a lover, Troilus is distinguished by the attributes usually ascribed to the votaries of beauty; but, in other respects, Caxton, Chaucer, and Shakspeare appear alike solicitous for his exaltation. Caxton's praise is brief, but full-❝ Troilus was great, and of great courage; well attempered, and sore beloved of young maidens. In force and gladness he resembled much to Hector, and was the second after him of prowess; and there was not in all the royame a more strong and hardy young man." Chaucer is still more unmeasured in his commendations :

"And Troilus well woxen was in hight,
And complete formed by proportioun,
So well that kind it naught amenden might,
Young, fresh, strong, and hardy as lioun,
Trew as steele, in ech conditioun

One of the best enteched creature,

That is or shall, while that the world may dure.

“And certainely, in story as it is fond,
That Troilus was never unto no wight
As in his time, in no degree second,
In daring do that longeth to a knight,
All might a giaunt passen him of might,
His herte aye with the first and with the best,
Stood peregall to dare done what him list."

Shakspeare surpasses both his predecessors in the real dignity of character which he bestows on Troilus.*

* Act IV. sc. 5. “The youngest son of Priam, a true knight,"

&c.

Between the character given of Cressida, and the actions ascribed to her by Caxton and Chaucer, there is a contradiction, not exactly reconcilable to modern notions. The former, in addition to his description of her, whom he calls Bresyda, as "passing fair, of mean stature, white and medled with red, and well made, sweet and piteous, and whom many men loved for her beauty," calls her "wise." Chaucer amplifies this praise of the lady, adding —

"She sobre was, eke simple, and wise withall,
The best inorished eke that might bee,
And goodly of her speech in generall;
Charitable, estately, lusty, and free,
Ne nevermore, ne lacked her pitee;
Tender-hearted, sliding of corage,
But truely I cannot tell her age."

And this is the lady the sequel to whose story is shameless inconstancy! Shakspeare took a very different view of the subject. She was to appear in the subsequent scenes of his play destitute of virtue; and he represents her therefore, from the first, as volatile and licentious, gross in ideas and indelicate in language.* It is true, that she loves Troilus, and all her protestations of fidelity are the undisguised feelings of her heart at the moment: but as her love is violent, † Act IV. sc. 2.

*Act I. sc. 2.

so is it transitory; and the same fervent temperament that, in the first instance, resigned her to the dominion of one tender feeling, renders her willingly susceptible of a second, when separated from the original object of her passion. Shakspeare's representation of Cressida is one consistent exemplification of an animated passage, in which she is justly and accurately described by Ulysses,

"Fye, fye upon her,

There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip!
Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out
At every joint and motive of her body.

Oh these encounterers! so glib of tongue,
That give a coasting welcome ere it comes

And wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts

To

every ticklish reader! Set them down

For sluttish spoils of opportunity,

And daughters of the game."

Pandarus flourishes with extraordinary prominence in Chaucer's tale; whence Shakspeare caught not only the general idea of his character, but several minute particulars of conduct: such as Pandarus' rallying of Cressida, after he had betrayed her to the arms of Troilus†; 'a passage completely parallel to one in Chaucer.

Diomede is a courtly and obsequious lover

* Act IV. sc. 5.

+ Act IV. sc. 2.

in Caxton and Chaucer; but he appears in Shakspeare born for any thing rather than "a woman's slave." He, in fact, subdues the wanton Cressida, by convincing her that the practice on him of the arts and coquetries of her sex will be the surest way to lose him-"Thou never shall mock Diomede again;"—" I do not like this fooling."

*

The story of Troilus and his faithless mistress was of itself too slight to form the entire subject of a play, and the poet endeavoured to supply the deficiency by the introduction of the principal actors in the Trojan war previous to the death of Hector; with which event his drama closes. The facts of the historical portion of the play are confusedly intermixed: the writer was evidently conversant with his subject, but shrunk from the trouble of reducing the events represented into a systematic and regular arrangement. Caxton's work afforded abundant information relative to the origin and progress of the Trojan war; but Shakspeare derived from the first book of Homer his knowledge of an event which, next to the story of Troilus and Cressida itself, is made the leading feature of the drama- the retiring of Achilles from the field of battle.

* Act V. sc. 2.

Shakspeare's reason for that circumstance is dif

ferent from Homer's:

"The great Achilles, — whom opinion crowns

The sinew and the forehand of our host,
Having his ear full of his airy fame,

Grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent
Lies mocking our designs."

"Possessed he is with greatness;

And speaks not to himself, but with a pride

That quarrels at self-breath: imagin'd worth
Holds in his blood such swoln and hot discourse,
That 'twixt his mental and his active parts,
Kingdom'd Achilles in commotion rages,
And batters down himself." †

It is, indeed, a sad perversion of historic fact to convert the just wrath of the highminded Achilles into a wayward and splenetic ebullition of vanity and pride; but Shakspeare seized on the incident of Achilles' withdrawing himself from combat, and bent it to an object that he had immediately in view, - the playing off Achilles and Ajax on each other. To effect his purpose the dramatist took scarcely fewer liberties with the character of Ajax than with that of Achilles. Caxton gives the following description of Ajax :-"Of great stature, great and large in the shoulders, great arms, and alway was well cloathed, and richly. And was of no † Act II. sc. 3.

* Act I. sc. 3. VOL. II.

E