Read the full text of Troilus and Cressida Prologue with a side-by-side translation HERE.
- We begin with a prologue.
- An actor dressed in armor comes out on stage and welcomes us to ancient Troy, where the Greeks and Trojans have been going at it on the Trojan battlefields for the last...get this...7 years.
- Since we're starting out "in the middle" of all the action, the Prologue quickly catches us up to speed.
- You know, just in case we've never heard of a little old thing called the Trojan War.
- Here are the deets: the Greeks have sailed across the "Athenian Bay" to "ransack" Troy because a Trojan Prince named Paris stole Helen from the Greek King Menelaus and has been sleeping with her ever since.
- Simple as that.
- Next, the Prologue warns us that we might not like the play because nothing good ever really happens in times of "war."
- (Uh-oh. Something tells us this play isn't going to be like one of those traditional epic tales full of heroic deeds like, say, The Iliad.)
- By the way, Shmooperinos, the Prologue says absolutely NOTHING about Troilus and Cressida, the two characters Shakespeare named this play after. What's up with that?