SOURCE: Jago, David M. “The Uniqueness of Troilus and Cressida.” Shakespeare Quarterly 29, no. 1 (winter 1978): 20-7.

In the following essay, Jago contends that Troilus and Cressida is unique because it stands outside “the popular traditions Shakespeare normally followed”; Jago demonstrates this point by contrasting the play with Romeo and Juliet.

One of the distinguishing features of Shakespeare's work is the dramatist's ability to create plays out of very different kinds of source-material and to define in each play an entirely independent moral atmosphere, closely connected with the source. It is this variety of moral outlooks that makes it so difficult to give critical consideration to more than one of Shakespeare's plays at a time. Troilus and Cressida, however, is remarkable for the degree to which its dissimilarity from other plays can be located in the author's treatment of source material, rather than in the material itself. There is no...