Pastries and Postulations: Revising Sexual Signs with Familiar Metaphors

From the onset, Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida mixes considerations of war and love with superficial concerns, employing metaphor to smuggle gender roles and sexual meaning into an otherwise interpersonal critique from Pandarus regarding Troilus’s behavior and countenance.

In his first lines, Troilus asks, “Why should I war without the walls of Troy / That find such a cruel battle here within?” (1.1.2-3). By intervening in the psychology of war with his personal feelings, Troilus combines his affections and war into a single issue while remaining emotionally conflicted in full battle attire.

“Will this gear (affair) ne’er be mended?” inquires Pandarus, whose words prompt Troilus to end his inaction on the battlefield in terms of  his body armor and unresolved pursuits in love (1.1.6). Troilus expresses his belief that he has done all he can in the pursuit of Cressida’s love, “tarrying” all he could in the hopes of realizing the “cake” of his efforts in a step-by-step fashion. Pandarus says, “Ay…but here’s yet… / the making of the cake, the heating the / oven, and the baking – nay, you must stay the cooling too, or / ye may chance burn your lips,” suggesting that Troilus must carefully coordinate his actions in order to bring his efforts to fruition while relating the consequences of a misstep to a flesh wound (1.1.21-4).

Pandarus’s metaphor of baking a cake carries strong gendered connotations from a societal as well as anatomical perspective, for not only is baking and cooking commonly associated with women’s work, but the female body as an oven/receptacle in an Elizabethan context also lends itself to the interpretation that baking a cake refers to producing a child. Just like the heat of battle, timing is everything for Troilus if he is to bake a cake of love with Cressida.

The embedded video is the song “Time’s a‘ Wasting” by Johnny and June Carter Cash with lyrics as performed by Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon in the 2005 film Walk the Line. The song exemplifies the familiarization of love in a modern context through baking a cake. The lyrics “A cake’s no good if you don’t mix the batter and bake it” show that Shakespeare’s metaphor is very much alive in modern gender roles and sexuality. In my opinion, the fact that June Carter sings this line shows that she affirms both Shakespeare’s metaphor as a viable analogy for love and the aforementioned connotations associated with the metaphor. Even though mutuality exists between man and woman in the movie’s musical adaptation rather than between two men – especially with regards to the quick timing and precise coordination (of a duet) needed to bring love to fruition as introduced in Shakespeare’s text – the lyrics indicate  to me that time’s a‘ wasting on addressing the archaic connotations associated with the metaphor rather than procuring heteronormative love.