Oh, Cressida! Why art thou so insecure?
The Actors' Shakespeare Project did a brilliant production of Troilus and Cressida this season, which I was fortunate to see yesterday. The last time I encountered this play was in grad school (!), and I remember thinking that Cressida was lame and kind of slutty.
But I found myself more charitable towards her this time (because age make us more charitable towards everyone?). I loved her painfully honest concern that admitting her affection for Troilus will make him lose interest:
Cressida: Boldness comes to me now, and brings me heart: -
Prince Troilus, I have lov'd you night and day,
For many weary months.
Troilus: Why was my Cressid then so hard to win?
Cressida: Hard to seem won; but I was won, my lord,
With the first glance that ever Pardon me;
If I confess much, you will play the tyrant.
I love you now ; but not, till now, so much
But I might master it. In faith, I lie;
My thoughts were like unbridled children, grown
Too headstrong for their mother. See, we fools!
Why have I blabb'd? Who shall be true to us,
When we are so unsecret to ourselves?
But, though I lov'd you well, I woo'd you not;
And yet, good faith, I wish'd myself a man;
Or that we women had men's privilege
Of speaking first. Sweet, bid me hold my tongue;
For, in this rapture, I shall surely speak
The thing I shall repent. See, see ! your silence,
Cunning in dumbness, from my weakness draws
My very soul of counsel: Stop my mouth.
What do we make, then, of Cressida's quick change of heart with the Greek man she's forced to marry? In her hasty hook-up with Diomedes, just moments after she's made Troilus swear up and down to stay loyal, Cressida's actions are a poetic statement about the fragility of all human bonds, the futility of words, and the inherent craziness of all humans in matters of love and war.
Standing O!
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