What Shakespeare Did to Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde."

Author / Editor
Bradbrook, M. C.

Title
What Shakespeare Did to Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde."

Published
Shakespeare Quarterly 9.3 (1958): 311-19.

Description
Argues that "[c]ompression and inversion direct Shakespeare's use of" TC in "Troilus and Cressida," particularly, "the clear inversion of every idealistic feeling save those of Troilus is so relentless that a 'mirror image' emerges." Shakespeare "turned for his bitterest refashioning" to Chaucer's "most original parts"--the characterizations of Criseyde and Pandarus.

Chaucer Subjects
Chaucer's Influence and Later Allusion
Troilus and Criseyde
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations