ABSTRACT
Act II scene 11 Disputatio ad absurdum 93 Anti-reason 95 Fallacy of 'indignant language' 96 'What's aught, but as 'tis valued?' 96 Fallacy of false conversion 97 Illogic in blunderland 99 Cassandra 100 Eventual ironies 101 Hector's verdict and palinode 103
Act III scene 11 Tertium quid 106 'To be wise and love': 'Fools on both sides!' 106
Act V scene 11 'Doubt truth to be a liar' 107 'Deceptio visus': 'This is, and is not, Cressid!' 108 Generalizing Troilus 109 Unity and division 109
... the practice of Law to bee the use of Logike, and the methode of Logike to lighten the Lawe
Abraham Fraunce, The Lawiers Logike (1588)
logike is necessary for obtaining of the knowledge of the Law John Doddridge, The English Lawyer (1631)
A meere Common Lawyer who has 'Logicke enough to wrangle' Thomas Overbury, Characters
Act I scenes i and ii
Definition, identity and contradiction
scholastic works regularly initiated a question with reason's first logical act, definition. Regarding identity and contradiction, Pandar and Cressid (in l.ii.59-80) debate whether A is really A, or whether, in violation of logical rule, A 'is and is not' A: compare Pandar's 'brown and not brown',Cressid's 'true and not true' (l.ii.98) and Troilus' 'This is, and is not, Cressid!' (V.ii.146). Identity questions recur (e.g. in Il.iii.42-67), where Thersites is quizzed on the identities of Agamemnon, Achilles, Patroclus and himself. Such preoccupation with identity (and its unmasking) is itself (as in Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night) a conventional comic concern.2
