's Won (Carbondale, Ill., 1957), pp. 1–15, has discovered that in all probability a play by Shakespeare entitled Love's Labor's Won was being offered for sale in August 1603. In view of Roberts' entry, I doubt that the play could have been Troilus and Cressida. Hotson's arguments are all based on questionable hypotheses and proceed circularly; hence even this tentative historical evidence offers a more convincing rebuttal to his thesis than a point-by-point series of negative assertions.

Note 17 in page 196 E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage (4 vols., Oxford, 1923), iii, 366. Satiromastix was entered for publication on 11 November 1601; Poetaster and the A pologeticall Dialogue, 21 December 1601.

Note 18 in page 196 “Cynthia's Revels, Poetaster, and Troilus and Cressida,” SQ, v (Summer 1954), 297.

Note 19 in page 196 Vol. iv, The Complete Works, ed. C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson (11 vols., Oxford, 1925–52), ii.iii.122–145.

Note 20 in page 196 See William Elton, “Shakespeare's Portrait of Ajax in Troilus and Cressida,” PMLA, lxii (June 1948), 744–748; and Marjorie L. Rayburn, “New Facts and Theories about the Parnassus Plays,” PMLA, lxxiv (September 1959), 325–335.

Note 21 in page 196 M. A. Shaaber, “Review: A New Variorum,” SQ, iv (April 1953), 176, believes that, acted or unacted, a literary copy of the play as early as 1609 is difficult to explain.

Note 22 in page 197 Quarto, sig. ¶2v.

Note 23 in page 197 W. W. Greg, The Shakespeare First Folio, p. 348.

Note 24 in page 197 C. J. Sisson, “The Laws of Elizabethan Copyright: the Stationers' View,” The Library (5th series), xv (March 1960), 20.

Note 25 in page 197 See “Troilus and Cressida, 1609,” The Library (4th series), ix (December 1928), 267–286.

Note 26 in page 197 Alfred Harbage, Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions (New York, 1952), p. 116, and T. W. Baldwin, Variorum, pp. 356–357.

Note 27 in page 198 E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems (2 vols., Oxford, 1930), ii, 319–320, 327–328; and Elizabethan Stage, i, 221.

Note 28 in page 198 A. Wigfall Green, The Inns of Court and Early English Drama (New Haven, 1931), p. 153. See also C. H. Hopwood, ed., Middle Temple Records: Calendar (London, 1903), p. xx.

Note 29 in page 198 Middle Temple Records: Calendar, ed. C. H. Hopwood (London, 1903); Middle Temple Records: Minutes of the Parliament, ed. C. H. Hopwood, trans. C. T. Martin (3 vols. and Index, London 1904–05); D. P. Barton, Charles Benham, and Francis Watt, The Story of the Inns of Court (Boston, n. d.); R. J. Blackham, The Story of the Temple, Gray's and Lincoln's Inn (London, n. d.); W. Herbert, Antiquities of the Inns of Court and Chancery (London, 1804); W. B. Odgers, ed., Six Lectures on The Inns of Court and of Chancery (London, 1912); Hyacinth Ringrose, The Inns of Court (Oxford, 1909); and J. B. Williamson, The History of the Temple, London (London, 1924).

Note 30 in page 198 Peter Alexander, Shakespeare's Life and Art (London, 1939), p. 196; W. W. Lawrence, Shakespeare's Problem Comedies (New York, 1931), p. 128.

Note 31 in page 198 Robert B. Sharpe, The Real War of the Theatres (Boston and London, 1935), pp. 200–204, suggests that Shakespeare wrote Troilus for a special performance of the play before the Queen by the Chamberlain's Company and the rival children of the Chapel Royal on 29 December 1601. The men played the Greeks and the boys, the Trojans; Hector represented Essex and Achilles, Cecil. In light of Alfred Harbage's general delineation of Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions (New York, 1952), no comment on this theory seems necessary.

Note 32 in page 199 Leo Kirschbaum, “The Copyright of Elizabethan Plays,” The Library (5th series), xiv (December 1959), 246.