Troilus and Cressida

Troilus and Cressida is a five-acts play by William Shakespeare, written somewhere in 1601–02 and printed in a quarto edition in two different “states” in 1609, probably from the author’s working draft. The editors of the First Folio of 1623 may have had copyright difficulties in obtaining permission to include this play in their collection; it is anomalously placed between the histories and the tragedies, almost entirely without pagination. Its genre is indeed anomalous; many scholars prefer to classify it with the “problem plays” or the “dark” comedies.