I may compare him to some spacious building;
His body holds vast rooms of entertainment,
And lower parts maintain the offices;
Only the garret, his exalted head,
Useless for wise receipt, is fill’d with lumber.
Dryden followed Shakespeare in the portion of this field which he had selected; and cast afresh the subject of Troilus and Cressida. He departed alike from Shakespeare and from Chaucer by making Cressida prove innocent, a supposition, says Scott, no more endurable in the preceding age, than one ‘which should have exhibited Helen chaste, or Hector a coward.’ All the incongruities of Shakespeare’s play are here reproduced, including the mixture of the modern element of love with the Greek and Trojan chivalry; Ajax and Achilles are depressed to one and the same low level.
Ajax and Achilles! two mudwalls of fool,
That differ only in degrees of thickness[1092],
says Thersites; and Ulysses answers in a similar strain. Troilus fairly slays Diomed in single combat, and is then himself slain by Achilles in the crowd. Hector is dispatched, behind the scenes, under the swords of a multitude of men[1093].
Racine’s Andromaque and Iphigénie.