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The Individual Versus the Collective
One of the major political themes running throughout Troilus and Cressida concerns the individual’s relationship with and responsibility to the collective. Shakespeare draws this theme out via Ulysses’s ongoing attempt to convince Achilles to return to the battlefield. In one of his earliest and most famous speeches in the play, Ulysses diagnoses the Greeks’ main weakness as a pervasive disrespect for authority. Without a proper respect for hierarchy, which he calls “degree,” individuals begin to act of their own accord, and chaos quickly ensues. In a chilling but memorable sentence, he envisions “an universal wolf” (1.3.125) who, in pursuing “an universal prey” (127), finally “eat[s] up himself” (128). Although he doesn’t explicitly name Achilles, this prideful hero who refuses to fight is undoubtedly on Ulysses’s mind here. Indeed, Ulysses discusses his frustration with Achilles at several points in the play, and in act 3, scene 3, he even confronts Achilles, explaining that his reputation among the Greeks has waned because he isn’t a team player.
Although Achilles is the play’s most obviously “individualistic” character, he is by no means the only one. In one of the great ironies of the play, Ulysses, the man who discourses so eloquently on the importance of hierarchy, flouts the chain of command. Instead of simply punishing Achilles for failing to respect the leadership’s authority, Ulysses cooks up a secret plan of his own. Essentially, he creates a lottery to select which Greek will fight Hector in single combat, but he rigs the lottery to ensure that Ajax will be chosen. This choice will, he believes, enrage Achilles and so manipulate him into rejoining the fight. So much for the chain of command! Meanwhile, against the background of the war story, there is the love story between Troilus and Cressida. It’s significant that the play opens with Troilus removing his arms, unable to join the day’s fight because he has failed to be “master of his heart” (1.1.4). His single-minded pursuit of Cressida amid so much death offers another example of individualistic selfishness. But the sweetness of his romantic chase is no sooner enjoyed than spoiled, such that “lechery eats itself” (5.4.37). These words from Thersites ominously echo Ulysses’s image of the universal wolf consuming itself.
The Relationship Between Word and Action
It is perhaps conventional for a play that takes place during a war to involve sustained reflection on the relationship between word and action. This theme first arises in the play’s third scene, when the Greek leaders are discussing why they haven’t been able to make much headway against the Trojans. Ulysses delivers his famous speech on the collapse of an authoritative hierarchy, which is clearly inspired by the prideful Achilles, who refuses to respect the chain of command and return to the fight. In a later speech during that same scene, Ulysses clarifies that one of Achilles’s issues with the military leaders relates to their emphasis on strategy. Whereas Achilles, the great hero, fancies himself a man of action who can simply enter the battlefield and improvise, the Greek leadership prefers to waste time on “bed-work, mapp’ry, [and] closet war” (1.3.209). As men of action, Achilles and Patroclus both “tax [the military leaders’] policy and call it cowardice” (1.3.201), and they “esteem no act / But that of hand” (203–204).
Whereas Achilles emphasizes the stark difference between word and action, other characters in the play make less of a distinction. Troilus and Cressida, for instance, both intuitively understand that words can function as actions. In the orchard scene where the two lovers meet for the first time in the play, they each make a firm pledge of fidelity that they take as binding. Word here becomes deed, both in the sense of action and binding agreement. But prior to making her pledge, Cressida hesitates. At one point she wonders aloud about the danger of lovers “vowing more” (3.2.86) than they can deliver. Later, believing that she herself may be vowing too much, she commands herself to “hold [her] tongue” and “stop [her] mouth” (1.3.129, 133). If she remains silent, she will protect herself from “speak[ing] / The thing I shall repent” (1.3.130–31). All this caution shows Cressida’s awareness that words aren’t empty gestures. The deed-like power of words becomes crushingly clear when Cressida does end up breaking her vow by sleeping with Diomedes. This act of infidelity undoes her earlier pledge to remain faithful, undermining its force and reducing it to “words, words, mere words” (5.3.119).
The Crisis of Value
At several points in the play, characters either directly or indirectly discuss the question of value—both where it comes from and how properly to determine its worth. In many cases, the language of value is specifically tied to the mercantile economy of buying and selling. One prominent and early example of this language appears when Ulysses convinces Nestor that the Greeks should elect Ajax to fight Hector rather than Achilles. To explain his logic, Ulysses offers the following simile: “Let us like merchants / First show foul wares and think perchance they’ll sell; / If not, the luster of the better shall exceed / By showing the worse first” (1.3.367–70). In other words, they should offer Ajax as a second-rate commodity. If he “sells” (i.e., wins the fight), the Greeks will profit in terms of reputation. If he doesn’t, then they’ll bring out their best merchandise (i.e., Achilles), which will seem that much more impressive after the initial disappointment. Couched as it is in the language of value, Ulysses’s speech suggests that the model of market trade has begun to replace the more traditional model, where value derives from an economy of honor and prestige.
Perhaps nowhere is the crisis of value more acute than in the case of women. The first key scene where Shakespeare links women to the question of value comes when the Trojans are discussing whether it makes more strategic sense to keep Helen or return her. Hector ventures that “she is not worth what she doth cost / The keeping” (2.2.54–55). Troilus retorts with his famous query, “What’s aught but as ’tis valued?” (2.2.56)—that is, what’s anything worth except how it’s valued? Troilus’s logic is circular, yet it also accurately captures the essence of how a money economy works: commodities are worth whatever they can be sold for. In this case, whereas Hector argues that the toll of the war makes it too costly to keep Helen, Troilus argues that Helen has great worth simply because the Greeks are willing to fight for her: “Is she worth keeping? Why, she is a pearl / Whose price hath launched above a thousand ship / And turned crowned kings to merchants” (2.2.87–89). Compared to Helen, Cressida has far less political valuable. Though she is also a pawn in a war between men, she is ultimately exchanged for a single soldier, mainly to appease her father.
