Troilus and Cressida

Henry Chettle and Thomas Dekker (1599)

Historical Records

Henslowe's Diary

F. 54v (Greg I.104)

		Lent vnto Thomas downton to lende
aprell 7		vnto mr dickers & harey cheattell in
daye 1599		earneste of ther boocke called Troyeles &
		creasse daye the some of . . . . . . . . . . . . iijli
		[...]
		Lent vnto harey cheattell & mr dickers in pte
		of payment of ther boocke called Troyelles &
		cresseda the 16 of Aprell 1599 . . . . . . . . xxs

F. 63 (Greg I.109)

Henslowe also appears to have confused the play with another on a Greek subject also co-authored by Chettle and Dekker:

			Lent vnto mr dickers & mr chettell the 26 of
			maye 1599 in earneste of a Boocke called troylles
			& creseda the tragede of Agamemnon the some of . . . . . xxxs

Plot

One of the seven extent backstage-plots (British Museum MS. Add 10449) is generally assumed to belong to Dekker and Chettle's "Troilus and Cressida." Greg noted that the actors names that appear in the plot connect it to the Admiral's Men and date it between March 1598 and July 1600, making the 1599 Troilus the most likely of several possible candidates (Documents, II.138). (For dissent, see Hillebrand 461, who proposes the "troye" play that Henslowe records in June 1596.)

The plot was transcribed by Greg in 1904 (Henslowe Papers, App. II.5, 142). A facsimile was published and the transcription corrected in Greg, Dramatic Documents, Plate V. This transcription is reprinted in Bullough, Narrative Sources, v. 6, pp. 220-21; and another facsimile appears in Bullough, "The Lost 'Troilus and Cressida'," facing p. 38.

Theatrical Provenance

"Troilus and Cressida" was to be performed by the Admiral's Men at the Rose. Payments made "in earnest" to Dekker and Chettle are recorded in April 1599. Although Henslowe did not record the completed payment, this can be accounted for by a gap in the Diary between April 17 and May 26 (Greg, Documents, 138; Gurr 29, 243n).

The existence of a backstage-plot means that a staging of the play was being prepared and that a performance was anticipated. Plots were usually the final documents created before the performance of a play, and the extant plot for "Troilus" suggests that a performance did take place, although it does not necessarily constitute proof (cf. Stern 227).

The details of the plot that identify it with Dekker and Chettle's play provide us with evidence about its casting. In the plot, Richard Jones is cast as Priam. Jones's boy is cast as a waiting maid. John Pigge, Alleyn's boy, is probably cast as a beggar (Greg, Documents, II.142). Thomas Hunt is mentioned without a character name. "Proctor" may refer to an actor of whom this is the only mention (Chambers II.335; Gurr 285) or to a character, "perhaps a steward [or] factor of a spital-house," perhaps performed by Hunt (Greg, Documents, II.141-42).

Probable Genre(s)

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Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

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References to the Play

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Critical Commentary

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For What It's Worth

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Works Cited

Bullough, Geoffrey. "The Lost Troilus and Cressida." Essays and Studies n.s. 17 (1964): 24-40.

Greg, Walter W., ed. Henslowe Papers, Being Documents Supplementary to Henslowe's Diary. London: A.H. Bullen, 1907.

Greg, W.W. Dramatic Documents from the Elizabethan Playhouses. Oxford: Clarendon, 1931.

Gurr, Andrew. Shakespeare's Opposites: The Admiral's Company 1594–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009).

Stern, Tiffany. Documents of Performance in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. [chapter 7]

Tatlock, John S. P. "The Siege of Troy in Elizabethan Literature, Especially in Shakespeare and Heywood." PMLA 30 (1915): 673-770.

Thompson, Ann. Shakespeare’s Chaucer: A Study in Literary Origins (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 1978).

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Site created and maintained by Misha Teramura, Harvard University; updated 21 July 2012.