ttle.

_The Fable._ The scene is Troy. Cressida is a Trojan woman, whose
father, Calchas, has gone over to the Greeks. She is beloved by the
youth Troilus. Her uncle, Pandarus, seeks to bring her to accept
Troilus. Hector, brother to Troilus, challenges a Greek champion to
single combat.

In the Greek camp there is much disaffection. Achilles, the chief
Greek champion, conceiving himself wronged, makes a mock of the
other leaders. To teach him his place the leaders plan that Ajax
shall be chosen in his stead to take up Hector's challenge.

Pandarus succeeds in bringing Cressida to love Troilus.

Calchas, in the Greek camp, sends to Troy for Cressida. She is
delivered over to the Greeks. Forgetting Troilus, she entangles one
of the Greeks with her wiles.

Ajax takes up Hector's challenge. They fight a friendly bout and
then go to feast, where the moody Achilles insults Hector.

The next day, Hector and Troilus come to the field, the one to
avenge Achilles' insults, the other to kill the man who has won
Cressida. Hector is cruelly and cowardly killed by Achilles.
Troilus is left unhurt, cursing.

_Troilus and Cressida_ is the dialogue scenario of a play that was never
finished. It seems to have been written before 1603, then laid aside,
incomplete, until the mood that inspired it had died. Conflicting
evidence makes it doubtful whether it was acted during Shakespeare's
life. It was published, under mysterious circumstances, a year or two
before he retired to Stratford.

Two or three scenes are finished. The rest is indicated in the crudest
dialogue, written so hastily that it is often undramatic and nearly
always without wit or beauty. The finished scenes are among the grandest
ever conceived by Shakespeare, but the grandeur is that of thought, not
of action. They make it plain to us why the play was never completed.
The subject is this: a light woman throwing over a boy. The setting, the
Trojan war: a light woman overthrowing a city, is so much bigger than
the subject that it overshadows it. Another subject arises in the
circumstance of the Trojan war. Achilles, the man of action, without
honour or imagination, sulks. The wise man, Ulysses, suggests that he be
brought from his sulks by mockery. The result of this wise counsel is
that Hector, the one bright and noble soul in the play, is killed
cruelly and sullenly, by