Exonerating Cressida

The past two months of my life have been dominated by Troilus and Cressida. I'm a theatre kid; I have been since high school. This year, I'll have assistant directed one show, directed two, and played a lead role in what is perhaps Shakespeare's least-loved play, Troilus and Cressida. Saturday night was the final performance. For the first time in all of my years of theatre, I completely invested myself in the role. I decided several weeks ago that I wasn't going to play Cressida. I was going to become her. I'm not a method actor; I usually just hop on stage and do my thing. This time, though, it was different. This time, I cared - perhaps too much. This time, I gave everything.

Cressida never existed. She was invented 900 years ago to be the very epitome of falsehood. For almost a millennium, she has been a "whore." She has been used variously to glorify courtly romantic feelings in men, to warn against the flightiness and inconstancy of women, and to spur the men around her into action. She is never given a greater purpose. She is "false Cressid."

Except, that's not the whole story. Cressida is a young Trojan woman whose father, Calchas, has abandoned her and fled for Greece. In Shakespeare's version of the story, she is practically given away by her uncle, who thinks her a fine prize for Troilus, the youngest Prince of Troy. She is wooed, bedded, and then given away to the Greeks in exchange for a Trojan prisoner. Not one person tries to stop it from happening. Usually, she is portrayed as being false to Troilus from the very start of her imprisonment by becoming the lover of Diomedes, the Grecian warrior. Troilus sees her with Diomedes, declares her falsehood to the heavens, and uses his anger to fuel his rage in battle. So, you see, she is just a literary pawn. As I got to know her, though, I realized how much more is going on in her story and, eerily enough, how alike we are.

In my show, Troilus is played by a guy that I've spoken about in previous posts. A guy for whom, in spite of my best efforts, I developed feelings. A guy that told me, after our last performance, that he feels the same way about me. A guy that I cannot be with for myriad reasons. A guy that broke my heart in two. My will to play Cressida as a victim with no agency whatsoever stemmed from that heartbreak. I refused to let her be the whore of the story, because I loved her too much. It wasn't fair to her to be used, and it wasn't fair to me to be scorned.

So, after two months of emotional turmoil, I'm done with the play and, therefore, am finished trying to exonerate Cressida. People who came to the show could have chosen to see her as the whore, but I know that I did my part to make her something else.

There are two sides to every story, friends. We throw around labels like candy. Sometimes they're meaningless, but sometimes they stick. Sometimes, they stick for 900 years. Let us choose our words carefully, always cognizant of how important language is. And let us be willing to listen to the whole story and to encounter those involved the way God wants us to: as infinitely-loved, ever-forgiven children of the Creator.