Cressida, a Trojan woman, pledges her love to Troilus, one of King Priam's sons. However, when her father demands her presence in the Greek camp, she quickly switches her affections to Diomedes, the Greek soldier who is sent to escort her.

Troilus and Cressida is perhaps Shakespeare's most philosophical play, and its preoccupation with war, sex, and time has seemed peculiarly relevant since the First World War. Fine productions have demonstrated the play's theatrical power, and critics have explored and illuminated its ideas and its exceptionally complex language. Kenneth Muir, in his introduction, sets the play in its historical context, discusses its odd career in the theatre, examines Shakespeare's handling of his multiple sources, and assesses the contribution of interpretative criticism to a deeper understanding of this sombre examination of a fallen world.

Troilus and Cressida is one of Shakespeare’s “problem plays,” characterized by its duality of tone as it jumps from bawdy comedic to dark tragedy. The plot was sourced from two epic poems: Homer’s Iliad is the source of the play’s Greek mythological references, the Trojan War, and the war’s key figures, while Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde is the source of Troilus’s love affair with a Trojan woman. At the beginning of Troilus and Cressida, seven years have passed since the start of the Trojan war. Achilles refuses to fight due to his hurt pride, but one day, the Trojan hero Hector challenges the Greeks to one-on-one combat. On the other side of the city walls, the Trojan Prince Troilus is madly in love with Cressida, and his heartache makes it difficult for him to fight. Pandarus, Troilus’s close friend and Cressida’s uncle, tries to bring the couple together, but Cressida’s father has plans to use her as a bargaining chip in the siege. This Standard Ebooks edition is based on William George Clark and William Aldis Wright’s 1887 Victoria edition, which is taken from the Globe edition. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

The story of the Trojan War unfolds from the perspectives of Troilus and Cressida—a Trojan prince and his true love, one of whom is traded to the Greeks as part of a prisoner exchange.

This major new complete edition of Shakespeare's works combines accessibility with the latest scholarship. Each play and collection of poems is preceded by a substantial introduction that looks at textual and literary-historical issues. The texts themselves have been scrupulously edited and are accompanied by same-page notes and glossaries. Particular attention has been paid to the design of the book to ensure that this first new edition of the twenty-first century is both attractive and approachable.

This new Complete Works marks the completion of the Arden Shakespeare Third Series and includes all of Shakespeare's plays, poems and sonnets, edited by leading international scholars. New to this edition are the 'apocryphal' plays, part-written by Shakespeare: Double Falsehood, Sir Thomas More and King Edward III. The anthology is unique in giving all three extant texts of Hamlet from Shakespeare's time: the first and second Quarto texts of 1603 and 1604-5, and the first Folio text of 1623. With a simple alphabetical arrangement the Complete Works are easy to navigate. The lengthy introductions and footnotes of the individual Third Series volumes have been removed to make way for a general introduction, short individual introductions to each text, a glossary and a bibliography instead, to ensure all works are accessible in one single volume. This handsome Complete Works is ideal for readers keen to explore Shakespeare's work and for anyone building their literary library.