Women in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida and Chaucer's Book of the Duchess

Women in Chaucer and Shakespeare

What is a female reader supposed to get from reading a poem or watching a play written by male authors? If the topic is classical, the chances are that it is intended as a sort of model for conduct, a form of etiquette instruction in the guise of a worthy lesson from the traditional classical education -- and therefore obliged to reflect contemporary moral standards to which women were expected to adhere. I propose to compare the treatment of women in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida -- specifically in Act III Scene 1, the moment when Pandarus finally manages to effect a meeting between the lovers of the title -- with that much earlier in Chaucer's Book of the Duchess, with specific reference lines 1052-1087. I think we can see a shift from the medieval to the modern mindset in such a comparison: specifically to watch how Chaucer's very medieval use of virtuous models of behavior from the classical world is subverted by Shakespeare's bitter portrayal of one of the bitterest episodes from classical epic. The difference will also demonstrate a shift between the pious Roman Catholicism which Chaucer was obliged to respect in his verse to the revisionist Trojan War of Shakespeare's play, which seems to take place in a godless world.

Chaucer illustrates the perfect way in which classical reading subjects were employed as virtual "conduct manuals" for the female reader. The passage from the Book of the Duchess which I intend to examine is certainly entailed in understanding how Chaucer portrays female characters with an eye on female readers. I would like to quote the passage in full, but ask the reader to approach it specifically with the question of its tone in mind:

'With myn? Nay, alle that hir seyen

Seyde and sworen hit was so.

And thogh they ne hadde, I wolde tho

Have loved best my lady fre,

Thogh I had had al the beautee

That ever had Alcipyades,

And al the strengthe of Ercules,

And therto had the worthinesse

Of Alisaundre, and al the richesse

That ever was in Babiloyne,

In Cartage, or in Macedoyne,

Or in Rome, or in Ninive;

And therto al-so hardy be

As was Ector, so have I Ioye,

That Achilles slow at Troye

And therfor was he slayn also

In a temple, for bothe two

Were slayn, he and Antilegius,

And so seyth Dares Frigius,

For love of hir Polixena

Or ben as wys as Minerva,

I wolde ever, withoute drede,

Have loved hir, for I moste nede!

"Nede!" nay, I gabbe now,

Noght "nede," and I wol telle how,

For of good wille myn herte hit wolde,

And eek to love hir I was holde

As for the fairest and the beste.

'She was as good, so have I reste,

As ever was Penelope of Grece,

Or as the noble wyf Lucrece,

That was the beste -- he telleth thus,

The Romayn Tytus Livius

She was as good, and no-thing lyke,

Thogh hir stories be autentyke;

Algate she was as trewe as she. (Chaucer. p 337).

I crave the reader's indulgence in quoting this passage at length, but I think it is important for contemporary readers to inquire into the tone of this passage. The proliferation of classical names -- rhyming Alcibiades with Hercules, and "Penelope of Grece" with "Lucrece," the same noble Roman wife raped by the evil King Tarquin depicted in Shakespeare's own early poem "The Rape of Lucrece" -- almost seems like frivolous macaronic verse here. It is only by realizing that each of these is a sort of topos -- an educational illustration -- selected to indicate certain forms of female virtue. In other words, they are like standard educational tropes -- the patience of Penelope, the chastity of Lucretia -- for which the elegized lady in Chaucer's dream vision is being praised.

Intriguingly the strange and bitter climax of Shakespeare's "overtly rancid" (as Harold Bloom calls it) genre-bending drama Troilus and Cressida takes this element from Chaucer (Bloom 638). In Act III Scene 1 of Shakespeare's play we get to see the fictionalized invention of just such a topos for legendary female behavior as Chaucer employs in good faith. Unfortunately, the topos that is depicted is a negative one: Cressida would be famed for her fickleness and inconstancy, she is the opposite of a Penelope or a Lucretia. Of course what intervenes between Chaucer's treatment of female virtue and Shakespeare's is dramatic irony. We need only examine the speech by Cressida at the conclusion of the scene to demonstrate how this works:

CRESSIDA ?Prophet may you be!

If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,

When time is old and hath forgot itself,

When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,

And blind oblivion swallow'd cities up,

And mighty states characterless are grated?

To dusty nothing, yet let memory,

From false to false, among false maids in love,

Upbraid my falsehood! when they've said 'as false?

As air, as water, wind, or sandy earth,

As fox to lamb, as wolf to heifer's calf,

Pard to the hind, or stepdame to her son,'?

'Yea,' let them say, to stick the heart of falsehood, 'As false as Cressid.'?

(Shakespeare p. 104)

The formal quality of Cressida's verse here, with its elaborate anaphora at the beginning, with the oxymoron of "when time is old" and the traditional motif of the passage of Troy. Moreover Cressida's use here of the word "oblivion" chimes with the chilling usage of the word elsewhere in the play by Ulysses, who states that "Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back wherein he puts alms for oblivion." In both cases, what seems to be emphasizes is the great historical distance of these classical examples, which allows Shakespeare to rewrite the legend (so to speak) and to emphasize a bitter and un-romantic version of these legendary lovers.