KISSING CRESSIDA

The question asked of Lavinia and the Ghost – who or what is this? – is a question that in Troilus and Cressida is provoked by the play itself. What is this play? The Quarto title page calls it a history, in Elizabethan usage a loose term that can simply mean “story.” The Quarto includes a prefatory letter praising Shakespeare as a master of comedy, and the play itself as a triumph of wit. Modern critics and editors sometimes group it as a “problem comedy” along with All's Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure. The Folio groups it with the tragedies, a category somewhat destabilized by the inclusion of Cymbeline. (Could we call Troilus and Cymbeline “problem tragedies”?) Hector, the principal character who dies in Troilus, is not one of the title characters. That alone might seem to disqualify it as tragedy. There are many Greek tragedies, and at least one Elizabethan one, Marston's Antonio's Revenge, in which the title character does not die; but by the general practice of Shakespeare's time to keep the title characters alive at the end is an odd way to end a tragedy. On the other hand, Hector is sufficiently important, and his death sufficiently momentous, that by normal usage the play seems disqualified as a comedy. And this chapter will argue for a more positive link with the tragedies, based on the connected ideas of violation and identity.

Troilus and Cressida, then, breaks generic boundaries.