SOURCE: Greenfield, Matthew A. “Fragments of Nationalism in Troilus and Cressida.” Shakespeare Quarterly 51, no. 2 (summer 2000): 181-200.

In the following essay, Greenfield argues that by depicting Troy as decadent and corrupt in Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare undercut England's efforts to build national pride by connecting its ancestry as a nation to the heroic and ancient city of Troy.

Literary critics largely agree that Shakespeare's history plays raised troubling questions about who qualified as a member of the national community.¹ Problematic cases include: the Scots, the Welsh, and the Irish; bastards; ethnic half-breeds; foreign brides; women generally; and sometimes all non-aristocrats. Still, though, despite these questions and anxieties, Shakespeare's tetralogies and the other English history plays move toward closures in which the nation heals and the dream of community reasserts its claim.

Troilus and Cressida explores a more pessimistic political argument. If Shakespeare's histories maintain an investment in some idea...