Essay by Anika Islam
Art by Nicole Ma
The problem with Trojan fanfiction manifests in the way characters have been shaped by each writer whose pen they pass through, deciding what kind of a lens with which to portray them. The histories of these characters can be forever changed by the writers who create their own spin on their narratives, relegating the audience to viewing them through the author’s specific light. Such is the case with Cressida, whose many names—Cressida, Criseyde, Criseida, and even Briseida—reflect the many lights in which she has been cast, complicating matters of originality in her story, whether one pinpoints her conception to medieval romances, or traces her origins even to the Iliad, where this supposed original incarnation appears, though quite different in form and name. In his seventeenth century play Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare represents the problems of retelling stories already coloured by the judgments of its previous writers by consistently having Cressida interpreted through a secondary lens via other characters before allowing the audience to form their own opinions of her as a character. Shakespeare thus draws attention to the difficulties of exploring the “original” forms of characters condemned by their long literary histories.
Within my paper, I will be defining the concept of “narrative filtering” in order to understand the representation of Cressida as she stands in Shakespeare’s drama. For this, it is crucial to peel back the layers of the drama itself, reducing the immersive world of the play to a study of the tradition of retelling and adaptation, examining the ways in which each iteration of a story passed down is moulded—or corrupted—by the pens that previously formed its words. From there I will move back and forth between the internal world of the play, and the outer stage performance, discussing how Cressida is presented by the characters, and how the characters themselves often stand in for previous authors of generations past. Lastly, Cressida’s own actions will be examined in order to investigate the question of whether an authentic portrayal and retelling is possible in the aftermath of centuries of narrative filtering.
Before Troilus and Cressida begins in media res, the play begins as a play—it negates the possibility of the viewer forming a complete sense of immersion by blatantly speaking to the audience with no barriers between the diegetic and non-diegetic world in order to inform them that this is a retelling. When the Prologue confesses he is “not in confidence / [o]f author’s pen or actor’s voice” (Prologue 23–4) he encourages the audience to view the characters on stage as actors playing at a representation of a character scripted for them by the playwright as opposed to the actual characters from the Trojan War myth coming to life as the story starts. This play and these characters are simply another representation filtered through another author’s pen rather than an authentic image. From the start, the audience is introduced to a concept I term “filtering,” which constitutes the understanding that the portrayals of the characters are being presented after passing through a secondary medium. Any conclusions the audience draws are coloured by this filter’s perceptions and subsequent presentations of the story and characters. As John Drakakis notes, “the actor…is, by virtue of his ‘profession’, split, and [his] task it is to ‘imitate’ or ‘personate’ the dramatic character” (117). For most of Shakespeare’s plays, this imitation is meant to be seamless, to invite the audience to believe they have become the character they are portraying. However, in Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare’s insistence on seeing the actors as actors playing another version of this story invites a critical lens into examining the ways in which authors and actors portray characters—Cressida in particular—rather than have the audience members accept completely that the Cressida on stage is Cressida. Thus, Shakespeare
alerts the audience to the fact that Cressida has already passed through one filter, setting up the rest of the play where she will continue to be filtered by more characters.
Before the audience gets to glimpse the titular character, she is introduced through Troilus and Pandarus’ discussion about her. Troilus refers to her as “fair Cressid” (1.1.28), an opinion of her at least somewhat influenced by Pandarus’ own peddling of Cressida to Troilus by way in which he “answer’st [Troilus that] she is fair” (1.1.49)—all positive traits, but a mirage set by the two men nonetheless. Therefore, the audience’s first impression of Cressida in Shakespeare’s play is tainted by the conceptions planted within their minds by “being versed in Pandarus’s and Troilus’s idioms” (Keller 149). Of course, even prior to the play, the character of Cressida is already saddled by expectations and perceptions held by an audience familiar with “inset traditions of the Troilus and Criseyde narrative, represented by Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (c. 1385), and by Henryson’s corrosive sequel to that poem, The Testament of Cresseid (c. 1475)” (Simpson 190). I argue that by defining Cressida for the audience even prior to her first appearance, Shakespeare speaks to the baggage of perception that each viewer brings with them to the way they see Cressida on account of how many narrative hands her character has passed through, with each iteration seeking to shape her on the basis of what they believed of her and how they chose to portray her. Of course, with each iteration, the authors comment on the Cressida shaped by previous judgements, to the point where we wonder what the original Cressida was meant to be. In the diegetic world, the text ponders this dilemma of originality and filtering through Troilus’ question to Apollo: “[t]ell me, Apollo, for thy Daphne’s love, / What Cressid is” (1.1.94–5). Though his language is metaphorical, Troilus’ appeal to Apollo to define Cressida conveys how little of Cressida’s “true” form the characters and the audience know—a task made more difficult with the ambiguities in her original authorship. Taken on a literal level and speaking solely to the play’s world, Cressida would be filtered through Apollo for Troilus, who then narrates who Cressida is for the audience—that is, Troilus would have an image of Cressida described to him as Apollo views and understands her, which he would pass his own judgements on before presenting this constructed image to the audience. Pandarus tells Troilus to “[l]et her be as she is” (1.1.63–4). It is through his statement that the underlying question remains: what exactly is she? What is she in Pandarus’ eyes, who demonstrates that he clearly sees her differently than Troilus? What is she to Troilus? What is she to the audience? Is she the same character burdened by her previous reputation derived from prior texts? Is she an original character in this play? “[W]e can never approach the ‘real’ Cressida any more than Troilus can” (Drakakis 115) because the spectator’s perceptions are so weighed down by cultural knowledge predicated on the presentations of Cressida according to individual writers’ judgements, which is represented through the contamination of our perception of the Cressida specifically in this play by Troilus and Pandarus’ remarks. The emphasis of representation in Troilus and Cressida thereby falls onto the title’s first half much more than its latter part.
For most writers engaging in the Cressida tradition, the most pivotal scene is that of her exchange with Diomedes. It makes sense that Shakespeare chose this scene to be the most heavily filtered; the scene’s numerous asides from Troilus, Ulysses, and Thersites that outnumber Cressida’s lines depict how many times the scene has already been presented by prior authors. Wolfram Keller states that the retellings of the Trojan War “are for the most part intensely hostile to each other” on account that “[t]here is room for one account only… [thus] some go…further, as they deface the competitor” (190). Instead of defacing each variation of the Cressida legend, Shakespeare presents them all together in this scene through the interruptions to what should be the focal point on stage: Cressida and Diomedes. Instead of a coherent scene between the two, the viewer must contend with the narrations from the scene’s voyeurs, a representation of how in reality, the audience (and Shakespeare) is working through centuries of narration from all reiterations of Cressida. As the play regards the Cressida on stage as her original form, the scene is overlaid with influencing views that represent this grand literary history of filtering. In this case, much of the rewritings on Cressida presents her as supposedly “[f]alse, false, false” (5.2.185). Troilus’ most interesting line within this scene is his declaration to “[l]et all untruths stand by [Cressida’s] stained name” (5.2.186), when for the audience, much of this invisible stain on Cressida’s name comes from his judgments as well as the pre-existing stain from previous writers. Cressida’s lines within this scene are often demarcated with em dashes signifying interruption, or left incomplete before the audience’s attention is once more redirected to another aside. The complexity of Cressida’s thoughts pertaining to her dilemma is not given the proper space to be explored and explained on stage as she is interrupted and spoken atop of repeatedly. Rather than be able to glimpse her internal state within the scene, she is interpreted for the audience by Troilus, Ulysses, and Thersites, who tell the audience that she is engaging in “roguery” (5.2.21). Whether the audience believes in this judgement is not the point—through this stage populated with voices and perspectives crowding out Cressida’s own, Shakespeare pulls back the veil—that is, that invisible barrier between the real world of the spectators, and the fictional world that comes into being as the play is performed on stage—which starkly reveals its very existence and exposes its many layers, driving an awareness in the audience that Cressida is filtered not just through the characters’ narrations, but through each version which has contributed to creating the version currently on stage.
The added separation from viewing Cressida’s character within her scene with Diomedes alienates her further from the audience. Shakespeare is attempting to depict a character whose narrative has been passed through many writers, coloured with judgements he cannot fully disengage from—for where does the original Cressida stand, then? Shakespeare and the audience’s identity dilemma is best summed up by Troilus’ own admission following the meeting: “This is and is not Cressid” (5.2.153). With the multitudinous depictions of Cressida and the many ways she is narrated to the audience through the watchers in this scene, his statement raises the question of who the real Cressida is beyond all the translations and interpretations of her by characters and writers alike. The three do not solely enter the room, they infiltrate the narrative, proceeding to take over. They act like omniscient narrators, when the very nature of narration is biased. All narrators are unreliable, doubly so when personal stakes are involved. Thus, presenting Cressida through two different mediating lenses in this scene points to the many layers involved in constructing her character, each shaped by a narrator’s particular version of her story. While “Shakespeare’s Cressida is given no room to question the literary tradition that condemns her” (Keller 199), Shakespeare invites the audience to do so throughout the course of the play as they are forced to view Cressida through the eyes of the other characters’ narrations, representing on a larger scale the many representations of her engrained into the literary tradition by the many authors who have presented their iterations of the Cressida myth influenced by their own ideas and beliefs. The Prologue’s worry about the inaccuracies of the author’s pen is realized most clearly in this scene, where the “metatheatrical performance anxiety that permeates the play” (Keller 147–8) are conveyed in the overlapping voices that crowd out the “original” Cressida, now relegated to a secondary character in her most crucial scene.
Earlier in the play, Pandarus claims that Cressida possesses the power to change her image according to her will, stating that “[i]f she be fair, ’tis the better for her; an she be not, she / has the mends in her own hands” (1.1.64–5). While Cressida is not entirely helpless, in the grander picture, his words ring hollow. Against all the narrations and descriptions of Cressida within the play, being filtered to the audience though Troilus and Pandarus and Thersites and Ulysses and so on—Cressida attempts to wrest the narrative away from the men of the play and the men of the pen by writing a letter of her own, reclaiming this supposed ability to shape her image. With this letter, Shakespeare portrays the attempts of the character Cressida to speak to the “original” image she once had without the male interventions of both the characters and her writers. Shakespeare uses Troilus’ destruction of the letter to convey that no matter what she does within the diegetic world of the play, she cannot escape the shackles of the literary tradition outside of it that condemns her, narrates her, and presents her as they see fit. As Troilus tears up the letter, he commands the torn scraps to “[g]o, wind, to wind! There turn and change together” (5.3.109). By his own admission, Troilus acknowledges that his actions will allow for Cressida’s words to be changed to fit the narratives of other characters as well as Cressida’s writers. The fragments of Cressida’s views on her story—whatever they may be—taunt the viewer, who once again can only access her through the secondary methods of her character’s presentation—and even then, the Cressida who writes the letter is still presented through Shakespeare’s own pen, too.
By tearing up Cressida’s letter and barring the audience from its access, Troilus condemns her to her long literary history of being perceived through others’ interpretations of her character, especially his own. He clearly reads what the letter states, but rather than read it aloud for the audience to hear and come to their own perceptions about, he delivers his own judgement, claiming that “[his] love with words and errors still she feeds, / But edifies another with her deeds” (110–11). Her words are filtered again, and this is the final blow delivered to this play’s iteration of Cressida. From this point forward, Cressida disappears from the text, and her subsequent silence throughout the last act of the play leaves little choice but to rely on the words of others. Grace Tiffany “regard[s]… Cressida’s passage into silent nonbeing as [a conformation] of both… Ulysses’ assessment of her character and Troilus’s fearful prediction for her” (47). From a different angle, it can be argued that the cessation of Cressida’s voice serves as Shakespeare’s representation of the disappearance of the “original” Cressida, replaced by the perceptions of her by secondary characters and authors working off each other. The representation of the original Cressida in the play’s world tries to reach out and establish herself in her own words but is rejected and ultimately relegated to being filtered. Her character is defined by the male characters of the play and ends just the same way. As her voice disappears, so does any chance to present herself faithfully.
Building on a story brings baggage. Stories retold by more authors and actors trap characters further into narratives altered from the influences of their new creators. Such is the case with the Trojan War tradition. With each retelling, characters suffer from the lights they are presented in—a detail Shakespeare noted when he too took part in the tradition through his own play. For Shakespeare, Cressida was the best character to present the idea of narrative “filtering.” Shakespeare’s seventeenth century play Troilus and Cressida represents the problems of retelling stories altered by the judgements of its prior writers by consistently having Cressida interpreted through a secondary lens via other characters before allowing the viewers to form their own perceptions of her as a character. Thus, Shakespeare draws attention to the difficulties of finding the “original” forms of characters already condemned by their long literary histories. The long histories of characters who trace back hundreds if not thousands of years ago are a testament to the power of fiction in influencing people’s lives. But the ways in which people influence the characters’ lives can radically alter how they are perceived for the next hundreds or thousands of years—for better or for worse.
Works Cited
Drakakis, John. “The Presence of Troilus and Cressida: Shakespeare’s Refurbishment of
Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde.” Love, history and emotion in Chaucer and Shakespeare: Troilus and Criseyde and Troilus and Cressida, edited by Andrew James Johnston et al, Manchester University Press, 2016, pp. 109–124.
Keller, Wolfram R. “Arrogant Authorial Performance: Criseyde to Cressida.” Love, history and ‘
emotion in Chaucer and Shakespeare: Troilus and Criseyde and Troilus and Cressida, edited by Andrew James Johnston et al, Manchester University Press, 2016, pp. 141–156.
Shakespeare, William. Troilus and Cressida: Revised Edition, edited by David Bevington,
Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015.
Simpson, James. “‘The formless ruin of oblivion:’ Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida and
literary defacement.” Love, history and emotion in Chaucer and Shakespeare: Troilus and Criseyde and Troilus and Cressida, edited by Andrew James Johnston et al, Manchester University Press, 2016, pp. 189–206.
Tiffany, Grace. “Not Saying No: Female Self-Erasure in Troilus and Cressida.” Texas Studies in
Literature and Language, vol. 35, no. 1, 1993, pp. 44–56. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40754999.