Editing Cressida (section)

==Character history==
{{more citations needed|date=June 2018}}
The character's name is derived from that of [[Chryseis]], a character who appears in the ''[[Iliad]]'' but has no connection with Troilus, Diomedes or Calchas. Indeed, the story of Troilus and Cressida does not appear in any Greek legends but was invented by the twelfth century French poet [[Benoît de Sainte-Maure]] in the ''[[Roman de Troie]]''. The woman in the [[love triangle]] is here called not Cressida but [[Briseida]], a name derived from that of [[Briseis]], a different character in the ''Iliad'', who again is neither related to Calchas nor involved in any love affairs with Troilus or Diomedes. Initially, after the ''Roman'' appeared, other authors who refer to the story, for example, [[Azalais d'Altier]] in her poem ''Tanz salutz e tantas amors'' and [[Guido delle Colonne]] in his ''[[Historia destructionis Troiae]]'', continue to use names derived from that of Briseis.

It is the Italian author and poet [[Boccaccio]] who makes the decisive shift in the character's name in ''[[Il Filostrato]]''. This poem is the first work dedicated to telling the story of the love triangle rather than to the larger tale of the Trojan War. [[Geoffrey Chaucer]]'s ''[[Troilus and Criseyde]]'' is an expanded version of the story based on Boccaccio. Several other authors then took up the tale, including the [[Kingdom of Scotland|Scottish]] poet [[Robert Henryson]] in his ''[[The Testament of Cresseid]]'', which 'completes' Cressida's story (left unfinished by Chaucer), and [[William Shakespeare]] in his play of the Trojan War, ''[[Troilus and Cressida]]''.

Cressida has most often been depicted by writers as "false Cressida", a paragon of female inconstancy. As soon as she has betrayed Troilus, she has fulfilled her purpose and the men who have written about her do not mention her again. Such is the case in Benoît, Guido, Boccaccio, Chaucer and Shakespeare. Chaucer's poem, however, at least portrays a more sympathetic Criseyde showing a self-conscious awareness of her literary status: "Alas, of me until the world's end shall be wrote no good song". Henryson's treatment is unusual in that he looks at events after the end of the traditional tale. His poem takes up the repentant Cresseid's story after she has been abandoned by Diomedes and developed leprosy.

Some authors have attempted to exonerate the character by having her choose Troilus over Diomedes. Such is the case in [[John Dryden]]'s rewriting of Shakespeare in an attempt at {{nowrap|"remov[ing]}} that heap of Rubbish, under which many excellent thoughts lay bury'd".<ref>Dryden, John ''Preface to Troilus and Cressida'' in: Novak, M. E (ed.) (1984). ''The Works of John Dryden: Volume XIII Plays: All for Love; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida''. Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press. {{ISBN|0-520-05124-6}}. p. 226.</ref> [[William Walton]] and [[Christopher Hassall]]'s 1954 opera ''[[Troilus and Cressida (opera)|Troilus and Cressida]]'' did likewise. In both of these cases, Cressida's being true to Troilus is associated with her death as part of the concluding tragic events.

Other modern fiction has introduced further departures from the traditional narrative. [[Jack Lindsay (writer)|Jack Lindsay]]'s novel ''Cressida's First Lover: A Tale of Ancient Greece'' explores another area untouched in standard narratives, some of her earlier life.{{citation needed|date=July 2020}}