'Rule in Unity' and Otherwise: Love and Sex in 'Troilus and Cressida'

rTROILUS AND CRESSIDA IS NOT ONLY A notoriously slippery play (comedy, l tragedy, or history?) but one founded on a familiar contradiction. The play's relentless vulgarity constructs a scathing critique of the dominant forms of sexuality in Western culture, but at the same time the partners in its central romantic couple engage the sympathies of even the most sophisticated readers. When Cressida reflects sadly that "Men prize the thing ungained more than it is" (1.2.291),1 and when Troilus wryly observes that Helen's reputation for beauty derives from the amount of blood shed over her (1.1.93-94), they appeal to our own knowingness about sexuality and expose the sexual cliches and conventions of their, and our, culture. But the complicity engendered by this shared knowledge has the paradoxical effect of making an audience identify with Troilus and/or Cressida as they reenact those conventions. Despite their worldly-wise cynicism, Troilus and Cressida, as they enter into the romantic partnership, idealize each other without reserve and without self-consciousness about the utter convention