The Testament of Cresseid is anarrative poem of 616 lines inMiddle Scots, written by the 15th-centuryScottishmakarRobert Henryson. It is his best known poem.[1] It imagines a tragic fate forCressida in the medieval story ofTroilus and Criseyde which was left untold inGeoffrey Chaucer's version. Henryson's cogentpsychological drama, in which he consciously resists and confronts the routine depiction ofCressida (Cresseid) as simply 'false', is one of the features that has given the poem enduring interest for modern readers and it is one of the most admired works ofNorthern Renaissance literature. A modern English translation bySeamus Heaney, which also included seven of Henryson's fables fromThe Morall Fabillis, was published in 2009.
Diomedes, anAchaean hero with whomCresseid begins a romantic relationship after being separated from and subsequently losing romantic interest inTroilus, banishes Cresseid from his company, thereby leaving her destitute. After wandering for a while amongst the Greek soldiers, seeking their company, she returns to the home of her fatherCalchas, a keeper of the temple ofVenus. Though Calchas welcomes her heartily, Cresseid desires to hide away from a disapproving world and encloses herself in a privateoratory, where she weeps and rages against the cruelty of Venus andCupid in, as she sees it, leading her on. The gods take offence at this blasphemy, and assemble to pass judgement on her, and the poem features graphically-realised portraits of the planetarypantheon of gods in thedream vision at its heart. They strike her with the symptoms ofleprosy which remove her youth and good looks, leaving her disfigured and blind. She is thus considered a social outcast and decides she must join aleper colony. There she laments her fate until a fellow leper woman encourages her not to sigh over things which cannot be changed, but instead to take her cup and clapper[2] and join the other lepers to beg for daily alms.
As Cresseid joins the lepers to go out begging, Troilus and the garrison of Troy happen to pass by. She lifts her eyes to his, but since she is blind she cannot recognise him. Troilus, similarly unable to recognise the disfigured Cresseid, yet being reminded of her, without quite knowing why, is spontaneously moved to give up to her all the wealth he has about him at that moment (his belt, a full purse of gold, and jewels) before riding off, almost fainting for grief when he reaches Troy. The lepers are astounded at the unexpected show of beneficence and when Cresseid asks of her benefactor's identity and is told, she, like Troilus, too is overcome with emotion. She berates herself for her treatment of him and renounces her previously 'selfish' complaints, before sitting down to write hertestament, or will, dying soon after.
Henryson's portrayal of Cresseid's 'disgrace' and ultimately tragic end, through the narrator of the poem, is observed with a largely rigorous objectivity. Where the narrator comes to judge, rather than reinforcing the institutional admonishment of a 'shocked' or disapproving society, he 'confesses' to his natural pity for Cresseid's misfortune, against the standard view of 'false womanhood' which she was taken in his day to represent. This is perhaps all the more expressive for having been apparently withheld or 'repressed' within theconceit of the poem. The most explicit statement of this breaks through in the passage:
Yit nevertheless, quhat ever men deme or say
In scornefull langage of thybrukkilnes,
I sall excuseals far furth as I may
Thy womanheid, thy wisdome and fairnes,
The quhilk fortoun hes put to sic distres
As hir pleisit, and nathing throw the gilt
Ofthe, throw wickit langage to bespilt!
