SOURCE: "The Inaction of Troilus and Cressida," in Essays in Criticism, Vol. XXXII, No. 2, April, 1982, pp. 119-37.

In the following essay, first read to senior members of the Oxford English Faculty in 1972, Everett explores the fragmented narrative of Troilus and Cressida, characterizing the drama as "a sequence of brilliantly-achieved moments that are incomparable in their power to startle, to needle and to entertain. "

Troilus and Cressida has no story, or is as near to having none as a Renaissance play can be. And it is the only one of Shakespeare's plays of which this can be said: no other, for instance, shares its notable lack of a formally structured ending, as of wedding or funeral. This absence of simple story-line in Troilus and Cressida is experienced by anyone who tries to remember the exact order of events, particularly in the middle of the play; and it is the...