How Troilus and Cressida drew on The Iliad
A documented line of influence: William Shakespeare demonstrably engaged Homer’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Iliad
Homer · c. 750 BCE
Ancient GreeceThe influenced
Troilus and Cressida
William Shakespeare · c. 1602
ShakespeareRelevance
7/10
On Troilus and Cressida’s page
- Behind this sour, disillusioned war play stands Homer's Iliad, which Shakespeare knew through Chapman's 1598 translation
- The bones are Homeric — Achilles sulking in his tent, Hector marching to his death — but Shakespeare strips out the heroism and lets Thersites jeer at all of it
- Read the Iliad first and you feel exactly what Troilus and Cressida is corroding: the epic ideal of glory it refuses to grant
On The Iliad’s page
- Shakespeare reached the Iliad through Chapman's 1598 translation — and turned it inside out
- He kept the cast — Achilles' ruinous pride, Hector's tragedy — but soured the glory into satire, hanging the foul-mouthed Thersites at the center as a chorus of disgust
- Troilus and Cressida is what the Iliad looks like when a cynic retells it: the same war, none of the honor