Director's Note

Troilus and Cressida is its own kind of love story. Not only do we have the titular love between Troilus and Cressida, as well as its complementary will-they-or-won’t-they battlefield romance of Hector and Achilles, but basically everyone around loves someone within throwing distance: Troilus loves Cressida, Cressida loves Troilus, Diomedes loves Cressida, Achilles loves Hector, Pandarus loves Troilus, Aeneas loves Hector, Paris loves Helen (or at least he did), Ajax loves Thersites, Patroclus loves Achilles, Helen loves Paris (or at least she did) Ulysses loves Troilus, and I would argue Agamemnon and Nestor both in their own way love Hector too (people find Hector very loveable), and I won’t even pretend to diagnose the tortured feelings Thersites has for Patroclus.

This play has long been mired in a judgmental Victorian morality. Peter Brook said that the Victorian image of Shakespeare was useful because whatever the Victorians thought, we should always do the opposite. The general critical consensus about Troilus and Cressida – even among people who like it – has usually been that it is a bitter, cynical play, somehow concerned with how sexual depravity poisons military endeavors. Such a mindset renders the ultimate death of Pandarus at play’s end through his contracted venereal diseases as somehow the fine for the wages of sin, whose punishment is death, rather than what it is: an unfortunate extension of a man’s inability to express his love directly for another man, and when the one avenue by which he has contact with that man disintegrates, his health disintegrates in tandem.

As for the cynicism, sure, the play has a non-reverential treatment of its Homeric characters. The flaws and foibles of these warriors are more on display than ancient legend would prepare us for. And yes, the play’s ending, with the death of Hector and the imminent destruction of Troy, is certainly not a positive ending for those involved. However, I object to the notion that somehow this means the play is “cynical” or “pessimistic.” This play asks us, very reasonably, to see ourselves as part of a society that can only move forward if it is completely destroyed. The action shows us people striving to do their best under untenable circumstances, and how even well-intentioned action in such a situation inherently corrupts the people living within that corrupt society. Every character in this play, to an individual, is striving for transcendence from the putrid civilization in which they live, and that transcendence usually comes in the form of interpersonal love. Thus, I feel no need to judge that love more harshly simply because it often veers from heteronormativity, as previous generations did.

Yes, Troy falls at the end of this play. Almost everyone is consumed in the flames. If Shakespeare’s universe continued, there would be no Trojan horse, no Odyssey, no Aeneid, because his fall of Troy is so complete it incinerates both Greeks and Troyans alike. However, maybe that is what needed to happen. Maybe Troy needed to burn down to allow for a new epoch. Whatever tragedy this play may have is tempered by the prime function of that genre: the play incites a purgation of heightened emotion by which experience we exit the story more productive citizens.

In the waning light of Troilus and Cressida, we hear the message that, as the poet Tennyson said, “’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.”

We invite you to “rage against the dying of the light” with the SYT ensemble, as you enjoy our rendition of this verbose, invigorating, and unclassifiable gem.

Lukas Brasherfons
Director, Troilus and Cressida
Resident Dramaturg, Shakespearean Youth Theatre