Why, she's a gemSay no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay whose price tag exceeded a thousand ships and turned crowned kings into merchants. (2.2.81-3) The world of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida does not make a clear distinction between the Greeks and the Trojans. Although the Greek camp is a collection of improvised tents erected on the banks of Troy and Trojan society is the court palace of Priam and his sons, both societies value the same ideas and the same objects: honor in men, and beauty and fidelity in women. , as it reveals itself through chance appearances and actions. The insufficiency of such measures of value, their inability to be absolute and their inability to make themselves known, results in the incestuous and inbred world of Troilus and Cressida, where war is waged as between brothers and sisters: full of petty, devoid rivalries of meaning, repetitive trade between camps and showy comings and goings in place of real conflict. Unable to live or act without considerations of value, the actors of Troilus and Cressida create and operate in their own fallen world. Troilus and Cressida immediately open themselves into this world of judgment and evaluations. Troilus' mini-coat of arms in appreciation of Cressida "Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her walk, her voice (1.1.56)" is soon followed by Pandarus' attempt to elevate Troilus' station in Cressida's eyes : You have eyes, don't you? do you know what a man is? Birth, beauty, good form, speech, virility, knowledge, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality, etc., are they not the spice and salt which season a man? (1.2.262-266). The humor of the play's opening scenes comes not from the discrepancy between the way women are celebrated and that of men, but rather from Shakespeare's demonstration that the modes of evaluation are in fact the same; both reduce men and women to objects of desire. In the opening scenes of the play, the lovers only confront each other through Pandarus, who first agrees to sell Cressida to Troilus (already a lovesick buyer), and then to sell Troilus to Cressida (who is just playing the part). hard to get), through a series of comparisons with other lovers and actors in their tightly scripted world. The role of Pandarus in Troilus and Cressida, mediating action by attempting to mediate “or provoke” desire, is problematic. His interactions with Troilus and Cressida are awkward, not only because he is the uncle of a well-born woman reduced to the role of imbecile or intermediary, but also because his praise sometimes seems to border on the unnatural and the incestuous. . In his praise of Cressida, for example, Pandarus cannot help admitting twice that she is his niece, which forces us to take the dialogue with concern, even if we had not understood it from that point of view. way. As for me, she is my kinswoman, said Pandarus; I would not praise her, as they say, (1.1.45-47). A few lines later, he laments again: Because she is my relative, so she is not as beautiful as Helen. If she were not my relative, she would be as beautiful on Friday as Helen is on Sunday (1.1.78-80). Speaking of Troilus to Cressida a scene later, Pandarus returns to the theme of illicit admiration. Unable to exalt Troilus as much as he would like, he posits a nonexistent female relationship to fulfill his desire: If I had a sister a grace, or a daughter a goddess, he should make his choice (1.2.244). -46). Although it's all part of the show, the business side of love, Pandarusnevertheless helps to create the claustrophobic and embodied atmosphere of the piece. Taken together, these scenes place Pandarus beyond the role of intermediary until he appears not only as the champion of the young lovers but also as their pimp, which he will realize by the end of the play. In his concluding remarks, Pandarus, the poor, scorned agent, identifies himself with the debauchees and merchants of the country.chair (5.10.36, 46). If the society of Troilus and Cressida is sick and the actors in this society are brothers and sisters of closed-door commerce, Pandarus has voluntarily held the door open for others to pass through (5.10.51). But he is not alone. in this symptomatic charge of the undifferentiated society of the play. It reaches the highest levels, as is wonderfully demonstrated by the humiliating treatment that Ulysses inflicts on Cressida upon his arrival at the Greek camp. After the Greek general Agamemnon receives Cressida with a kiss, Odysseus "without apparent purpose" extends the reception to all the other Greeks, from the ancient Nestor to the cuckold Menelaus: The kindness is, however, special. / It was better that she was kissed in general (4.5.20-21). Ulysses places himself at the end of this series of kisses, but when his turn comes, he rejects the generosity induced by Cressida. Why then, for Venus's sake, give me a kiss, / When Helen is a servant again, and his own, says Odysseus, imposing an impossible condition, Helen's virginity defiled, to the kiss (4.5.49 -50). Odysseus, it seems, sets up this scenario in order to expose Cressida as a woman worthy of his conception of her, so that he can then pass judgment on her as she dates Diomedes: Fie, rely on her! There is language in his eye, his cheek, his lip; even more, his foot speaks. His wanton minds monitor every joint and pattern of his body. (4.5.54-57) Odysseus, too, in his lowest moment, reveals himself to be an agent in the closed-door trade. Odysseus's replies are also significant for another reason. When he asks that Cressida be kissed in general rather than in particular, Ulysses offers the reader one of the major dichotomies of the play, that of the gap between what is general "absolute or unified" and what is particular , contingent or private. It is appropriate (insofar as anything similar can be appropriate) that Agamemnon, as general of the Greeks, should embrace Cressida; it is not appropriate for all men to follow suit. By stripping the Greek camp of even this small level of hierarchy, Ulysses further contributes to the pervasive lack of hierarchy in all aspects of the play's world. Ironically, the compulsion of Troilus and Cressida's characters to judge and evaluate the worth of people and actions ultimately leads to a non-hierarchical society in which everyone is low and equally low. The beautiful Helen flirts shamelessly with Pandarus in 3.1, her only appearance in the play, and Pandarus' insinuations extend not only to Helen and Cressida but even to Cassandra, Priam's prophetic daughter and not so much a traditional sex object . As he says to Troilus before being interrupted: “I will not criticize the spirit of your sister Cassandra, but” (1.1.48-9). The role of the pimp, as expounded by Pandarus in Troilus and Cressida, is an unnecessary social role because the desire need not be achieved "through Pandarus' attempts to increase Cressida's stock and of Troilus" or by mediation. People don't need a pimp because they have their own private desires and decisions that can be played out at their own pace. Perhaps this is what gives Troilus and Cressida its trace of tragedy: the game world is hostile to any sort of true union between Troilus and? (5.10.39-40).