What happens in Troilus and Cressida

Seven years into the siege of Troy, the young prince Troilus is too lovesick to fight. He aches for Cressida, a Trojan woman whose father has already defected to the Greeks, and he leans on her uncle Pandarus to carry messages and bawdy encouragement. Cressida, for her part, is just as smitten, but she hides it to keep the upper hand. Outside the walls the war grinds on for the sake of Helen, with both armies stuck and sick of it.

In the Greek camp the problem is Achilles. Their greatest warrior sulks in his tent with his friend Patroclus, refusing to fight, and his pride is poisoning the whole army. Ulysses delivers a famous warning that order itself depends on rank and degree; pull out one thread and chaos follows. His fix is sly: stage a lottery so the dull, vain Ajax, not Achilles, is chosen to fight Hector. Wounded jealousy, Ulysses hopes, will shame Achilles back into battle. Inside Troy, meanwhile, the royal council debates whether to give Helen back and end the misery. Hector argues she isn’t worth the blood, then yields to his brothers and to honor, and the war goes on. Cassandra shrieks that Troy will burn, and they wave her away.

Pandarus finally brings the lovers together in his orchard. Troilus and Cressida exchange passionate vows of eternal faithfulness, and he leads them off to bed. Their night together is barely over when the world breaks in. Cressida’s traitor father, Calchas, has asked the Greeks to trade her for a captured Trojan, and the deal is already done. At dawn the lovers are torn apart. They swap keepsakes — he gives her his sleeve, she gives him her glove — and swear again to stay true. Troilus warns the Greek Diomedes to treat her well, on pain of death, and watches her led away to the enemy camp.

Hector visits the Greeks under a truce, and the generals greet Cressida with kisses and easy flattery. He and Ajax fight a brief, friendly bout, then embrace as kin, while Achilles and Hector size each other up and agree to meet in earnest the next day. That night Ulysses guides Troilus to Calchas’s tent, and what he sees there destroys him. Hidden in the dark, he watches Cressida flirt with Diomedes and, after a show of resistance, hand over the very sleeve Troilus gave her. The woman in front of him cannot be the woman he loved, and his mind splits trying to hold both. He vows to kill Diomedes.

The next morning Hector arms for battle though his family begs him not to — Cassandra and his wife Andromache have seen his death in their dreams, and Priam pleads. Hector goes anyway. On the field the fighting is brutal and confused. Troilus and Diomedes clash over the stolen sleeve. Patroclus is killed, and the news finally drives Achilles back into the war, roaring for revenge.

The end is not a duel but a murder. Achilles catches Hector alone, exhausted and unarmed, and surrounds him with his Myrmidons. Hector asks for mercy. Achilles refuses, orders his men to strike together, and then ties the body to his horse and drags it across the field. Word spreads through both armies that Hector is dead and Troy is doomed. Troilus carries the news back to the Trojans, vowing vengeance and cursing Achilles, calling his people to march home and fight on with whatever hope is left. The play closes not on grief or triumph but on Pandarus, abandoned and diseased, left alone to whine about his ruined name.