A Comparison of Chaucer and Shakespeare for Troilus and Cressida - Essay Example

A Comparison of Chaucer and Shakespeare for “Troilus and Cressida” The story of “Troilus and Cressida” is one of the tragedies of love. The story is based upon an old story that emerges from the histories and myths of the Trojan War, but may have its origins in medieval oral traditions that used the backdrop of the war to create the tale. Geoffrey Chaucer handles the story through the format of the long poem with the use of rime royal as the type of structure (Chaucer and Raffel xxi). When compared to William Shakespeare’s play “Troilus and Cressida”, the accolades that are given to Chaucer for the refined construction of his poem are not reflected in the work of Shakespeare whose play is considered one of his ‘problem plays’. The play switches back and forth between comedy and tragedy, making it difficult for the audience to follow and creating even greater difficulties for anyone who tries to produce the work. The works both discuss the idea of a love that fades and passes, but it is presented differently in each of the works which both reflect something of the time period in which they were written. The idea of fading love is developed in the work on “Troilus and Cressida” through different concepts of love by both Chaucer and Shakespeare as they reflect the beliefs about love that was contemporary to the time of their writing. Chaucer’s work consists of 8000 lines in five books throughout which the use of rime royal (ABABBCC) form is used to create the structure of the poem. Although it is a shorter version of the work from which it was inspired which was an even longer poem by Boccaccio, it is one of Chaucer’s best works which describes a myriad of complex emotions for the themes of the story (Chaucer and Raffel xxi). According to Raffel’s discussion of the works of Chaucer as he focused on “Troilus and Cressida”, “he instills in his characters – most especially Cressida – a psychological texture and complexity unique in the medieval period. We wonder with her about the place of courtly love in society, about what loyalty and freedom means in trying times about the price of honor and trust within an unstable environment, and we agonize with Troilus on many of the same scores” (Chaucer and Raffel xxi). Through the belief systems that express the idea of courtly love, Chaucer develops his story based on what he sees relevant to love and creates a conflict based on this system. Dodd discusses how the development of the work was seen through Chaucer’s understanding of love and that it in no way intended to reflect the belief systems that were in place during the Trojan War. The work is centered in its time period and is a result of its position in time as it related to the culture of Chaucer. The opinion of the reader cannot be formed based on contemporary beliefs about love, but the couple, as they had the appropriate rank, were developed based on medieval courtly love ideas and thus are treated as ‘courtly lovers’ by Chaucer (Dodd129). An example of this adherence to ‘courtly love’ beliefs can be seen in the way in which Troilus acts towards Cressida. Dodd states “under the system of courtly love a knight, though absolutely fearless elsewhere, must tremble before his lady” (141). Chaucer writes “And Troilus may weep in care and cold/Such is the world for those who can behold/The way it goes; there’s little of heart’s rest/God grant we learn to take it for the best” (Chaucer 5.250). However, in the next verse, Chaucer writes “The knighthood and the prowess, do not doubt it/Of Troilus, this very gallant knight” (Chaucer 5.251). These two passages specifically reflect the belief systems of courtly love as it is put forth by Dodd. The nature of love as a tragic hold on the individual can be seen reflected in the way in which Troilus responds to seeing the broach that he had given to Cressida on the clothing of Diomede. Troilus says “Cast from your mind, I see I have no part/In you and yet I neither can nor may,/For all the world, find it in my heart/To un-love you a quarter of the day!” (Chaucer 5.243). Unrequited love was a theme of medieval literature and fell into the constructs of courtly love. Troilus is the example of this as he cannot stop loving Cressida and is weakened by his love, even though this in no way reflects on his abilities as a warrior. Another aspect of courtly love is the idealization of the object of love. Cressida is idealized by Troilus, his beliefs in what she is not based on her nature, but on what he projects onto her nature. Chaucer writes “To Troilus; she was – he came to see -/Less kindly natured than she ought to be/And in the end he knew beyond all doubt/That all was lost that he had been about” (Chaucer 5.235). As Dodd suggests, the crashing down of his ideas about her is a part of the construction of idealization from which he has created a woman to love (148). He was attracted to Cressida and in the end, she was not the person that he thought, but he did not stop loving her because he was in love with the memory that he had constructed about her and that had not changed, even though he knew her to be different. The tragedy of his love was that it was not real as he did not know her for the truth of her character but only for the person he had decided that she represented for him. In contrast to the high success of Chaucer’s work, Shakespeare’s play is one of his ‘problem plays’, a work that does not fall neatly into either the tragedy or comedy genre and is therefore not considered one of his best. The work is historic in nature as it relates stories from the event of the Trojan War, but the core story about the two lovers designates it in the genre of romance as well (Hawkins-Dady 709). The play is developed through integrations of genres that are not fully successful, thus the themes are sometimes difficult to explore. The core of the story, however, is based upon the loss of love between Troilus and Cressida which is influenced by the back drop of the Trojan War. The end of the play is dedicated to a retelling of the story form the Iliad which explores the conflict between Hector and Achilles, while the end of Chaucer’s work is more focused on the effect of Cressida’s betrayal on Troilus. Muir and Wells discuss the work by Shakespeare as a kind of ‘thesis’ in which the conflict between intuition and emotion which reflected the Trojans and between intellect and reason which represents the Greeks was explored (133). Muir and Wells quote Theodor Spenser who believed that the play reflected back to Greek works of literature, which would have been part of the rise of humanism in Renaissance intellectualism. However, it is just as reasonable to look at the play from the point of view of a moralistic play in which the ‘adventures’ of the lovers lead to the ‘deserved disaster’ (Muir and Wells 134). Both aspects, the reflection of Classic literature and the moralistic cause and effect, suggest that the play reflects the aesthetics of the time period similar to the way in which Chaucer reflects his time period. A similarity that emerges in the Shakespeare work to that of Chaucer is recognition that the Cressida that Troilus fell in love with is not the one that he sees in the end. Shakespeare writes “This she? No, this is Diomed’s Cressida/If beauty have a soul this is not she,” (Shakespeare Act 5 Scene 2 Line 136-137). Troilus continues on to insist that the Cressida that he knows is still his as Shakespeare writes “Cressida is mine, tied with the bonds of heaven” (Shakespeare Act 5 Scene 2 Line 153). As Troilus works to reconcile what has happened to him in regard to the woman that he loves, he cannot place the Cressida he knows as the one that has betrayed him. The idea of betrayal in both works weakens Troilus as he does not reconcile the object of his love with the woman who has betrayed him. One of the primary differences between Chaucer’s work and Shakespeare’s work is that in Chaucer’s work the love for Troilus fades in Cressida while in Shakespeare’s work she is tricked into believing Troilus is dead. Other differences include the fact that in Chaucer’s work Troilus dies, where inexplicably Troilus does not die in the end, but the story of Hector and Achilles then takes precedence. Unlike the tragic form that is more common for Shakespearean work, neither lover dies in the end (Shaheen 565). While Shakespeare was inspired by Chaucer’s recounting of the story, he did not simply reconstruct it into a play. It is possible that the ambition to create something more on the events of the Trojan War made the complexity of the story develop in ways that were a bit too difficult to resolve successfully as many critics seem to not see this play as a better example of his work (Hawkins-Dady 20). An important understanding that occurs when comparing the two works is that the product is the result of the beliefs of the time on the themes that are represented. In the time of Chaucer the story is one that exemplifies courtly love and creates, especially, in Troilus a character that is not reflective of Greek aesthetics, but medieval aesthetics that shows the knight as a man who is valiant in war but weak and human in his love of a woman. The love story is developed in Shakespeare’s play reflecting the Greek and Trojan aesthetics as well as providing context of morality through showing how the consequences of becoming lovers was punished through the loss of one another. Moralistic cause and effect was one of the methods of storytelling during the time of Shakespeare. Details of the stories change from the work of Boccaccio to Chaucer, and then again from Chaucer to Shakespeare. The differences in story, however, pale against the psychological construction of the character of Cressida as in Chaucer she is fickle where in Shakespeare she is naive and tricked into her betrayal. The development of the love stories are different because of the way in which they reflect the time in which they were written, the strong structures of courtly love in Chaucer’s version being very different than the moralistic values that were used to construct the love story in Shakespeare’s work. Works Cited Chaucer, Geoffrey, and Burton Raffel. The Canterbury Tales. New York: Modern Library, 2008. Print. Dodd, William G. Courtly Love of Chaucer and Gower. Gloucester, Mass: Smith, 1959. Print. Hawkins-Dady, Mark. Reader’s Guide to Literature in English. New York: Taylor and Francis, Inc, 1996. Print. Muir, Kenneth and Stanley W. Wells. Aspects of Shakespeare’s Problem Plays. Cambridge, Mass: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Shaheen, Naseeb. Biblical References in Shakespeare's Plays. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999. Print. Read More