The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys

According to Tadeusz Ulewicz, Kochanowski wrote the play most likely around c.1565-66.[5]^: 188 However, Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz implied it was commissioned by Jan Zamoyski for his wedding, an event that took part in the late 1570s.[1]^: 68 In either case, the play was not published or performed until it debuted at said wedding of Jan Zamoyski and Krystyna Radziwiłł at Ujazdów Castle in Warsaw on 12 January 1578, in front of the royal court and king Stephen Báthory.[5]^: 188[6] Many of the actors in the premiere were royal courtiers and the play was directed by physician Wojciech Oczko.[3]

it was translated into English as The Dismissal of the Grecian Envoys by George Rapall Noyes and Ruth Earl Merrill in 1918, and under the same title by Charles S. Kraszewski in 1994; as The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys by Barry Keane in 1999; and most recently, as The Envoys by Bill Johnston in 2007.[4][7][8]

The plot of the play focuses on the arrival of the titular Greek envoys at Troy, in order to prevent the outbreak of hostilities—an event mentioned in Homer's Iliad. The envoys ask for the return of kidnapped Helen. Some statesmen from Troy, led by Antenor, support such an action, but in the end they are overruled by a more vocal faction led by Helen's abductor Paris.[1]^: 68–69[9]

This was a blank-verse tragedy of eleven and thirteen syllables.[1]^: 69[3] In its structure it is a typical Renaissance work, inspired by Horace and subsequent French and Italian developments (works of Scaliger). It is divided into five acts, from the exposition to the announcement of the tragedy to the tragedy itself. Events that happen outside of the stage are summarized in dialogues, including a vision of Cassandra.[1]^: 69 It was the first tragedy written in Polish.[6]

Miłosz wrote that the drama is "neither a tragedy of passions nor a tragedy of a revelead fate... the fatal outcome is due not to an inexorable fatality but merely to stupidy and demagoguery." The tragedy depicted is that of characters who understand what is at stake but who cannot stop the wheels of events put in motion, ushering the impending doom (the Trojan War). As such, Miłosz writes, the play has no heroes outside the state of Troy.[1]^: 69

The works main theme are the responsibilities of statesmanship, critique of weak rulers and failings of power, where the voice of "wise and reasonable" is drowned by that of passionate but selfish and poorly educated youth.[3][6] Edmund Kotarski commented on its universal values such as "the truth about the superiority of the common good and dependence of the country and of its future on its citizens’ stance".[6] The tragedy also connected to the 16th century reality of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, with the deliberations of Greek statesmen resembling that of Polish Sejm, and the weakness and impotence of King Priam was a commentary on the Commonwealth's constitutional monarchy.[1]^: 69, 74[10]

The play is one of Kochanowski's more important and better known works;[11] already described as well studied by scholars in the mid-1960s.[12] Miłosz called it "the finest specimen of Polish humanist drama".[1]^: 68 Kotarski in turn wrote that the work "was Poland’s first really poetic and deeply reflective drama, the first and for a hundred years the only one".[3] Despite its significance, it failed to inspire many imitators in Poland, at least not until centuries later (works of Stanisław Wyspiański).[1]^{: 70, 72–74}

• Theatre of Poland
• Polish literature