← All plays

Troilus and Cressida: The Trojan War and the Betrayal of Honour

Achilles withdraws to his tent. Patroclus is killed. Hector lays aside his armour and is murdered, his body dragged behind a horse. Lewes Lewkenor had already told this sequence in The Resolved Gentleman in 1594, using the words “cruelly and dishonourably” for the destruction of Troy’s greatest defender.

Lewkenor’s classical histories

The Resolved Gentleman combines moral allegory with historical examples explaining the destruction of powerful men. Lewkenor introduced his supplementary histories by identifying the readers he hoped to assist:

A brief explanation of some Histories but obscurely touched by the Author in this Treatise, which I thought fit to annex for the greater delight of those that shall read it, especially Gentlewomen, and those that are unacquainted with such historical discourses.

Lewes Lewkenor, The Resolved Gentleman (1594), introduction to the explanatory histories.

Among these histories is an account of the Trojan War. It moves from Paris’s breach of hospitality through the quarrel over captive women to Achilles’s withdrawal, Patroclus’s death and the killing of Hector.

These events belong to a broad classical tradition. What makes Lewkenor’s treatment worth reading beside Shakespeare is the particular sequence he selects and his explicit judgement upon the manner of Hector’s death.

Paris and the betrayal of hospitality

Lewkenor begins with Paris travelling as an ambassador and being received at the court of Menelaus:

Young Paris, son to Priamus King of Troy, being by his father sent as Ambassador to the Grecian Princes, about the restitution of his Aunt Hesione, was by the way entertained at the Court of Menelaus King of Sparta, where, fixing his eyes upon the marvellous beauty of Helena the new married Queen, grew so far surprised with her love, that forgetting the laws of hospitality, alluring her aboard his Ship, he hoist up sails, and carried her thence to Troy.

Lewkenor, The Resolved Gentleman; spelling and abbreviations lightly modernised.

The phrase “forgetting the laws of hospitality” makes the offence political as well as personal. A guest entrusted with an embassy abuses his reception and carries away his host’s wife.

In Shakespeare’s play, the consequences have become an entrenched war. The leaders argue over Helen’s value while soldiers continue to die.

Hector’s argument for peace

Hector recognises that possession does not establish a right. He argues that Helen should be returned:

If Helen then be wife to Sparta’s king,
As it is known she is, these moral laws
Of nature and of nations speak aloud
To have her back return’d.

Hector, Troilus and Cressida, II, ii.

“The laws of hospitality” in Lewkenor’s account become “the laws of nature and of nations” in Hector’s argument. Both formulations locate the original offence within obligations that cross the boundaries of kingdoms.

Yet Hector does not maintain his opposition. He joins his brothers in defending the war as a matter of Trojan honour. His intelligence recognises the injustice; his allegiance carries him back into it.

Achilles withdraws to his tent

Lewkenor describes the conflict between Agamemnon and Achilles over Briseis. The commander’s demand almost produces violence within the Greek leadership:

To which delivery of so fair and so beloved a prey, Agamemnon would not by any means consent, unless Achilles in her stead would yield Briseis up unto him. But so unpatiently did Achilles brook that unprincely and discourteous demand, that with his sword he would presently have slain Agamemnon, had not he been by the other Greekish Peers restrained: who, what with sweet persuasions, and other practices, at length so much with him prevailed, that, though extremely against his will, they made him deliver his fair and dearly beloved Briseis to the pleasure of the Greekish Emperor.

But when she was once gone, then began her absence to strike and wound his heart with so excessive a sorrow, and deadly a discontentment, that full of ireful melancholy, he retired himself into his Tent, refusing to come abroad to wear Arms as he was accustomed, though every day he saw fierce Hector come murdering and chasing the Grecians, even to their Tents.

Lewkenor, The Resolved Gentleman; spelling modernised.

Shakespeare changes the balance of motives, giving Achilles a secret attachment to Priam’s daughter Polyxena as well as pride in his reputation. The military result remains comparable: the army’s greatest fighter stays in his tent while the common enterprise suffers.

Ulysses describes the disorder:

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.

Ulysses, Troilus and Cressida, I, iii.

Patroclus and the return to battle

Lewkenor continues the story through the failure of negotiation and the death that finally changes Achilles’s purpose:

Many means were made by the Greekish Lords, to remove him from this settled and obstinate determination. Agamemnon offered to return Briseis untouched, with the interest of many other rich presents, but nothing prevailed: till one day, as Hector came victoriously beating down the Greekish Squadrons, his dear friend Patroclus thinking with the dissembled presence of Achilles, to terrify the Trojan troops, armed himself in the rich and gorgeous Armour of Achilles: but so cruel were his destinies, that at his first entry into the battle, he was by Hector encountered and slain.

Lewkenor, The Resolved Gentleman; spelling modernised.

In Shakespeare, the news of Patroclus’s death similarly marks the moment at which withdrawal gives way to revenge. Nestor orders:

Go, bear Patroclus’ body to Achilles;
And bid the snail-paced Ajax arm for shame.
There is a thousand Hectors in the field.

Nestor, Troilus and Cressida, Act V.

Lewkenor describes Achilles’s response:

Which cruel tidings had no sooner touched the ears of sorrowful Achilles, but awaked with revenge, forgetting all other passions, he called for his Armour, and like an enraged Lion, rushed into the thickest of the Trojans’ press.

Lewkenor, The Resolved Gentleman; spelling modernised.

Shakespeare gives the returning warrior a single object:

Where is this Hector?
Come, come, thou boy-queller, show thy face;
Know what it is to meet Achilles angry:
Hector? Where’s Hector? I will none but Hector.

Achilles, Troilus and Cressida, Act V.

Hector unarmed: “cruelly and dishonourably”

The closest comparison comes in the circumstances of Hector’s death. Lewkenor does not present it as an honourable victory in equal combat:

In which very instant, the valiant Hector, distained in blood, and bathing in sweat, was with his immoderate toil well-nigh sweltered in his Armour, so that he withdrew himself out of the battle, and by the River’s side disarmed himself, to refresh his spirits, and to take a little air: which Achilles perceiving, followed him, and at unawares, cruelly and dishonourably ran him through with his Lance; and not yet therewith satisfied, caused his body with thongs to be tied to a Horse tail, and so in derision to be thrice trained about the walls of Troy.

Lewkenor, The Resolved Gentleman; spelling modernised. “Trained” here means dragged.

Shakespeare likewise has Hector put off his armour before Achilles arrives with the Myrmidons. Hector protests:

I am unarm’d; forego this vantage, Greek.

Hector, Troilus and Cressida, Act V.

Achilles orders the attack. The method differs from Lewkenor’s account: Shakespeare makes the killing a collective assault by the Myrmidons. The essential moral circumstance remains. Hector is unarmed, and the victor exploits the advantage.

The outrage continues after death. Troilus reports:

He’s dead; and at the murderer’s horse’s tail,
In beastly sort, dragg’d through the shameful field.

Troilus, Troilus and Cressida, Act V.

Lewkenor’s “cruelly and dishonourably” and Shakespeare’s “murderer” direct attention to the same distinction: defeating a renowned warrior does not, by itself, make the action honourable.

The manufacture of military glory

Achilles immediately instructs his followers how the killing is to be announced:

On, Myrmidons, and cry you all amain,
“Achilles hath the mighty Hector slain.”

Achilles, Troilus and Cressida, Act V.

The audience has witnessed the action that the proclamation compresses into a heroic achievement. The Myrmidons’ part and Hector’s helplessness disappear from the advertised victory.

Shakespeare makes reputation depend upon who controls the report. Lewkenor’s prose performs the opposite operation: it preserves the dishonourable circumstances within the account of the famous warrior’s success.

“Degree, priority, and place”

Ulysses explains the Greek army’s failures through its neglect of hierarchy. His argument moves from the heavens to institutions, commerce and government:

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre
Observe degree, priority, and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office, and custom, in all line of order.

Ulysses, Troilus and Cressida, I, iii.

He then imagines the consequences of removing the restraints upon power:

Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy. The bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
And make a sop of all this solid globe;
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead;
Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong,
Between whose endless jar justice resides,
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.

Ulysses, Troilus and Cressida, I, iii.

Lewkenor’s translation of Contarini describes political stability through the ordering of offices and the restraint of powerful individuals. Its account of justice insists:

Justice should be equally administered to all, and that it be not lawful for any how great soever, to do wrong or injury to the least of the lower or meanest people.

Gasparo Contarini, The Commonwealth and Government of Venice (1599), translated by Lewes Lewkenor; extract, spelling modernised.

Ulysses’s warning that “force should be right” becomes horribly concrete when the unarmed Hector is surrounded. The play tests the Greek leaders’ professions of order against their actual conduct.

Ajax, Achilles and professional rivalry

Ulysses and Nestor attempt to bring Achilles back into service by promoting Ajax as a rival. The plan relies upon the difference between courage and the hunger to be recognised as courageous.

Lewkenor’s military experience belonged to a world in which pay, promotion and reputation were practical concerns. The Estate of English Fugitives repeatedly exposes the poor rewards of service abroad:

As for those that have their pensions granted them to follow the court without any obligation of service, as in a manner all the pensions granted to the Englishmen are, the Spanish soldier maketh the most base and contemptible reckoning of them that may be, even as of men that live by charity, as our poor knights do at Windsor.

Lewes Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives (1595); spelling modernised.

The contrast between expectation and treatment gives Lewkenor’s account its bitterness. Men drawn towards honour and advancement may discover that their supposed patrons regard them with contempt.

Shakespeare’s commanders similarly treat reputation as something that can be allocated or withheld to obtain a result. Their praise of Ajax is a means of acting upon Achilles.

Thersites strips away the glory

Thersites refuses the heroic explanation of the war:

All the argument is a whore and a cuckold; a good quarrel to draw emulous factions and bleed to death upon.

Thersites, Troilus and Cressida, II, iii.

His abuse reduces public glory to sexual rivalry and competitive vanity. “Emulous factions” identifies the internal competition that weakens the Greek army as surely as the enemy does.

He is neither an impartial historian nor a reliable moral guide. His cruelty forms part of the world he attacks. Yet his refusal to accept heroic language makes it harder for the audience to overlook the motives beneath it.

Troilus: the war within

Troilus begins by declaring that the fighting outside Troy is less violent than the struggle within him:

I am mad
In Cressid’s love: thou answer’st “she is fair”;
Pour’st in the open ulcer of my heart
Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice.

Troilus to Pandarus, Troilus and Cressida, I, i.

The language makes love a wound. His ideal of Cressida becomes bound up with his own identity, leaving him unable to accommodate anything that contradicts it.

When Cressida is exchanged for Antenor and taken to the Greek camp, political negotiation determines the lovers’ separation. She enters a setting in which the commanders inspect, kiss and judge her. Her vulnerability is part of the scene, alongside her subsequent encounter with Diomedes.

“This is, and is not, Cressid”

Watching Cressida with Diomedes, Troilus struggles to reconcile what he sees with what he believes:

This is, and is not, Cressid.

Troilus, Troilus and Cressida, V, ii.

The crisis parallels the play’s treatment of military reputation. A cherished identity cannot withstand the conduct now displayed before the observer.

Cressida’s predicament also complicates Troilus’s judgement. She has been transferred between opposing camps through an agreement made by men. The play places her choices within that coercive world rather than allowing the love story to remain separate from the war.

Hercules, Nessus and destructive love

Lewkenor’s account of Hercules offers a related example of heroic strength destroyed through desire and deception. Nessus gives Deianira a poisoned garment, pretending that it will secure her husband’s love:

Which shirt, he told her, that if she should at any time send unto her husband, when he should be in love with any other Lady, would reclaim his love from the other to her alone. The Lady received it, and with secrecy many years did keep it as a jewel of rare and singular price.

Lewkenor, The Resolved Gentleman; extract, spelling modernised.

When Hercules falls in love with Iole, Deianira sends the garment. The supposed remedy becomes the means of destruction:

Which he had no sooner put on, but the venom so ragingly pierced even to his very entrails, that thinking to tear it off, he pulled therewith away great gobbets of his own flesh.

Lewkenor, The Resolved Gentleman; extract, spelling modernised.

Shakespeare’s explicit invocation of this garment occurs in Antony and Cleopatra:

The shirt of Nessus is upon me: teach me,
Alcides, thou mine ancestor, thy rage.

Antony, Antony and Cleopatra, IV, xii.

For Troilus and Cressida, the sharper textual comparison is Lewkenor’s actual Trojan narrative: withdrawal, grief, revenge and the dishonourable destruction of Hector. The Hercules story extends the comparison across plays concerned with the collapse of heroic self-command.

Read the Antony and Cleopatra investigation →

Achilles and Polyxena

Lewkenor also recounts Achilles’s attachment to Priam’s daughter, a relationship Shakespeare makes part of the explanation for his conduct:

Shortly after it fell out, that either side being weary with the daily turmoils of Wars, agreed upon certain days of truce, in which mean time, it might be lawful for the Trojans to come into the Greekish Tents, and the Greeks likewise to enter into Troy. Among the rest, Achilles entering the Town, chanced one day to espy young Polixene, daughter to King Priam: the sight of whose admirable beauty, did so astonish him, that laying all hostility apart, from thence forward meditated on nothing but love.

Lewkenor, The Resolved Gentleman; extract, spelling modernised.

In Shakespeare, the attachment already exists before Hector’s death. Achilles receives a letter from Hecuba reminding him of his oath, and for a moment the obligation of love restrains his martial promise.

The change in chronology matters. Shakespeare brings love and military duty into immediate competition, then lets the death of Patroclus overturn that restraint.

An ending without restoration

Hector is dead, the lovers remain separated, and the war continues. Troilus turns towards revenge rather than reconciliation. Pandarus’s final address leaves disease and transmission in place of a romantic conclusion.

The play dismantles the reassuring distinction between noble war and private weakness. The commanders’ vanity affects the campaign; sexual possession helps sustain its purpose; an unarmed man’s killing becomes a celebrated victory.

Lewkenor’s earlier account makes the central comparison unusually concrete. He had described Achilles’s “ireful melancholy”, the death of “his dear friend Patroclus”, Hector disarming to recover from battle, and the attack made “cruelly and dishonourably”. Read beside Shakespeare, those passages give the investigation a foundation in words and events rather than a general resemblance between two treatments of Fortune.

Sources and further reading

Lewes Lewkenor, The Resolved Gentleman (1594), explanatory histories: Paris and Helen; Agamemnon and Achilles; Patroclus; Hector’s death; Achilles and Polyxena; Hercules and Nessus. Quotations retain the substance of the text, with spelling and abbreviations lightly modernised.

Lewes Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives (1595), accounts of foreign military service, pensions and reputation.

Gasparo Contarini, The Commonwealth and Government of Venice (1599), translated by Lewes Lewkenor.

William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, complete text, Folger Shakespeare Library. Scene divisions within Act V vary between editions.

William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, IV, xii, for the explicit “shirt of Nessus” allusion.

Homer, Iliad; Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde; William Caxton, Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye.

Angelica Kauffmann, Diomed and Cressida (1789), National Trust Collections, Petworth House.

The Master of the Ceremonies, 18 October 2026, sections concerning The Resolved Gentleman, the Trojan histories and Low Countries military service.

Continue:
Coriolanus — Exile, Rome and the Soldier’s Honour →