The genre of Troilus and Cressida is uncertain. In the epistle to the "ever reader" in the second state of the 1609 quarto, the play is considered one of "the author’s comedies"; the title-pages of the two quartos call the play a "History" (The Historie of Troylus and Cresseida, in one; The Famous Historie. . ., in the other); and the first page of the 1623 folio text calls the play The Tragedie of Troylus and Cresseid, and places it first in the section of tragedies.

Even in Shakespeare’s own time, the nature of this odd play was obviously puzzling. Hector’s death and the general sense of tragic waste prevent the play from easily being thought of as comic; although the play is based on historical materials, they themselves are more legendary than factual, and the title characters play no role in Homer’s account; so it is not easily thought of as a history. And as the title characters survive, it is not formally a tragedy in that sense. Even though Hector, who comes the closest of any in this problematic play to occupying the role of its tragic hero, does die, his death, and the play itself, does not produce the catharsis we expect from tragedy.

Still, Hector is the most attractive of the play’s classical characters, almost alone escaping the demystification, if not actually the debunking, of the great heroic models in the play’s skeptical portrayal of the Trojan War. Hector’s rational argument for the return of Helen establishes his moral superiority over his more willful countrymen, and even his decision, "ne’ertheless," to continue to fight with them as they seek to keep Menelaus’s wife, while distressing, displays his sense of family and communal commitment. He is a man of honor; "the gods have heard me swear" (5.3.15), he says to Andromache as he ignores her pleadings and goes forth to embrace his fate.

But honor in this play too easily gets tied into to sterile, unrealistic, and even destructive chivalric values. When Troilus enters, armed for battle, Hector, knowing nothing of his younger brother's private grudge that day, tells him to stay at home.  "I am today i'th' vein of chivalry," he assures him, and announces that he will "stand today for thee and me and Troy." (5.3.32, 36)  Here, as director Hall has said, Shakespeare shows Hector's attraction to the fatal charms of chivalry:  "Even the great Hector, who is probably the closest to a hero for the Greeks," Hall said, "winds up being seduced by love of war."

But if Hector is so seduced, he usually conducts himself on the battlefield with remarkable self-control and magnanimity, clinging to chivalric values that the realities of battle must mock.  Though his behavior offers an attractive contrast to the ruthlessness of the Greeks, even Troilus realizes that Hector’s generosity makes no sense in the context of warfare.  "You have the vice of mercy in you," Troilus chides:  "When many times the captive Grecian falls, / Even in the fan and wind of your fair sword, / You bid them rise and live."  "O, 'tis fair play," Hector replies.  "Fool's play, by heaven," his practical brother answers, prophetically (5.3.39-43 ).

In the battle scenes of the final act, Hector twice spares a foe over whom he has the advantage.  He first faces Thersites, but when he asks, "What art thou, Greek?  Art thou for Hector's match? / Art thou of blood and honour?". Thersites quickly assures him, "No, no, I am a rascal, a scurvy railing knave, a very filthy rogue."  "I do believe thee," Hector assures him: "Live." (5.4.25-29). Hector's next act of mercy has more consequence. Hector and Achilles meet in 5.6. The stage directions do not specify exactly how this first bout between the champions goes, but Hector's offer, "Pause, if thou wilt," and Achilles’ anxious "disdain" for Hector’s "courtesy," (5.6.15-6), makes it clear that the encounter ends with Hector refusing to follow through on the advantage he has won.  B.H. Barry, in his fight choreography for Hall’s production, has Hector deftly disarm Achilles before he releases him.

Achilles gone, Troilus enters to tell his brother that Ajax has captured Aeneas.  The younger brother races off to the rescue, but before Hector can follow he is distracted by the entrance of a soldier in gorgeous armor. In Hall’s production a knight in black with gilded trim walks slowly into the sand from the stage left entrance.  The original stage directions read only "Enter one in armour," but Hector's subsequent lines and the silence of the text, suggest something of the uncanny about this unidentified soldier who speaks not a word of defiance or challenge, merely appears and walks across the stage. Hall stages this almost as a dream, an phantasm conjured by Hector’s chivalric imaginings.  "Stand, stand, thou Greek! Thou art a goodly mark," Hector demands, but the apparition merely pushes his proffered sword point aside and walks on, seemingly unperturbed, exiting into the audience down-right.  "I like thy armour well," says Hector, "I'll frush it and unlock the rivets all, / But I'll be master of it."  He exits in pursuit: "I’ll hunt thee for thy hide" (5.6. 28-31).

The next scene finds Achilles away from the front.  His dark, masked, Myrmidons surround him as he instructs his private army to save all their energies for finding and destroying his special foe:  "It is decreed that Hector the great must die" (5.7.8).  Miller in his 1981 television version highlighted the vanity of his Achilles (Kenneth Haigh) by picturing him in this scene back at his tent calmly tidying up his beard in a mirror as he instructs his guard.  Idris Elba's Achilles in Hall’s production is every bit as cold blooded, as he, with chilling ferocity, prepares for a rematch on his own terms. His Myrmidons crouch in a circle at the periphery of the sand pit, while Achilles, from the center, instructs them.  They carry short poles with them when they enter and, as he talks, they stick them into waiting flanges in the metal frame of the pit, leaving a ring of black stakes when they exit.

Hector returns with his "prize," the lifeless, gilded Greek, over his shoulder and lays the body on the sand remarking, "Most putrified core, so fair without,/ This goodly armour thus hath cost thy life" (5.9.1). Some critics and directors, including Jonathan Miller, have taken Hector's line to mean that he finds a literally putrefying corpse inside the armor. But the implications are clear enough: the "goodly armour," a symbol of chivalric glory, however "fair without," hides a sick, disgusting reality beneath.

Attentive audience members might see that the knight in the golden armour is played by one of the production's actresses, perhaps even guessing from her height which one it is; but the curtain call reveals her as Cindy Katz, who plays that other fatal object of desire, similarly "fair without" -- Helen.  Hector, whom we first saw fighting for the cause of reason against the irrational cries of "manhood and honor" urged by his young brother Troilus, has succumbed to the fatal call of chivalry, seeking the trappings of "honor" in the form of this gilded shell.

Having achieved the rich "hide" he sought, Hector resolves to rest and enjoy his spoils. "Now is my day's work done.  I'll take good breath./ Rest, sword; thou has thy fill of blood and death" (5.9.3-4).  Hall has his Hector signify his withdrawal from the fighting by not only laying down his sword, but by taking off his leggings and leather cuirass and stripping off his shirt.  When he suddenly finds himself surrounded by Achilles and his sinister black-clad fighters, he is wearing only he reddish-brown trousers and is naked to the waist. Achilles gloats at Hector’s vulnerability:
 

Look Hector, how the sun begins to set,
How ugly night comes breathing at his heels.
Even with the vail and dark’ning of the sun
To close the day up, Hector's life is done.
                                    (5.9.5-8)

The Trojan appeals to the rules of fair play by which he has fought: "I am unarmed.  Forgo this vantage, Greek."  Achilles, however, plays by other rules, and quickly closes his foe's couplet: "Strike, fellows, strike! This is the man I seek" (5.9.9-10).

The original editions have no stage direction at this point, but the Arden's "They fall upon Hector and kill him" is fully justified by the text. Hall and Barry have shaped the scene with particularly brutal imagery and choreography.  The Myrmidon's pull their black stakes from their places to reveal them tipped with bright steel blades that were not visible before. They first beat Hector senseless with their shields and then mass about him stabbing with their spears, which seem fitted more for the abattoir than the battlefield. Standing back they reveal their fallen victim bathed in gore. Achilles’ epitaph for his foe has none of the chivalric generosity of, say, Hal’s lament over Hotspur’s body in 1 Henry IV.  Indeed, Achilles is a more chilling version here of that other anti-chivalric spokesman, Falstaff, as the Greek, too, claims credit for a kill accomplished by others:
 

So, Ilium, fall thou!  Now, Troy, sink down!
Here lies thy heart, thy sinews and thy bone.
On, Myrmidons, and cry you all amain,
"Achilles hath the mighty Hector slain."
                                    (5.9.11-14)

The brutal scene of Hector's ambush and execution (for that is what it is; in 1985, Howard Davies, in his RSC production stages it as a firing squad) plays against all the expectations and conventions of the heroic representations of warfare. But that, of course, is the point: warfare is not glorious. Hector has lived for martial glory, but his death is sordid and the "hero" Achilles' triumph, treacherous.  And even in his death, Hector fails to be tragically ennobled.  He dies foolishly, grasping after a hollow suit of armor, not even defending his kinsman Aeneas, as Troilus bid him do just before the tempting Grecian appeared.

Shakespeare, whose early stage creation, the heroic warrior Talbot in Henry VI, Part 1, held the stage for decades, became suspicious early on of the ideals of traditional chivalry and the claims of martial glory.  As his first series of histories winds their way from the patriotic gore of the Hundred Years War through the often sordid scheming of the Wars of the Roses, the veneer of romance and chivalry got increasingly thinner. No previous play, though, prepared Shakespeare's audience for the bleak vision of the final scenes of Troilus and Cressida.  Other works merely questioned the dramatic conventions of heroic idealism.  Troilus and Cressida explodes them.

Troilus reappears to announce his brother's death, his bare torso now covered in layers of blood similar to those that caked Hector’s body as the Myrmidons take him off the field to be tied to the tail of Achilles’ horse and dragged around the walls of Troy.  Troilus has taken upon himself his brother's mantle, but he will wear it more recklessly than ever the noble Hector did.  Hector, who in life attempted to embody ideals of rationality and nobility, will in death inspire only the base savagery of vengeance.  Troilus, his successor as Troy's hero, leads the grieving Trojans back to the city with the cry: "Hope of revenge shall hide our inward woe" (5.11.31).