Dashes are sometimes used for parenthetical interjections where the Folio has brackets. They are also used for interruptions and changes in train of thought. Where a change of addressee occurs within a speech, we have used a dash preceded by a period (or occasionally another form of punctuation). Often the identity of the respective addressees is obvious from the context. When it is not, this has been indicated in a marginal stage direction.

Entrances and Exits are fairly thorough in Folio, which has accordingly been followed as faithfully as possible. Where characters are omitted or corrections are necessary, this is indicated by square brackets (e.g. “[and Attendants]”). Exit is sometimes silently normalized to Exeunt and Manet anglicized to “remains.” We trust Folio positioning of entrances and exits to a greater degree than most editors.

Editorial Stage Directions such as stage business, asides, indications of addressee and of characters’ position on the gallery stage are only used sparingly in Folio. Other editions mingle directions of this kind with original Folio and Quarto directions, sometimes marking them by means of square brackets. We have sought to distinguish what could be described as directorial interventions of this kind from Folio-style directions (either original or supplied) by placing them in the right margin in a different typeface. There is a degree of subjectivity about which directions are of which kind, but the procedure is intended as a reminder to the reader and the actor that Shakespearean stage directions are often dependent upon editorial inference alone and are not set in stone. We also depart from editorial tradition in sometimes admitting uncertainty and thus printing permissive stage directions, such as an Aside? (often a line may be equally effective as an aside or as a direct address—it is for each production or reading to make its own decision) or a may exit or a piece of business placed between arrows to indicate that it may occur at various different moments within a scene.

Explanatory Notes explain allusions and gloss obsolete and difficult words, confusing phraseology, occasional major textual cruces, and so on. Particular attention is given to non-standard usage, bawdy innuendo, and technical terms (e.g. legal and military language). Where more than one sense is given, commas indicate shades of related meaning, slashes alternative or double meanings.

Textual Notes at the end of the play indicate major departures from the Folio. They take the following form: the reading of our text is given in bold and its source given after an equals sign, “Q” signifies a reading from the First Quarto of 1609, “F” a reading from the First Folio of 1623, with “F2” indicating a correction that derives from the Second Folio of 1632, “F3” a correction introduced in the Third Folio of 1664, “F4” from the Fourth Folio of 1685, and “Ed” one that derives from the subsequent editorial tradition. The rejected Folio (“F”) reading is then given. Thus for Act 1 Scene 2 line 216: “1.2.216 note = Q. F = not.” This means that the Quarto reading “note” has been preferred to Folio’s “not” in Pandarus’ line “Mark him, note him,” since we judge that “not him” is likely a printer’s error in the Folio (though it could conceivably be argued that Cressida is looking at another warrior and Pandarus is saying “mark him [Troilus], not him [the other one]”).

KEY FACTS

MAJOR PARTS: (with percentage of lines/number of speeches/scenes on stage) Troilus (15%/131/13), Ulysses (14%/80/7), Pandarus (11%/153/8), Cressida (8%/152/6), Thersites (8%/90/7), Achilles (6%/74/9), Hector (6%/57/7), Agamemnon (6%/52/7), Nestor (5%/38/6), Aeneas (4%/44/8), Diomedes (3%/54/11), Paris (3%/27/5), Ajax (2%/55/8), Patroclus (2%/37/5).

LINGUISTIC MEDIUM: 70% verse, 30% prose.

DATE: 1601–02. Registered for publication 7 February 1603 (“as yt is acted by my lo: Chamberlens Men”). Not mentioned by Meres in 1598; influenced by Chapman’s Homer translation of the same year. The armed prologue (Folio only) seems to parody that of Ben Jonson’s Poetaster (performed summer 1601). There are apparent allusions to the play in Thomas Lord Cromwell (Chamberlain’s Men, registered for publication in August 1602) and Thomas Middleton’s The Family of Love (?1602–03).

SOURCES: Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (perhaps in Speght’s 1598 edition) for the love plot; George Chapman’s translation of seven books of Homer’s Iliad (1598) and William Caxton’s Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (1474, the first printed book in English) for the war. Perhaps also John Lydgate’s Troy Book (1513) and Robert Henryson’s The Testament of Cresseid (1532).

TEXT: Quarto, 1609, in two separate states: one with title page The Historie of Troylus and Cresseida. As it was acted by the Kings Maiesties seruants at the Globe. Written by William Shakespeare, the other with title page omitting reference to the stage (The Famous Historie of Troylus and Cresseid. Excellently expressing the beginning of their loues, with the conceited wooing of Pandarus Prince of Licia. Written by William Shakespeare) and a prefatory epistle that makes claims for the readerly as opposed to the theatrical text. The nature of the printer’s copy for both the Quarto and Folio’s The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida is fiercely debated by scholars, as is the relationship between the texts. The original intention of the Folio editors was to print Troilus after Romeo and Juliet, using the Quarto as copy text (a few early copies of the Folio survive with a canceled last page of Romeo and first page of Troilus).