SOURCE: McCandless, David. “Troilus and Cressida.” In Gender and Performance in Shakespeare's Problem Comedies, pp. 123-66. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

In the following essay, McCandless explores the play's approach to masculinity, particularly Shakespeare's treatment of the Trojan War as a process of emasculation. The critic maintains that the play's dramatic representation of sexual difference is left unresolved.

Troilus and Cressida is the most problematic of the problem comedies, the most removed from the ameliorative comic structures that lend All's Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure a provisional integrity. It deploys the largest screen for its projected crisis in gender, turning the epic Trojan War into a vast spectacle of emasculation, and leaves its drama of sexual difference even more unresolved. It more provocatively deconstructs its sources, deflating heroic legends instead of fracturing folk tales. For these reasons, I am discussing Troilus and Cressida last, even though...