Character guide

Troilus

major

Also known as Prince Troilus, young Troilus, Troilus Hector, Troilus Cressid, Troilus O Cressida, Troilus Good Pandarus, Troilus armed, Troilus Brother, Troilus Fly, Troilus Hark, Troilus The Greeks, Troilus Fie, Troilus Fool, Troilus Ajax, Brother Troilus, Troilus Grecian, Troilus Sirrah, Troilus Thou, Exeunt Troilus

Troilus is Priam's youngest warrior son, expected to fight but too distracted by desire to keep his heart in the field. He confesses to Pandarus that he is 'weaker than a woman's tear,' sighing at his father's table and burying his grief in a smile so Hector won't see it. His longing sets the play's romantic engine running, and his impatience with delay — the grinding, bolting, leavening of Pandarus's cake metaphor — defines the anxious middle act.

Cressida

major

Also known as Cressida Hector, the Lady Cressida, Cressid, fair Cressid, sweet Cressid, Cressida O Jupiter, sweet niece Cressida, Cressida Sweet honey Greek, Cressida Prophet, Cressida Juno, Cressida Ay, Cressida Boldness, Cressida Good, Cressida Sir, Cressida Perchance

Cressida trades barbs with her uncle Pandarus while carefully refusing to admit she favors Troilus, defending herself with wit, secrecy, and a mask. She mocks Helen's praise of his complexion and insists Troilus is simply himself, not Hector — a coolness that makes her eventual yielding feel hard-won. Her guardedness matters because it turns the courtship into a duel of language, and because her father's defection to the Greeks already hangs over her position in Troy.

Pandarus

supporting

Also known as Pandarus Troilus, Pandarus Sweet Pandarus, Pandarus Ay, Pandarus Within, Pandarus Who, Pandarus Prithee, the Lord Pandarus, My Lord Pandarus, Lord Pandarus, Pandarus Friend, Pandarus Helenus, Pandarus Achilles, Pandarus Hark, Pandarus Condition, Pandarus Quoth, Pandarus Words, Pandar, Pandarus Grace, Pandarus Nay, Pandarus Pretty

Pandarus bustles between the lovers, extolling Troilus's dimpled smile, his chin, his valor, until even Cressida tells him to be quiet. He speaks in food and baking metaphors — grinding, bolting, kneading, cooling — as if love were a cake that must not burn. His relentless chattering drives the courtship forward and gives the play its name for go-betweens, making him both comic engine and uneasy witness to what he arranges.

Hector

major

Also known as the great Hector, the gallant Hector, Hector Aeneas, Hector the great, Hector Paris, worthy Hector, brave Hector, sweet Hector, Great Hector, Hector Ho, Hector Brother, brother Hector, Hector Fie

Hector is the pillar of Troy, the man whose name Cressida invokes as the standard against which all others are measured. Struck down by Ajax the day before, he is 'kept fasting and waking' by the shame, and Pandarus warns he will 'lay about him' when he next takes the field. His pride and prowess anchor the Trojan side of the war, and his courtesy toward the Greek lords — including his wary exchange with Ulysses — shows a nobility the play will steadily test.

Ulysses

supporting

Also known as Ulysses Nestor, Ulysses The great Achilles, Ulysses Achilles, Ulysses Troy, Lord Ulysses, Ulysses Sir, Ulysses A, Exit Ulysses

Ulysses moves through the Greek camp diagnosing its sickness — pride, faction, and the sulking of Achilles — and prescribing order as the cure. He trades prophecies with Hector about Troy's coming fall, then turns his analysis on Achilles, arguing that a man only knows himself through others' eyes. His rhetorical power and appetite for manipulation make him the play's chief architect of Greek strategy, and the early-middle war council scenes belong largely to him.

Achilles

major

Also known as the Greeks Achilles, Achilles Old Nestor, The large Achilles, the hart Achilles, god Achilles, Achilles Patroclus, Achilles Thou, Achilles Peace, Achilles Ay

Achilles has withdrawn from battle, and the Greek lords — Agamemnon, Nestor, Menelaus, Ajax — walk past him with pointed indifference. He feels his greatness slipping and reads his own decline in their cold looks, musing that 'greatness, once fall'n out with fortune, must fall out with men too.' His wounded pride and refusal to fight paralyze the Greek cause, and his strange, hungry scrutiny of Hector at the feast signals the danger he still represents.

Ajax

supporting

Also known as the dull brainless Ajax, Ajax Dog, Ajax Thersites, Ajax Mistress Thersites, Ajax You dog, The unknown Ajax, Ajax Ay, Ajax Cobloaf, Ajax A, Ajax Toadstool, Ajax Do, Lord Ajax

Ajax exists in the Greek camp as pure, purchasable force: Thersites sneers that he is 'bought and sold among those of any wit, like a barbarian slave,' and even his own side treats him as a draught-ox yoked to Ulysses' schemes. His defining tension is that he knows he is being used and cannot articulate it, so he answers every insult with his fists — beating Thersites, roaring for Troilus, forever proving the fool's charge that 'he knows not himself.' When the Greek command elevates him to duel Hector, his bruised vanity becomes a weapon they can aim, making him the living proof of a war run on appetite rather than merit.

Nestor

supporting

Also known as venerable Nestor, old Nestor, Nestor Ay

Nestor sits at Agamemnon's council table as the embodiment of experience, the man whose age alone commands a hearing when the Greek coalition starts to fray. Yet Thersites dismisses him and Ulysses together as handlers who 'yoke you like draught-oxen and make you plough up the wars,' and the play keeps hinting that his venerable rhetoric is part of the problem, not the cure. His presence matters because he shows how a long war exhausts even its wisest men into ceremony — and how the young warriors who actually fight have stopped listening.

Agamemnon

supporting

Also known as Great Agamemnon, Agamemnon Sir, Agamemnon Yonder, Agamemnon This Trojan

Agamemnon opens the play presiding over a stalled siege, his authority asserted in formal speeches ('which with one voice call Agamemnon head and general') while his greatest warrior, Achilles, sulks in his tent and refuses to fight. His scene with Aeneas shows a king who can match Trojan courtesy blow for blow, but the council scenes reveal a leader whose command is mostly the management of other men's egos. He matters because the Greek war effort is only as strong as his fragile grip on Achilles, Ajax, and Ulysses — and that grip is visibly slipping.

Patroclus

supporting

Also known as Achilles Patroclus, Patroclus Achilles, Patroclus Paris, Patroclus Jove bless great Ajax, Patroclus Who, Patroclus Ay

Patroclus moves through the Greek camp at Achilles' side, mocked by Thersites as 'Achilles' brach' and treated by the commanders as the lever to move the man they cannot move directly. His bond with Achilles is the play's most intimate relationship, and the Greek leaders openly scheme to exploit it, hoping Patroclus will coax the sulking hero back to war. He matters because everything the Greeks want from Achilles runs through him — and because his presence makes the cost of that manipulation personal rather than political.

Diomedes

supporting

Also known as Sir Diomed, noble Diomed, Diomedes Fair Lady Cressid, Diomedes Lady, Diomedes Ay, Diomedes Troilus, Diomedes Nay, Good Diomed

Diomedes enters the play as an errand-runner with a soldier's impatience, escorting Cressida from Troy to the Greek camp and treating her, at first, as cargo. His courtship is transactional and unsentimental — he demands a token, refuses to be paltered with, and wears her sleeve on his helm the next day — and his bluntness exposes how quickly affection converts into possession. He matters because he is the instrument of the play's central betrayal: not a villain, just a practical man who asks for what he wants and gets it, making Troilus' idealistic love look like a story Diomedes never bothered to read.

Thersites

supporting

Also known as rank Thersites, Thersites Agamemnon, Thersites Mars, Thersites Ajax, Enter Thersites

Thersites serves 'voluntary' in the Greek camp, which is to say he attaches himself to Ajax and Achilles and abuses them both, cataloguing every commander's stupidity in a running commentary no one can silence. He is beaten, threatened, and dismissed, yet he keeps talking — 'I shall speak as much as thou afterwards' — because his deformity and low status make him useless to punish and impossible to ignore. He matters because he is the play's cynical chorus: when Thersites calls Ajax a 'thing of no bowels' or predicts the whole war is lechery and appetite, the audience has to decide whether the ugliest voice in the camp is also the most honest.

Aeneas

supporting

Also known as Lord Aeneas, Agamemnon Fair Lord Aeneas, the Lord Aeneas, my Lord Aeneas, Aeneas Courtiers, Aeneas Within, Aeneas Troilus, Aeneas The noble Menelaus

Aeneas moves between Trojan council and Greek tents, delivering the exchange that trades Cressida for Antenor. He is the play's honest broker in a world of spin: when Troilus begs him to pretend they met by chance, Aeneas dryly grants that nature itself has no greater gift for silence. His matter-of-fact decency sharpens the moral queasiness of the bargain he must announce.

Paris

supporting

Also known as Paris Hector, Priam Paris

Paris is the beautiful cause of everything, and Pandarus can barely be bothered to praise him once Troilus rides past. He claims to know what love is and pities those it wounds, yet his own appetite started a ten-year siege. His blithe survival in a city of casualties makes him the play's most uncomfortable argument about desire and its costs.

Priam

supporting

Also known as Priam Paris, Cassandra O Priam, royal Priam, Priam Ay

Priam presides over the Trojan state and the sons who defend it, weighing Antenor's military value against a private love affair. He never appears as a tyrant, only as a ruler forced to trade one person for another and call it policy. His authority sets the machinery in motion that separates Troilus from Cressida before the lovers can even plead their case.

Cassandra

minor

Also known as Cassandra Cry, Cassandra O Priam, Andromache Cassandra, Exit Cassandra, Cassandra Virgins

Trojan princess and prophetess, cursed to utter true prophecies no one believes.

Helen

minor

Also known as Sweet Helen, Helen Ay

Wife of Menelaus, living in Troy with Paris; her beauty is the war's cause.

Menelaus

minor

Also known as Menelaus Aeneas

Greek king, husband of Helen; fights to retrieve her from Troy.

Alexander

minor

Also known as Alexander Queen Hecuba, Alexander Madam

Servant to Cressida; delivers news and messages.

Helenus

minor

Also known as Pandarus Helenus

Trojan prince and priest, son of Priam; appears in Trojan council.

Servant

minor

Also known as Servant Ay, my servant

Generic servant character; appears in various scenes delivering messages.

Calchas

minor

Trojan priest who defected to the Greeks; father of Cressida.

Andromache

minor

Also known as Andromache Cassandra

Wife of Hector, pleads with him not to fight on the day of his death.

Hector (as Aeneas)

minor

Duplicate cluster for Hector; merged with main Hector entry.

Hecuba

minor

Also known as Queen Hecuba

Queen of Troy, wife of Priam; mother of Hector and Troilus.

Deiphobus

minor

Trojan prince, brother of Hector; appears in battle scenes.

Antenor

minor

Trojan commander captured by Greeks; exchanged for Cressida.

Margarelon

minor

Also known as Margarelon The devil

Bastard son of Priam; fights in the Trojan War.

Myrmidons

minor

Achilles' elite soldiers; carry out his orders in battle.

Neoptolemus

minor

Also known as young Pyrrhus

Son of Achilles; mentioned as future avenger, not present on stage.

Boy

minor

Also known as Exit Boy

Young servant boy; appears briefly in the Greek camp.