According to George Bernard Shaw, Troilus and Cressida showed that Shakespeare was 'ready and willing to start at the twentieth century if the seventeenth would only let him'. The play's performance history has proved Shaw correct. This book investigates that history, charting the play's trajectory from a long period of neglect to its rediscovery in the twentieth century. Suddenly, a play that had perplexed generations of readers found itself speaking directly to audiences who had survived the horrors of two world wars and witnessed the advance of fascism. Before long, it had become a vehicle for the exploration of modern ideas about gender, sexuality, race and culture. This is a play that has puzzled its theatrical interpreters since the seventeenth century. John Dryden, adapting it in the Restoration, found it slipping out of his control, forcing him to abandon the formal neoclassical rules he had set himself. Subsequent generations have struggled with the same questions: Is this a comedy or a tragedy, or both? Who are its heroes, and who are its villains - or is this a play without heroes and villains? How should the audience be positioned in relation to the characters? These, and more, are the questions explored in this book.

In its oddness, its uncertainty, its scepticism, its refusal to give easy answers, Troilus and Cressida is one of Shakespeare's most modern plays.