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theater-goers (Stallybras et al. 84-91) and in parallel, he states that Shakespeare “is many
times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into
bombast” (381). More particularly, Dryden appears torn between the imperative of
establishing Shakespeare as a leading literary figure and the necessity to valorize the
classical criteria he cherished the most. In his Preface to Troilus and Cressida Dryden
argues that the plots of Shakespeare are to be imitated “so far only as they have copied
the excellencies of those who invented and brought to perfection of Dramatic Poetry” and
laments the fact that in certain plays a hero may contain some of the traditional traits of a
villain (383-4). Seldom staged before the twentieth century, Shakespeare’s Troilus and
Cressida not only subverts the classical representation of the Trojan War and its principal
figures as depicted in The Iliad and in Chaucer’s epic but also trespasses—or even
“transgresses”—the boundaries of style and genre. The portrayal of Achilles in
Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, as an egomaniacal, untrustworthy, and cowardly
figure is a far cry from both the original Homeric representation and the concept of hero
according to Dryden. Crewe observes that Shakespeare not only “questions the heroic
legend of the Trojan War and strips its leading characters … of their legendary charisma,
revealing an often shameful although humanly recognizable underlying reality” but he
also “parodies the gorgeous yet grandiose, polysyllabic, circumlocutory language of
English epic-in-translation in the prologue and many of the speeches in Troilus and
Cressida” (xxviii-xxix). Troilus and Cressida also escapes any major generic
categorization by shifting from what first appears to be epic romance to comedy and
satire, a genre for which both Ben Jonson and John Dryden expressed sharp contempt
(Stallybras et al. 67-72). Hence, when Dryden confronted the prospect that Shakespeare,
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