SOURCE: Gil, Daniel Juan. “At the Limits of the Social World: Fear and Pride in Troilus and Cressida.” Shakespeare Quarterly 52, no. 3 (2001): 336-59.

In the following essay, Gil demonstrates that the Greek and Trojan warriors in Troilus and Cressida have grown weary of the establishment of homosocial bonds through the bodies of women. Supporting his contentions with a study of Renaissance thinking on the nature of personal identity and the definition of the self, Gil argues that the warriors want to distinguish personal sexual identity from social relationships and experience.

The story of the Trojan War that Shakespeare retells in Troilus and Cressida seems to invoke Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's notion of “homosociality,” in which social bonds between men are secured through the bodies of women.¹ The Greeks, after all, are fighting to restore the marriage bond, through which homosociality is guaranteed; moreover, the movement of Cressida from the Trojan...