Troilus and Cressida

Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is quite a weird play. The Arden edition’s explanatory notes can be frustrating, but David Bevington’s introduction does a good job highlighting the many facets of chauvinism displayed by the characters. Shakespeare tends to be more sympathetic to women than a lot of his contemporaries, and it’s interesting that here it means not giving that much insight into Cressida’s psychology. She is labelled a slut by others, but it feels like she’s just trying to make do in a world where she is traded from one man to another.

I imagine the audience knew the story so I was at a disadvantage. I assumed the unnamed warrior in the gaudy armour who runs away and is killed might have been revealed to be Cressida in disguise trying to make her way back to Troilus. Instead she just disappears from the final act of the play, robbing it of a sense of catharsis.

Bevington does a good job explaining the contemporary allusions to the Essex rebellion, a context that will be entirely lost on modern readers and viewers. Does feel like the play may have in large part been political satire, which stops working when current events move on. Thankfully this being Shakespeare, there’s always enough other stuff going on to keep the play fresh and ready for reinterpretation.

This is not very well-thought out, but a recurring element in the play is the body being anatomised into parts (and often corresponding attributes). The references to humours and a metaphorical treatment of organs like the heart and brain is common in Shakespeare, but I got the sense that this play has even more of that than usual, which may reflect the focus on the physical – perhaps another way to express disillusionment with the grand heroics of the Trojan war.

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'Tis Pity She's a Whore

'Tis Pity She's a Whore by John Ford
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Martin Wiggins’s excellent annotations and introduction in the New Mermaids edition sets out how effectively the play undercuts social niceties with the disturbing nature of human desire. What stuck out to me was the instances where the audience’s own observation of the action is noted by the play – with characters talking about how their decisions will be judged by airy spirits or posterity once all is revealed. Soranzo insists the whore deserves no pity, while the Cardinal’s final line “tis pity she’s a whore” is unsatisfying. The play works because it hovers above such judgements, and leaves the audience ambivalent about what they’ve just seen.

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Cymbeline

Cymbeline by William Shakespeare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an odd play but it managed to sweep me up in its drama. A lot of very tense, theatrical moments. A recurring motif is people in authority being so muddled by flattery and false reports that faithful service requires ignoring direct commands. Figures in power don’t understand their own interests, possibly including Jupiter himself, who seems to require the intercession of ghosts in order to set right the confusions in the play and deliver justice.

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