The Weekend in Troy

The Trojan War is the most famous war ever fought. This is curious since it’s an accepted fact it never took place. But that doesn’t matter. More people know about the Trojan Horse than about man walking on the moon. So even though it never was, the Trojan War cannot be erased from the conscience of humanity while man walks the earth. For a long time, Troy disappeared from the Western world. But Troy returned with full force in the Middle Ages, a time of quests, knights, courtly love and damsels in distress. And it was from this angle that first in France, with Le Romain de Troie, then in England, with Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and then Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. But each of these authors looked at Troy through their own time and Shakespeare’s Troy is not quite the same as Homer’s. In our own time, it is no different as can be seen in the various books and films on the subject. So the beauty of Troy is that it can be whatever anyone wants it to be and everyone’s version is as good as anybody else’s. It is a truly democratic subject. So this is my Troy and as I love both Homer and Shakespeare, they are both here, intertwined, first Homer then Shakespeare, into what I hope is a seamless whole.