SOURCE: Maquerlot, Jean-Pierre. “When Playing is Foiling: Troilus and Cressida.” In Shakespeare and the Mannerist Tradition: A Reading of Five Problem Plays, pp. 118-45. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
In the following essay, Maquerlot compares the style of Troilus and Cressida to the Mannerist mode of painting popular during Shakespeare's time, and contends that Shakespeare was attempting to portray the Trojan War as presented by Homer, as well as the love story of Troilus and Cressida as depicted by Chaucer, in a way that highlighted the modern disillusionment with the ideal of chivalry.
