Thursday, September 14, 2006

Troilus and Cressida Shakespeare Colloquy

Original title page of Troilus and Cressida
Can you top this-- Shakespeare and Homer in tandem? Shakespeare was famously belittled by Ben Jonson for having "small Latin and less Greek," but he did know the classics, thanks particularly to Ovid and Chaucer, and he borrowed storylines and characters as freely from the Greeks as from the Romans and later Italians. Troilus and Cressida is a Shakespeare-loving classicist's dream, a drama drawn from the world of The Iliad. Troilus and Cressida themselves are not Homer's characters, but this is the Trojan War: Ulysses is here, Achilles, Hector, Helen-- the whole gang. What Shakespeare makes of Homer's characters and the issues of The Iliad will surprise you; it is a "modern" play, impossible to classify as tragedy, comedy, or history, but it is surely fasinating. --Anne Gilhuly

Anne Gilhuly will lecture on Troilus and Cressida, a play set in the Trojan war by William Shakespeare, at Perrot Library. The event will also feature dramatic readings from the work by players Florence Phillips and Dick Leonard. This event will take place in the library, on Wednesday, October 4th, 2006, at 7:30 P.M. Reply to this post with questions, or call 203-637-3870.

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