INTRODUCTION

Summary

We first hear of what is probably Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida in a Stationers' Register entry of 7 February 1603, when James Roberts was conditionally licensed to print a play of this title belonging to the Chamberlain's men. We hear of what is certainly this play in a second entry of 28 January 1609, when ‘a booke called the history of Troylus and Cressida’ was licensed to Richard Bonian and Henry Walley for, in accordance with this entry, a quarto appeared the same year, attributing the play to Shakespeare. But before the quarto was published the original title-page was cancelled in order to withdraw the statement that the play had been acted ‘by the Kings Maiesties seruants at the Globe’. At the same time a preface was added, describing it as ‘a new play, neuer stal'd with the Stage’ and as the wittiest of Shakespeare's comedies. We are led to infer that it was published against the wishes of the players and the preface closes with a prayer ‘for the states of their wits healths that will not praise it’.

This early eulogy seems to have been wide of the mark in the estimate of most later critics, who have found the play less a birth of Shakespeare's brain than an abortion—lacking in dramatic effectiveness, in unity of style and purpose, and in respect for what Homer and Chaucer had treated with such generosity of spirit.