SHAKESPEARE is my Homeboy

Troilus and Cressida criticism

Cook, Carol. "Unbodied Figures of Desire" Theatre Journal 38 1986

Cook argues that a central crux of Troilus and Cressida is the "deeply problematic relation between desire and representation" and more specifically "the problematic status of women as objects of desire" (Cook 35) in the play. In the first part of the essay, Cook establishes the pattern of objectification of women with the play, specifically apparent in Troilus' fragmentation of Cressida: "Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice" (I. i 55). Cook argues that this objectification becomes further apparent through the "insistent language of commerce and the use of women as objects of exchange" (Cook 38).

Cook then discusses specifically the inherent conflict between "the idea" of Helen versus her presentation on the stage. Cook argues that Helen "becomes the measure…of the Trojans' capacity to imagine create and desire the infinite" (Cook 39).Yet, onstage this ideal is represented as inherently limited. Cook uses this moment in the play to begin to explore the idea of desire, from a Lacanian perspective, which distinguishes itself from "need" and "demand" (Cook 41). The courtly love model of desire which is explicit throughout Troilus and Cressida continually emphasizes the objectification of women and the ultimate unavailability of the woman desired.

Cook next introduces Lucy Irigaray's argument which emphasizes the role of homosexual desire in the play. "The use and commerce of women subtend and uphold the reign of hom(m)o-sexuality" (Irigaray cited in Cook 42) in the play. Female desire, Cook argues, serves as a mediation for male encounters between Pandarus and Troilus and even the Greek and the Trojan armies. As part of her further articulation of the homosexual undertones in Troilus and Cressida, Cook next discusses the role of narcissism and desire in the play through what Lacan describes as the 'mirror stage.' Cook best articulates the tension between these themes in the play in the following passage: "Sexuality and sexual difference come to hold a special place in the narcissistic genesis of identity in the play, for part of what the men desire of women is a stable reflection of themselves" (Cook 46).

Finally, Cook concludes her essay with a discussion of Troilus' representation of "truth" within the play as an unbodied, undiffertiated ideal. The embodiment and actual representation (or presentation) of women in the play, such as Helen or Cressida, only serve to diminish this ideal desire and reinforce the fragmentation and fetishism of the female body. "The legible woman becomes a degraded object" (Cook 49). This idea further reinforces Cook's final argument that ultimately, "the monstrous disproportion between desire and its limited realizations can be laid to insufficiencies of women as objects" (Cook 52).