(12) Troilus and Cressida

Last night I asked my wife the following question: “When you pick a book to read, do you select it by genre? Also, would it bother you if you discovered it was actually of a different genre than the one you though it would be?” Her response? Often and yes, which is not surprising I think (at least to me, because I do agree with her to a certain extent, but more on that in a moment). There is something about genre, the reassuring predictability of it, the familiarity, the art of the assumption, that just works for us readers. In some ways it sets up the whole experience, a map of sorts that the reader can use to get to where they want (and like) to go.

So, in this respect, Troilus and Cressida pretty much totally fails, at least in the Classical sense. Genre-ly (to coin a term), it’s all over the place, at once a straight up tragedy, then a comedy, then back to a tragedy…kind of. For example, the tragic romance of Troilus and Cressida is not introduced until essentially the halfway mark (late in Act III actually). Talk about foiled expectations...and this is the title of the play for God’s sake. Up until this point, it’s mainly a drama centering on the politics of the Trojan War from Greek mythology, with hardly a mention at all of the budding romance that the title suggests as core to the play. Reading this play is thus a chore, more so than most of the other works I have read so far. Beyond all the obscure language and typical obfuscation that is so often Shakespeare, this lack of genre focus really makes for a harder-to-follow-than-most experience.

However, and this is a big however (isn’t there always a “however” with this guy?), I still liked it, on a number of different levels, not the least of which would be because of this wacky disregard for following the rules. This play flips and flops about like a fish on a dock, and oddly enough it’s these very gyrations that pull the reader in, like the tentacles of a hungry octopus, creating a complex and unique work of art. It was a new and different experience, this extreme genre bending stuff, which is always worth the bumpy ride, at least in my not-so-estimable estimation.