ABSTRACT
In sum, this study in successive chapters has shown Troilus and Cressida, to a significant extent, to be consistent with an Elizabethan law-revels tradition. The play's parallels with that tradition (cf. 'Revels criteria', Introduction) include not only legal and burlesque elements associated with the revels, but also pervasive reflections of festive misrule. Such festive inversions comprise rhetoric and logic, themselves basic to law and forensic pleading, as well as propaedeutic to legal studies. Further, as Alexander concludes, 'Where an audience sufficiently learned to enjoy Shakespeare's deliberately cynical treatment of classical material, and sufficiently sophisticated to be addressed in the terms used by Pandarus, could be found outside the Inns of Court it is difficult to guess'.s Since no other hypothesis seems better able to account for such pervasive aspects and allusions, the evidence here presented confirms that the play was directed to a festive law audience.
