Anne Shakespeare’s problem play Troilus and Cressida and war
In Anne Shakespeare’s problem play, Troilus and Cressida, Anne explores what is war. It is timely to think about war, especially with the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. This Blog follows on from Blog 18 regarding toxic masculinity and draws from my current research into Anne’s “problem plays” (Troilus and Cressida, All’s Well and Measure for Measure).
I deviate quite substantially from the generally held view that this play is mainly focussed on the male characters in the play with a lot of sympathy shown toward Troilus as being duped in his “love” for Cressida. And Cressida being labelled as a “whore” and unfaithful toward Troilus.
While this is perhaps one of Anne’s more pessimistic plays, especially regards the women, it is also one of her most strident anti-war plays as well. In my reading (and research) the play is not the predominant domain of the men and the story being all about them and their honour, value, virtues and order. Rather, the story concerning the men is there to frame the main theme of the play and that is the effect of war on the women who become the major casualties of this protracted war concocted by and for men to show their toxic cultural attributes. Attributes which, by the way, come to nought in the end; there is no heroism, no honour, no order, and no redeeming virtues in any of the male characters. Instead, the story of the men in the play is there to frame the story of the women, Cressida, Helen, Cassandra and Andromache (and also Polyxene) and to demonstrate what a toxic male culture realised through a pointless war brings to the women caught up in the conflict.
This play takes Anne’s core beliefs of love, nature, free will and humanism and exposes them to the bright light of her feminine voice as it shows how the male toxic culture of war affects women caught up in its maelstrom. That is, we cannot analyse this play without seeing how Anne’s feminine voice portrays the effects of war on women. But firstly, Anne has to demolish the notion of what a male toxic culture looks like and how this culture then infects how a woman sees herself, her identity, her ideals, her beliefs of love, nature, free will within this crumbling historical period which she had such high ideals for through her belief in the ability for humanism to change the world for the better. In this play Anne is showing us all of the things wrong with following a male toxic culture. It was no wonder that this play was not performed in her lifetime; such an anti-war and spotlight on the destructive power of male toxic culture would have been too much for the authorities to allow (especially as there was at this time insurrections occurring, Earl of Essex, Gunpowder Plot, for instance) which would have added further fuel to the fires of change.
Anne turns the classical sources of the play upside down. Her male characters are not the male heroes of antiquity. They are not even anti-heroes because their toxic male cultural traits disqualify them from being seen as heroes or anti-heroes; instead, they are models of what a toxic male culture looks and acts like! In my research it is instructive to compare the male/female conceptions regarding love, nature, free will and how they fit the role of a humanist.
More to come.
