TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.

IRST heard of through an entry in the Stationers' Register,

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dated January 28, 1609, and reading as follows: "Richard Bonian and Henry Walley: Entered for their copy, under the hands of Mr. Segar, Deputy to Sir Charles Buck and Mr. Warden Lownes, a book called The History of Troilus and Cressida." In pursuance of this entry, a quarto edition of the play was issued in the course of the same year. This edition is specially remarkable for being prefaced with an address to the reader by the publishers. The address has two points of information requiring to be noticed here. The first is, that the play was then new, and had never been publicly acted; the words being, “You have here a new play, never staled with the stage, never clapper-claw'd with the palms of the vulgar." The other point is, that the issue was unauthorized and surreptitious: "Thank fortune for the 'scape it hath made amongst you; since, by the grand possessors' wills, I believe you should have pray'd for it, rather than been pray'd." "The grand possessors were doubtless the theatrical company then known as the King's Servants, in whom the rights of ownership were vested.

It would seem that the type of the 1609 issue must have been kept in form for some time, till after the play had been publicly acted, and then put through a second impression; as we have some copies of the same date, in which the forecited address is wanting, and the title-page changed so as to read, "As it was acted by the King's Majesty's Servants at the Globe."

How the publishers obtained their copy for the press, is a question about which we must be content to stand in some uncertainty. Possibly the play may have been first performed at the Court; which would nowise conflict with the claim of its being a new play, never staled with the stage." But, whether this were the case or not, we can easily conceive how it may

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have got into the publishers' hands without the consent of the owners. For copies of it must of course have been given out to the players some time before the day of performance. And so the most likely account of "the 'scape it hath made amongst you' is, that the copy leaked out through the players' hands, and was put through the press before it could be got ready for the stage. In the quarto edition, Troilus and Cressida is called a history"; while in the prefatory address it is spoken of as a comedy." In the folio of 1623, where it was next printed, it is called a "tragedy." The circumstances of its appearance in the latter edition are in some respects peculiar. It is not included in the list of plays prefixed to the volume, and is without any numbering of the pages, save that the pages of the second leaf are numbered 79 and 80. In that edition, as I have elsewhere observed, the plays are distributed under the three heads of Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. Each of these divisions is paged by itself, and in that of Tragedies the paging begins with Coriolanus. Troilus and Cressida is placed between the Histories and Tragedies, with nothing to mark which of the two divisions it belongs to, except that in the general title it is called a tragedy." From its not being included in the list of plays nor in the paging, some have inferred that its insertion in the folio was an after-thought; and that either its existence was unknown or ignored by the editors, or else the right of printing it was withheld from them till the rest of the volume had been made up and struck off. All this may indeed have been so: yet the most probable explanation of the thing seems to be, that the editors did not well know where to class the play. Nor has any headway been since made towards clearing up the puzzle. The play is indeed a perfect nondescript, and may with equal fitness be included in either of the three divisions, or excluded from them all.

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The originals, both quarto and folio, are without any marking of the Acts and scenes, save that at the opening we have “ Actus Primus. Scana Prima." That a copy of the quarto was used in printing the folio, is probable, as several misprints of the former are repeated in the latter; while, again, each copy has several passages that are wanting in the other; which shows that

in making-up the folio recourse was had to some authority besides the quarto. There are also divers other variations in the two copies; which puts us occasionally to a choice of readings. The printing, too, of both abounds to a rather unusual extent in errors, though most of these are of a kind to be easily corrected.

Nearly all the critics have remarked upon the great inequalities of style and execution met with in this play. In fact, scarce any of the Poet's dramas show more of ripeness or more of greenness in his art than we find in different parts of this: it has some of his best work, and some of his poorest: yet the greenness, except, perhaps, in the last ten lines, appears to be that of Shakespeare, and not of an inferior hand. — Nearly connected with this point is the fact, that the play is singularly defective in unity of interest and impression: there is no continuity of design apparent in it; where the real centre of it lies, what may be the leading and controlling idea, nobody can tell. The characterization, individually regarded, is of a high order, but there is little, if any, dramatic affinity among the persons; and, as they do not draw together towards any perceptible issue, we cannot gather why they should be consorted as they are. Therewithal the play abounds most richly in the far-sighted eloquence of moral and civil wisdom and discourse, such as carries our thoughts into the highest regions of Hooker and Burke; moreover it is liberally endowed with noble and impressive strains of poetry; yet one is at a loss to conceive why such things should be here, since the use of them does not seem to be regulated by any final cause, or any uniform law. So that, though ranking among the Poet's greatest and best efforts in respect of parts, still, as a work of art, the piece is exceedingly lame, because the parts do not converge in any central purpose, and so round up into an artistic whole.

All which naturally starts the question whether the play were originally written as we have it; or whether, in its present shape, it were an improvement on an earlier drama; and, if so, whether the earlier drama were by Shakespeare or by some other hand. As before seen, the address prefixed to the quarto calls it "a new play." There appears no cause to question the truth of

this statement, as it need not mean any more than that the play was new in the form it then had. In several cases, the Poet's earlier pieces are known to have been afterwards rewritten, enlarged, and replenished with the strengths and graces of his riper years. The inequalities of Troilus and Cressida are so like those in the plays thus revised, as to infer a common cause. And the argument thence growing is not a little strengthened by an entry in the Stationers' Register, dated February 7, 1603: "Mr. Roberts: The book of Troilus and Cressida, as it is acted by my Lord Chamberlain's men." The Lord Chamberlain's men" were the company to which Shakespeare belonged, and which, being specially licensed by King James soon after his accession, in the Spring of 1603, took the title of "his Majesty's Servants." Still some question is made whether the play entered in 1603 were Shakespeare's, because in Henslowe's Diary, under date of April and May, 1599, several entries occur of money paid to Dekker and Chettle in earnest of a play they were then writing, entitled "Troilus and Cressida," for the rival company known as "The Earl of Nottingham's Players." It appears, however, that in the title of this play Agamemnon was afterwards substituted for Troilus and Cressida. But, even if such had not been the case, there is very little likelihood that the "Lord Chamberlain's men" would have used on their boards the play of a rival company.

The most likely conclusion, then, from the whole matter seems to be, that Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida was originally written and acted before the Spring of 1603; that some years later, probably in 1608, it was rewritten, enlarged, and transfigured with the efficacy of the Poet's best period; and that this revision was with a view to the play's being brought out anew on the stage, and so was the cause of its being set forth in the quarto as a new play."

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Four sources are specially named as having been drawn upon by the Poet for the materials of this play. These are, first, Chaucer's Troilus and Cresseide; second, The History of the Destruction of Troy, translated from the French by Caxton; third, The Troy Book of Lydgate; fourth, Chapman's transla

tion of Homer. The first seven books of the latter were published in 1596, and the next twelve books not far from two years afterwards the whole twenty-four books, entitled "The Iliads of Homer, Prince of Poets, done according to the Greek, by George Chapman," were not published before 1603, and probably not till several years later, the edition being undated. It was from Chapman most likely that Shakespeare derived in the main his ideas of the Greek and Trojan heroes, as their several characters transpire in the council and in the field. And the influence from this quarter is most manifest in precisely those parts of the play which give the strongest relish and impress of the Poet's consummate mind; insomuch as to favour the belief of their being the fruits of after-thought grafted upon the stock of a much earlier production. It is equally probable that Chap-! man furnished the hints for the delineation of Thersites, there being nothing about him in the other sources mentioned. I say hints; for such are the most that could have been furnished by the Thersites of Homer towards the Thersites of Shakespeare; the character of the latter having all the life and vigour of an original conception.

In all that regards the action of the hero and heroine, the main staple of the play was unquestionably taken from Chaucer's poem. It is well known that of the particular story of Troilus and Cressida no traces are found in any of the old classic writers. Caxton and Lydgate have indeed something of it, but not in a form to have served the design of the play; while the part of Pandarus, whose character and doings are interwoven with the whole course of the story, as represented by the Poet, is altogether wanting in them, except a single mention of him by Lydgate, who refers to Chaucer as his authority. So that Chaucer's poem was the only work accessible to Shakespeare, that could have supplied the material for this part of the drama. And it is to be noted withal, that in Chaucer's poem Cressida is clothed with a purity and loftiness of character not consistent with the action there ascribed to her. Shakespeare borrowed the chief points of her action, and made her character conformable thereto. The character of Troilus, with its heroic ardour and constancy of soul, is substantially the same in the play as in the poem.