As the Prologue to Troilus and Cressida begins to address the audience, his unabashed assurance of place (“In Troy, there lies the scene,” 1.1) gives way to a strange kind of anxiety, a distinct lapse of assurance about both the text and the acting of the play.

The question that I propose to ask is whether and to what extent this want of “confidence” can be read in conjunction with a late Elizabethan difficulty in coming to terms with the circulation of authority between writing and performing in the theatre. Clearly, the representation of textually inscribed meaning (deriving from “author's pen” and the matter of history, myth, or romance) and the practice of performance (requiring the physical, audible presence of “actor's voice” and body) are not the same. Rather than identifying with either of these, Shakespeare's Prologue is “suited / In like conditions as our argument.” In other words, his appearance is warlike. While in opening the play he presents “the scene” to the audience, he also and simultaneously represents, is even costumed, or “suited,” to stand for “our argument.”