Achilles and Patroclus: Shakespeare’s Most Obvious Gay Couple Found in Troilus and Cressida?

Achilles and Patroclus in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida have the strongest textual claim to being Shakespeare’s most obvious gay couple. Okay, to preempt the angry comments: we cannot know that Shakespeare imagined either man as “gay” in the modern sense; Elizabethan categories of sexuality do not map neatly onto ours. What actors and directors can do is make a playable choice, then ask whether Shakespeare gives them enough evidence to sustain it. For me, Achilles and Patroclus are the best suggestions of a homosexual relationship in Shakespeare; you could easily play them as an overtly gay couple. Let’s see if I can convince you…

Where were they when Shakespeare first introduces them? In bed with one another. While the Greek commanders worry about a war Achilles refuses to fight, Ulysses complains that Achilles stays in his tent “with him Patroclus, Upon a lazy bed, the live-long day”. Moments later, Achilles is “on his pressed bed lolling” while Patroclus performs comic impressions for him. The men have withdrawn together into a private world, spending their days in bed, entertaining one another and mocking the military; sounds like a cute little romance if I'm honest.

ULYSSES: The great Achilles, whom opinion crowns The sinew and the forehand of our host, Having his ear full of his airy fame, Grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent Lies mocking our designs: with him Patroclus, Upon a lazy bed the livelong day.

Then Patroclus tries to persuade Achilles back into battle, saying that people believe “your great love to me” is keeping Achilles away from war. He asks Achilles to rise so that “wanton Cupid” (God of Love) will loosen his “amorous fold” from Achilles’ neck. It’s the language of love; Patroclus is worried that Achilles adoration of him is stopping him from fighting. Achilles does not reprimand him. Shortly afterwards, he calls him “sweet Patroclus”, which he repeats in Act Five. This could be him speaking down to him, or it could be affectionate; it's the actor's choice. An actor queering Patroclus could play: release the man I love from the embrace that is damaging us both. Achilles can receive the speech as something only this person is allowed to say.

PATROCLUS: and your great love to me restrains you thus: Sweet, rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold

Shakespeare then makes the sexual implication aggressively explicit through Thersites. First, Patroclus is “Achilles’ brach”... in modern speech we might say “His bitch”. By Act Five, Thersites ditches the euphemism and calls Patroclus Achilles’ “male varlet” (his male attendant) and then “his masculine whore” (I don’t need to explain this one). The joke depends upon the audience understanding the sexual accusation. Thersites then wishes diseases upon such “preposterous discoveries” (preposterous could be read as sodomy). Thersites is malicious, yes, but Shakespeare has given his accusation unusually precise sexual language.

THERSITES: Why, his masculine whore. Now the rotten diseases of the south, the guts-griping, ruptures, catarrhs, loads o' gravel in the back, lethargies, cold palsies, raw eyes, dirt-rotten livers, whissing lungs, bladders full of impostume, sciaticas, limekilns i' th' palm, incurable bone-ache, and the rivelled fee-simple of the tetter, take and take again such preposterous discoveries!

And Shakespeare does not leave the relationship as somebody else’s dirty joke. Patroclus’ death changes Achilles more completely than military humiliation. Ulysses says that Achilles is “arming, weeping, cursing, vowing vengeance” because Patroclus’ wounds have awakened him. Achilles storms on, asking for the “boy-queller” Hector and insists, “I will none but Hector.” For clarification, his character arc is: Achilles will not fight, Patroclus dies, Achilles fights. A queer interpretation can find motivation here: the man who has spent much of the play emotionally unreachable becomes furiously active through grief for Patroclus.

ULYSSES: Achilles is arming, weeping, cursing, vowing vengeance: Patroclus' wounds have roused his drowsy blood, together with his mangled Myrmidons.

Several historical productions of Troilus and Cressida have embraced the homoerotic nature of these characters. A 1954 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre staging was attacked by a reviewer for stressing the men’s unhealthy relationship; The 1968 RSC production made Alan Howard’s Achilles overtly queer through drag and gay visual codes. In the 1985 RSC production, Alan Rickman’s Achilles and Patroclus repeatedly emerged together from a curtained balcony staged like a bedroom. Sam Mendes’ 1990 production, people casually called Patroclus Achilles’ lover or boyfriend, and in Ian Judge’s 1996 RSC staging, the men shared long, passionate kisses. Homosexuality has become an accepted convention of the play in performance rather than a novelty.

None of this lets us pin a twenty-first-century sexuality label onto a fictional Greek warrior written around 1601. It does give actors an unusually solid chain of playable evidence: shared-bed imagery, “great love”, Cupid’s “amorous fold”, repeated “sweet Patroclus”, an explicit “masculine whore”, and grief powerful enough to restart Achilles’ war. A production can choose friendship, bisexuality, sexual partnership, romantic love or some messier combination; playing the men as lovers requires no textual gymnastics whatsoever. For directors still nervous about queering Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare has already done the legwork, right down to Achilles’ heel.