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The Greeks are strong and skilful to their strength,
Fierce to their skill, and to their fierceness valiant;
But I am weaker than a woman’s tear,
Tamer than sleep, fonder than ignorance,
Less valiant than the virgin in the night,
And skilless as unpracticed infancy. (1.1.7–12)
Troilus addresses these lines to Pandarus in the play’s opening scene. He has just called for his attendant to help him remove his armor—an action that symbolically parallels the feeling of emasculation he expresses here at not having his love for Cressida reciprocated. The eloquence of his speech shows that he has a way with words. However, Troilus, in his inexperience, is a lover rather than a fighter. Significantly, we won’t see him arm again until the play’s final act. Only then, after suffering from a broken heart, will he transform into a warrior, albeit an overeager and pitifully incompetent one.
When their rhymes,
Full of protest, of oath and big compare,
Wants similes, truth tired with iteration—
“As true as steel, as plantage to the moon,
As sun to day, as turtle to her mate,
As iron to adamant, as Earth to th’ center”—
Yet, after all comparisons of truth,
As truth’s authentic author to be cited,
“As true as Troilus” shall crown up the verse
And sanctify the numbers. (3.2.175–84)
With these lines, Troilus makes his grandiloquent pledge to remain faithful to Cressida. In true poetic style, he doesn’t simply declare his vow outright. Rather, he frames it as a matter of world-historical importance, as though sometime in the future, once he’s gained honor and fame, everyone will remember him as “Troilus the True.” The lofty idealism of his words immediately invites suspicion, not least because in this same scene Troilus seems primed to imagine the worst of their future romance. At one point he asks Cressida, “What too-curious dreg espies my sweet lady in the fountain of our love?” (3.2.66–67). And in a later scene he will insist on making her pledge her fidelity again and again. The loftiness of his own pledge therefore belies his uncertainty.
Let it not be believed for womanhood!
Think, we had mothers. Do not give advantage
To stubborn critics, apt, without a theme
For depravation, to square the general sex
By Cressid’s rule. Rather, think this not Cressid. (5.2.156–60)
After having witnessed Cressida’s infidelity firsthand, Troilus utters these words of shock and denial. What’s particularly striking about these lines is the way Troilus protests against reading Cressida’s unfaithfulness as a sign of something essentially feminine. Though he’s ostensibly speaking to Ulysses, it seems that he really addresses these words to himself, curbing his tendency to see the world like a love poet. According to that mode of perception, one woman can easily stand in for all women. But to protect his own idealism, he must explicitly refuse such a generalization. But by the same token, he refuses to acknowledge that the particular woman who has proven unfaithful is in fact his Cressida. This poignant contradiction signals the height of Troilus’s tragedy.
