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Act 5, Scene 1
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Troilus and Cressida, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
War
Love and Selfishness
Honor
Commodification of Women
Fate and Fortune
Summary
Analysis
Trailing Diomedes to Calchas’s tent, Ulysses and Troilus (and Thersites) hear him summon Cressida from within. When she emerges, she whispers in Diomedes’s ear in a flirtatious manner. Ulysses tells Troilus (and Thersites comments to himself) that Cressida is known as an easily seduced woman. With growing horror, Troilus listens as Diomedes pressures Cressida to honor the promise she made him. She wavers. She seems determined to resist Diomedes at some moments but anxious to give in to his amorous desires at other moments.
The audience is given very little insight into Cressida’s decision-making. In a way, this position puts them in Troilus’s shoes, because like him they can only judge her based on what they see of her actions. But her earlier musings on her vulnerability at the hands of powerful men suggest another reason why she might be flirting with Diomedes. He did offer to protect her in Act 4, Scene 4, and although his vow there carried the clear implication that he was interested in becoming her lover, it’s the most anyone in the Greek camp has offered her. The fact that she wavers suggests that her decision may not only be about lust for Diomedes, that she might want to be faithful to Troilus. And it also reminds the audience that she has inner depths that Troilus either can’t see or doesn’t care about. All he sees in this moment is the betrayal, not the wavering.
Active
Themes
Finally, Diomedes asks Cressida for some sort of token or pledge that she’ll keep her word. She retrieves the sleeve that Troilus gave her from within the tent and hands it over. But then, imagining Troilus back at home, pining for her and kissing the glove she’d given him, she tries to take the sleeve back. Diomedes won’t let her have it. He says he’ll wear it on his helmet in the morning, as a direct challenge to the man who used to be her lover, whoever he is. After some more wavering, Cressida ultimately decides to bring Diomedes into the tent with her. She doesn’t know Troilus is listening, so she’s talking to herself when she bids her former lover farewell, blaming her inconstant feminine nature for her inability to remain faithful to him as she promised.
The play doesn’t give the audience insight into why Cressida gives Diomedes a secondhand love token. Certainly, Troilus interprets it as a betrayal, a total renunciation of her earlier feelings for and vows to him. This gesture contributes to the play’s brutal deconstruction of romantic love. Noble feelings don’t enter into it, this moment proclaims, just lust and carnal desire. In this vein, it’s important that it’s a sleeve—an item of clothing that suggests female genitalia by enclosing a male body part (first Troilus’s and now Diomedes’s arm). Cressida’s final words onstage take ownership of her betrayal of Troilus and blame herself in words that align with antifeminist literature going back at least as far as the medieval sources for the play.
Active
Themes
Once Diomedes and Cressida have gone into the tent, Ulysses wonders why Troilus wants to linger. Troilus says it’s because he needs to memorize what’s just happened. And then he starts trying to process the scene aloud. At first, he’s unwilling or unable to admit that the person he saw was really Cressida. Ulysses, however, insists that it was. In that case, Troilus says, all women—including their beloved mothers—must be cursed. If Cressida could swear loyalty and still betray him, he doesn’t know if he can trust anything anymore, even the universal laws that govern nature.
Active
Themes
Ultimately, Troilus tells Ulysses about his love for Cressida. He swears that he will kill Diomedes in battle, if it’s the last thing he does. And then, he curses Cressida’s betrayal. Ulysses warns him to hush, lest he draw unwanted attention, but just at that moment, Aeneas stumbles upon the pair of them. He’s been looking for Troilus—it’s high time to return to Troy and prepare for the coming battle. Troilus and Ulysses bid each other a courteous farewell. As the Trojan and Greek lords go their separate ways, Thersites bitterly notes that all they seem to care about is fighting and whoring. He figures Patroclus will be interested in the information he’s gathered about Cressida, since Patroclus loves an easy sexual conquest.
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