The power of love and lust wielded by Cressida and the Lady White renders their suitors helpless. The struggle to attain the love of these women seems futile. Troilus and the Black Knight are quite young and naive and they react according to their experiences. They are both 'mad in pursuit' (Sonnet 129, 9) of these very beautiful women, putting aside the obligations of their office. The Black Knight is encapsulated in a dream, where the setting is calm and beautiful. Troilus's languish is set during the turbulence of war. They both undergo changes after the betrayal. Unlike Troilus and Cressida, the Book of the Duchess does not portray the female perspective so the audience is biased to the endeavours of the Black Knight. In Troilus and Cressida, the power of sexual desire casts its web over a vaster area and influences the entire royal court of Troy, the conglomerate of Greek States and Greece's greatest warrior, Achilles. Once the spell of sexual desire is lifted, the entranced resume their roles.
             The Black Knight is enraptured by the Lady White's beauty: 'For all the worlde, so had she Surmounted them all of beauty.' (825-826) She also had a 'steadfast countenance, So noble port and maintenance.' (833-834). She was so bewitchingly beautiful to him that he had 'no wit that can suffice To comprehende her beauty.' (902-903) There is enormous emphasis on Lady White's appearance and character as can be seen in the description of her physical and ethereal beauty which begins with line 817 and continues successively through to line 1022. It is this beauty, both within and without that provokes the Black Knight to become a slave to it: 'And through pleasuance become its thrall/ With good will: body, heart and all.' (767-768). Cressida's captivating beauty is also immediately conceived in I.i.53, although there is much less concentration on her spiritual beau...