TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. THE date of this play is pretty decisively fixed by the preface to the quarto edition which was published in 1609. It was then "a new play, never stal'd on the stage, never clapperclaw'd with the palms of the vulgar;" and it is accordingly full of that manly sentiment which we find thoughout the plays produced in the later periods of the Poet's life. 66 As to the story, it was part of the popular literature of England; the better kind reading it in Chaucer, and the meaner in some popular story-book, perhaps not now extant, but which is enumerated with others of its class by Tyndal in his Obedience of a Christian Man, 1535 :—“ Finally, that this threateninge and forbyddinge the laye people to rede the Scriptures is not for love of your soules (which thei care for as the foxe doeth for the gysse) is evidente and clerer than the sonne; in as moche as they permitt and suffre you to reade Robynhode and Bevise of Hampton, Hercules, Hector and Troilus, with a thousand histories and fables of love and wantones and of rybaudry." p. xx. It appears that some other poet had written a play with the same title, for in the books of the Stationers' Company there is entered under Feb. 7, 1602, "The booke of Troilus and Cressida, as it is acted by my Lo. Chamberlain's men." (Boswell's Malone, viii. 216.) If we suppose, with some of the commentators, this to be indeed no other than Shakespeare's, we are misinformed by the writer of the preface to the edition of 1609 in two points; first, that it was a new play, and second, that it had never been acted. That the book entered in 1602 was, however, not Shake speare's, appears from this circumstance, that on January 28, 1608, a book called The History of Troilus and Cressida was entered in the same books to Richard Bonian and Henry Whalley, the publishers of the edition of 1609. This would hardly have been done, had the same book been entered before to other parties. It also is found in Henslowe's papers that in 1599 Decker and Chettle were employed on a play called Troilus and Cressida. (Boswell's Malone, viii. 223.) And this seems to be a sufficient answer to the argument of Mr. Malone in his essay on the chronological order, by which he endeavours to establish for this play a right to be regarded as belonging to the reign of Elizabeth. It has not, I think, been noticed by any of the commentators, that there was a play on the story of Troilus written by Nicholas Grimoald. So at least says Anthony Wood, after Bale. (Ath. Ox. vol. 1, col. 140.) He belonged to the early Reformation æra. The introduction of this play into the first collected edition was an after-thought, as appears by the fact that it is not named in the table of contents; and also, that it stands first among the plays called Tragedies without any pagination, except that the second leaf is paged 79, 80, this last being a circumstance for which it is difficult to account. Troilus was admitted into the vocabulary of English names of persons. Shakespeare had a not very distant neighbour who bore the name. This was Troilus (or "Troylus," as it is on the monument, shewing how the name was pronounced) Kingscott, son of Henry Kingscott of Kingscott in Gloucestershire. Troilus Kingscott served under the Prince of Orange forty years, and died September 10, 1656, aged 80. The lady whom he married had also a remarkable name, Alliday, a daughter of Lambert Waller. |