The Greek Theater And Its Drama

Where Homer was dealing with incidents in a war which (in his time) must have been well known to all Greeks, with its heroes' names being household words, Shakespeare was not quite in the same position. Educated Englishmen in Shakespeare's time knew of the Trojan War, but chiefly through writings on the subject in Roman and medieval times. It was only toward the end of the sixteenth century that Homer's poem itself was translated into English by George Chapman (whose work inspired a famous sonnet by John Keats two centuries later). At the time Troilus and Cressida was being written, only a third of that translation had yet appeared, so it is doubtful how much firsthand knowledge of Homer's actual tale Shakespeare himself had and how much he had to depend on later (and distorted) versions of the Troy tale. Shakespeare did not apparently feel safe in starting, as Homer did, toward the end of the war, and inserts a somewhat apologetic Prologue to set the stage. The Prologue begins directly: In Troy there lies the scene.   —Prologue, line 1 The name of the walled city which endured the long siege was, apparently, Ilion (or Ilium, in the Latin spelling) ...»