Cressida

Play

Troilus and Cressida

Summary

A Trojan woman of wit and self-awareness who falls into a love affair with Troilus, only to be traded to the Greek camp as a prisoner exchange. Her behavior among the Greeks — flirting with the commanders and apparently taking Diomedes as a new lover — looks like betrayal to Troilus, but Shakespeare's presentation is deliberately ambiguous: Cressida is also a woman without protectors navigating a hostile military world alone.

Notable Quotations

"I have a kind of self resides with you; / But an unkind self, that itself will leave / To be another's fool." *(III.ii)*

"Troilus, farewell! one eye yet looks on thee, / But with my heart the other eye doth see." *(V.ii)*

Cross-references

• Troilus and Cressida — the play
• Tragedies
• character_troilus — her Trojan lover
• character_pandarus — her uncle who engineers her affair with Troilus
• character_diomedes_tc — the Greek who appears to supplant Troilus in her affections