famous Historie of Troylus and Cresseid, excellently
expressing the beginning of their loues with the conceited wooing of
Pandarus, prince of Lacia.' After this pompous title-page there was
inserted, for the first and only time in the case of a play by
Shakespeare that was published in his lifetime, an advertisement or
preface. In this interpolated page an anonymous scribe, writing in the
name of the publishers, paid bombastic and high-flown compliments to
Shakespeare as a writer of 'comedies,' and defiantly boasted that the
'grand possessers'--_i.e._ the owners--of the manuscript deprecated its
publication. By way of enhancing the value of what were obviously stolen
wares, it was falsely added that the piece was new and unacted. This
address was possibly the brazen reply of the publishers to a more than
usually emphatic protest on the part of players or dramatist against the
printing of the piece. The editors of the Folio evinced distrust of the
Quarto edition by printing their text from a different copy showing many
deviations, which were not always for the better.

Treatment of the theme.

The work, which in point of construction shows signs of haste, and in
style is exceptionally unequal, is the least attractive of the efforts of
Shakespeare's middle life. The story is based on a romantic legend of
the Trojan war, which is of mediaeval origin. Shakespeare had possibly
read Chapman's translation of Homer's 'Iliad,' but he owed his plot to
Chaucer's 'Troilus and Cresseid' and Lydgate's 'Troy Book.' In defiance
of his authorities he presented Cressida as a heartless coquette; the
poets who had previously treated her story--Boccaccio, Chaucer, Lydgate,
and Robert Henryson--had imagined her as a tender-hearted, if frail,
beauty, with claims on their pity rather than on their scorn. But
Shakespeare's innovation is dramatically effective, and accords with
strictly moral canons. The charge frequently brought against the
dramatist that in 'Troilus and Cressida' he cynically invested the Greek
heroes of classical antiquity with contemptible characteristics is ill
supported by the text of the play. Ulysses, Nestor, and Agamemnon figure
in Shakespeare's play as brave generals and sagacious statesmen, and in
their speeches Shakespeare concentrated a marvellous wealth of pithily
expressed philosophy, much of which has fortunately obtained proverbial
currency. Shakespeare's conception of the Greeks followed trad