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Part of the book: Engaging with Troy

Edited by Francesca Rayner and Janice Valls-Russell

Transcript 27

Legenda

RenaissanceEnglishDramaFictionopen

Abstract.  ‘What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, that he should weep for her?’, asks Hamlet, having heard the players performing a Trojan story — though they had done so at his own request. Elsinore, like Elizabethan London, was evidently saturated in tales of the Trojan war, and all present know that Hecuba was the ‘mobled queen’ of Troy. Filled with dubious rhetorical flourishes, and doubtless over-acted, the Trojan story made an ideal vehicle for a parody and critique of the theatre, if only because it was so hackneyed and familiar.

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