The Shakespeare Argument

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Cutting Open the Corpse of Romantic Love

I argued with my girlfriend at school as to which Shakespeare play was best: "Hamlet" or "King Lear"? I argued for "King Lear" while she was determined that "Hamlet" was a far superior play. I still think "King Lear" with its pitting of generations against each other is a most powerful work while "Hamlet" is a terrific melodrama. But now I am working on "Troilus and Cressida" and we are in totally different territory. The play isn't a melodrama or a tragedy ... and certainly not a comedy! Yet Shakespeare's totally cutting open the corpse of romantic love plunges the knife into later romanticism and 21st century Narcissism! There is nothing in Shakespeare's canon that suggests anything like his concepts in "Troilus and Cressida"!

Australian theatre companies love Shakespeare. His works are presented more than any other author and certainly more often in Australia than any Australian author. But what is presented? Cliche ridden productions of sentimental interpretations of emotionally narcissistic 21st Century friendly Shakespeare! "Romeo and Juliet" without the power play dimensions? "Comedy of Errors", Shakespeare's meaningless crap with funny situations? Macbeth with the supposedly psychological dimensions with relevance for politics today? Come on ...

I suggest if you want something more critical and more in tune with Shakespeare's relevance for today's world, then "Troilus and Cressida" has far more to offer. I am not writing a thesis on this; though I might one day!

I suggest you come and see our production to verify if I am full of it or not:

https://events.humanitix.com/troilus-and-cressida

Fully licensed bar opens at 6.15 for show at 7.00pm.

No more text: Come and witness the work ...

See also relevant articles:

https://www.shadowhousepitswrite.com/post/alone-alone-all-all-alone-alone-on-a-wide-wide-sea

https://www.shadowhousepitswrite.com/post/cressida-s-absurdist-refusal-to-bowdlerise-her-own-life

https://www.shadowhousepitswrite.com/post/why-teachers-fear-the-trojan-women

“Alone, alone, all, all alone, alone on a wide wide sea!"

Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida" is a raft on a wide wide sea of arts mediocrity and agenderism

I don't know that Coleridge referenced Shakespeare in his imagination! I don't know if he dreamed of an ancient mariner while in some ecstatic state of euphoria while experiencing laudanum. I do know that the romantic poets did revise Shakespeare. I know that Cressida in "Troilus and Cressida" is alone" and is "all alone on a wide, wide sea" as described by Coleridge ... I know that my skeptical students wonder if there is any relevance in even considering the discussions on Brecht and the ancients. Perhaps more attention to the work of theatre and art might put a bomb under the pretentions and erroneous conclusions of professional pundits of contemporary realities ...

Art as Provocation

Art and theatre are able to provide provocations which can indicate the connections between categories of conception and perception. By this I mean, if you are concerned about an issue of gender, race, class, poverty, systems of governance, religion, climate and survival and world views etc. Art and Theatre may well provide the questioning means necessary for consideration, study and even activism.

Can it provide answers? Probably NOT! Art as agitation / propaganda has long been associated with leftist theatre production to advance ideas of soviet or communist revolutionary platforms. While elements of its style are used consistently and even taught in schools, Agit-Pro is generally discredited as a legitimate artistic form. Art and theatre isn't about preaching or telling people what to think. That is for agitators, preachers, religious leaders and possibly for political leaders, psychologists (proclaiming what are disorders and deviations from the norm), opinion piece writers and philosophers! Though in all cases theatrical techniques are used to propagate messages ...

But art and theatre like the province of the Elizabethan "all licensed fool" is able to poke needles in the eyes of sanctimonious illusion and bullshit!

The Isolation of the Oppressed and Victimized

And so in Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida" a young woman is isolated and abandoned to being an object in a disfunctional enemy controlled universe. She is betrayed by her father and left to suffer by her lover, Troilus. She is left with limited choices. However, her passion for life over-rides her victimhood and she uses her oppression as a mirror to turn it back on her oppressors. For this, she is labelled whore.

Does anyone ever realize how isolated we all really are? Capitalism and the whole New Age thing preached in well-being seminars suggests we are all connected and part of the same universe; a positive universe at that. Yet so much of life's relationships are really games and posturing; hiding behind semantics. Language itself is a wall. As Artaud suggested it is a source of lies and deception. How true is this today? How constant is the social media in proclamations of how we can use petty well-being slogans to overcome the intense crises of existence? Each recovering addict who found the truth and the one true means wants to spread the message to some illusory crowd that is apparently eager to hear the heavenly message. Yet we all know this is illusory!

Being conditioned to believe in constancy and the positive certainty of our destiny or our worth, there is a devastating experience that defies this normative world propagated since birth. The atheist who proclaims there is no god then becomes neurotic when confronted with the inconsistency of their own belief system and actual experience only to then be soon diagnosed with some disorder becomes the victim of their own emptiness. The dysfunctional experience is transformed into a psychological disorder and soon destroys the very essence of personal control or one's well-being.

To see Cressida as being somehow a disloyal figure or an immoral / amoral wanton being is to fall into the trap of psychological romanticism; that setting of normative qualities against which everyone might be judged before some concept of god! Yet Shakespeare's Cressida is a strong and resilient being; she is capable of survival in both a spiritual and physical sense. As her captors line up to kiss her, she mirrors their disparaging and scornful approach with a mirror to them. She is no Medusa, yet one senses the potential destruction she might cause ...

Or am I being too overly blind on this issue ...

Contemporary

"Troilus and Cressida" is a contemporary work. It is no longer simply an historical piece as represented by it's being a least presented Shakespeare play. The shyness and patriarchal viewpoints that give rise to theatrical production mean that "Troilus and Cressida" is an almost forgotten work. Perhaps it is preferred to be forgotten; perhaps misunderstood and clearly discarded because of the ambiguous nature of female sexuality in a theatrical context! If all men are monsters, then "Troilus and Cressida" is a living and breathing theatrical truth to this notion! The male writer cannot claim to know the female psyche; just as the female experience of male monsters is a subject hidden by centuries of fear and a lack of conscious appreciation of the reality of relationships.

Boys and young men need to see this work of Shakespeare's to perceive how they might be perceived by militant young women who no longer wish to appease the posturing and brutish behaviour of you or your friends and their desire to seduce, humiliate or dominate. Yet somehow, after these centuries of humiliation and domination, there is empathy and even an expression of love and a truly felt connection to the slaughtered corpse of male superiority. Shakespeare captured something of this in the seventeenth century with this play. It wasn't evident in any other work. Yet the power dynamics were expressed so well in "Troilus and Cressida".

Coleridge and Cressida

I doubt Samuel Taylor Coleridge ever met Cressida, let alone Shakespeare. Both were dead long before he was born. Yet there is something of the aloneness of Cressida in Shakespeare's play that seems to have been missed in productions of "Troilus and Cressida"; though I could be wrong!

In Act 5 Scene 2 of "Troilus and Cressida" we witness the total attack on Cressida as a human being yet we also see her humanity as she recognizes the humanity of her unwitting oppressor. This is genius Shakespeare. The use of dialectics is a precursor to postmodernism. The aloneness and the fight she exhibits is amazing and something we can't assume in 21st century thinking!

Her boyfriend, Troilus, is a voyeur watching her make out with her future lover and enforced husband ... what happens to Troilus after this? Shakespeare offers no answer. Yet we know from the accounts of mythology he is killed ... perhaps without ever knowing the truth of his relationship with Cressida ...

Is Troilus, like Cressida, also alone, all, all alone on a wide wide sea?

As director of the production of "Troilus and Cressida", I can't but help see the connections between Shakespeare's work and that of Coleridge. I have then to pull myself back knowing the actors have no idea of such connections and such dimensions while they also bring to it the very notion of passion that relationships offer even in times of total insanity and war!

I am also aware that they, as young students of theatre, Drama and acting have been guided by the media and their education to see issues of consent, gender and culture appropriation the key elements in their approach to the development and performance of "Troilus and Cressida".

Education and youth arts might well accept mediocre manifestations for theatrical creation and presentation. Yet Alfred Jarry was still a student when inventing the characters that changed theatre for the next hundred years. Jarry was in many respects the first post modernist theatre practitioner.

Can we accept more from students performing in this current production of "Troilus and Cressida"?

Joe Woodward

See the production:

https://events.humanitix.com/troilus-and-cressida

Why Not Cancel ALL ART: Cressida's Absurdist Refusal to Bowdlerise Her Own Life

Image by -MayaQ- from Pixabay

So often over the past twenty-five years I have heard colleagues say they wouldn't come to my productions of Shakespeare because they were turned off Shakespeare so much while they were at school. I hear this even from some English teachers while administrators have also made this suggestion. So if this is coming from people close to me, I can only estimate how much this sentiment might be endemic within the wider community. I've had students decide Harry Potter was more relevant than anything Shakespeare did and other students deciding they could do better anyway and so bugger off Shakespeare.

And yes, he is a dead white male and no doubt privileged! Yes, all his actors were men; some of whom played women. Yes, he's been dead a while ... so why should we pay homage to this ancient dated and socially irrelevant arse whose grammar was awkward and any contemporary dramaturg would suggest he change most of his plots and do massive rewrites! Why aren't students forced to study ancient Asian playwrights, ancient indigenous writings from around the world that have had a huge influence on contemporary art, literature and culture? Why aren't we simply cancelling Shakespeare and adopting the works of whatever contemporary writer has sway ... maybe Clementine Ford or her opposite in Jordan Peterson! Maybe even cancel all European inspired and prepared literature and art from both male and female creators because of their racial and cultural bias and only study factual art that was made by non-European male, female and non-binary individuals!

Better still, why not cancel the very notion of art and the creative imagination because of its potentially decadent, subversive, sexist and appropriating nature. Why not find a way to remove from all memory all artistic works created prior to 2023? Cancel the Beatles, Keats, Wilde, Artaud, Brecht, Mary Shelley, Pina Bausch, Carol Churchill ... and of course, Shakespeare! You get the picture!!! Fuck off all these Racist, homophobic, sexist and patriarchal pricks ... They were all constricted by constructed reality viewpoints imposed by imperialist strictures under which none were even vaguely aware of ... Hmmm ...

Ahhhhhhhhhh ...

Shakespeare was a moment in history. That moment saw an incredible distillation of ideas, historical development and sheer audacity in cultural events that resulted in immediate persecutions of participants and also the exhilaration of artistic potential that resulted in people taking seriously the words of the licensed fool ... or the ALL LICENSED FOOL. And this point is one of the lasting and most significant yet under-valued points that Shakespeare actually raised in his work:

the role of art, artistry and literature as that of the cultural and social "all licensed fool".

We see the Fool as the Elizabethan equivalent of a comedian commentator. Yet art is its own FOOL! Art, literature, theatre and all artistic expression is a counter to all dogmas and agendas that seek to impose the WILL of some particular beholders of a given belief system on everyone. It is oppositional. But it can be manipulated to conform.

The New Propensity to Bowdlerise Theatre and Art

Thomas Bowdler two hundred years ago published bastardized versions of Shakespeare's plays removing what he considered to be offensive words. It seems in a world of cancelling and smug righteousness that a new bowdlerising is taking place. New Puritans have adopted the Fascist mode of decrying and disappearing that which is deemed decadent. While we haven't as yet seen museums devoted to the disappeared arts of the past with psychologists giving lectures on how the arts indicated mental illness and generally depraved minds; one can't be sure it isn't on some agenda from well-meaning left-wing fascists of the future!

So How Does Cressida Explain this Phenomena?

"Troilus and Cressida" is perhaps Shakespeare's most phenomenal play. It is deceptive on all counts and seems just an awkward and perhaps a flawed and unfocused work. However, on a closer study and when working on it, we discover it features all the social and political dimensions that have followed since the time of Shakespeare.

Cressida seems to be the victim of patriarchy and political intrigue. She is certainly traded as a commodity. However, we see all characters in "Troilus and Cressida" as traded for their own images. The very notion of war is a fabrication of narcissistic ego-driven constructivists; people who shape the belief systems into duties, honour and death!

Shakespeare's Cressida says: "But with my heart the other eye doth see.

Ah, poor our sex! this fault in us I find, The error of our eye directs our mind."

Cressida will fabricate a new reality as she leaves her naïve love and sexual attraction to a prince Troilus behind. She is the very opposite of the girl falling for the fairy-tale prince and the happy ever-after. For Cressida, sex is not a dirty word; though she recognises its potential devastating potential to destroy. In moving forward for a sexual relationship with a Greek trader, she never cancels her past dabbling in romantic love; however she recognises it as just as illusory, if not more so, than the arranged sexual partnering that is part of her father's deal. She is just like "your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass" ... etc. as suggested in the "bible".

Cressida's world is desolate and isolated. She is that lone woman along with the "manservant, maidservant, ox, and ass". She understands the absurdity of her situation and the whole situation of war and ego.

No other character in Shakespeare's works has ever done this. And she survives. Her reputation as a whore lingers on because she doesn't act like a victim.

How contemporary is this?

The Contemporary World of Shakespeare

Cressida recognizes the disturbing features of family, culture and destiny. These three disparate and nasty circles of her life then do not place her in some kind of social straitjacket. Rather she finds the way to manipulate them all. She would never believe the advice of her friends that it is OK to step into the cage with a wild tiger and not expect to be eaten; and then decry that tigers have got no right to kill young Cressida who steps into their cages ...

While most of Shakespeare follows fairly linear pathways and directions within the plays, "Troilus and Cressida" works on a substantially vertical plane. The plot is rambling. However, it details a psychological presence that baffles and even challenges the contemporary mindset. Troilus is a decent enough young guy brought up in a privileged white environment with his brothers and a particularly strange sister in Cassandra. But the power of Cressida is over-whelming and he is like a rabbit in the spot as it is about to be killed. He is frozen and totally confused by his object of obsession and naïve love.

Shakespeare as Absurdist

So before the moral fascist hacks begin cancelling Shakespeare, perhaps it is time to realign his work with the Absurdists. It isn't the theatrical form that is Absurdist in the way Beckett is absurdist; it is his views on the nature of the human condition that are essentially and culturally absurdist! And "Troilus and Cressida" is the most significant of his works. Cressida is the essential Absurdist recogniser. She knows the absurd situation could easily have her killed. In recognising the nature of her plight and even her own emotions, she is able to survive and possibly survive as well as any of her peers.

Troilus, on the other hand, is so locked into a sincere and honorable reality he can never see beyond the crap of his own straitjacket. He is doomed. This is his tragedy. His brothers are doomed. His father is doomed. His mother will see her grandson murdered by Greek hacks carrying out the orders of their masters (though not specifically seen in this play).

Shakespeare borrowed extensively from Greek plays and mythology. Yet he treated the subjects with very little respect in order to shape his own vision of humanity. Perhaps Shakespeare needs to be studied as a marker of original thought more so than as a master of literature and art. He survived cancelling and execution by being able to adapt to circumstances; often very dangerous circumstances! Very cleverly, he created a female character in Cressida who had to negotiate her own survival having also survived the cruel family situation that might well have destroyed most people. In some respects, this paralleled his own dire situation in an absurd pre-Bowdlerised world ...

Joe Woodward

Bookings can now be made for the 2023 DTC production of: TROILUS AND CRESSIDA by William Shakespeare.

There is a bar and some audience interaction with the cast. Don't expect the usual Shakespeare as this production approaches the work as if it has never been done before. It is a unique and very exciting approach to Shakespeare and one of his most problematic and least performed plays.

The production isn't about giving kiddies sticky gold stars. Rather it is about students and professional practitioners tapping insights and potential for presenting a work by one of the most essential contributors to Western Culture and Civilisation. In some respects it is Shakespeare negotiating his existence in a pre Bowdlerised world. Join DTC for an experience of Shakespeare's most contemporary and profound plays ... BOOK HERE