Shakespeare and the Corruption of Troy

When Lavatch, the Clown of All's Well That Ends Well, is ordered to fetch Helen to the Countess, he bursts into an impromptu ballad about Troy (i. 3. 69-78). 1 The Countess complains 'you corrupt the song, sirrah' (i. 3. 80-81), a remark that has multiple layers of meaning.My chapter considers how the Clown's 'corruption' or altering of the song is part of a wider refashioning of the Troy story for strategic purposes in retellings by Shakespeare and his contemporaries.The Troy story was significant because, as Thomas Fenne pointed out, 'the vanity of the English nation is such to derive their genealogie from the Trojans', via the Romans 'who chalenged their pedegree from the Trojans'.2 William Warner's Albion's England (1597) described how the Roman Brute searched for a fit place in England 'For rased Troy to rear a Troy' and chose to 'build up his Troy-novant, inclosing it with wall on the Thames'.3 The fullest elaboration of this myth, Thomas Heywood's epic poem Troia Britanica: or Great Britaines Troy (1609), draws parallels between British and Trojan history.4 In canto xiv, for example, grief for the death of Hector, expressed by Priam, Hecuba and Cassandra, is echoed by figures in distant and recent English history: Edward III's loss of Edward the Black Prince, Queen Margaret of Lancaster's tears for the murder of her son Prince Edward, and Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke's sorrow for the death of her brother Philip Sidney, 'Whose fame for Arts and armes the whole world sounded'.5 1 Unless otherwise stated, all quotations are to William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well, ed. by Suzanne Gossett and Helen Wilcox, The Arden Shakespeare Third Series (Bloomsbury, 2019