and strips the glittering armour from his heroes, showing them in the most ridiculous of dressing-gowns. Therefore critics who judge of Troilus and Cressida by the principles which Aristotle drew from the greatest dramas of Greece, must fall into great perplexity, if not into the absurdest errors. As a tragedy the piece was not sufficiently serious or sad, because everything in it went so naturally from the beginning, just as in our own life, and the heroes behaved just as stupidly, not to say vulgarly, as we ourselves do—and the hero is a puppy, and the heroine just such a common bit of calico[1] as we have met many a time among our most intimate acquaintances. Even the most famed bearers of great names, renowned in the heroic olden time, for example, the great Achilles, the brave son of Thetis—how wretchedly they seem before us here! And yet, on the other hand, the piece cannot be treated as a comedy, for the blood flows through it in tremendous stream, and the longest speeches of wisdom ring therein with grand dignity—as, for instance, in the remarks which Ulysses makes as to the necessity of Authority, and which to this day deserve the most serious consideration.
"No, no—a play in which such speeches are
- ↑ "Der Hauptheld ist ein Laps und die Heldin eine gewöhnliche Schürze." Schürze is literally a petticoat; jocosely, a girl or woman.
