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The Testament of Cresseid is a narrative poem of 616 lines in Middle Scots, written by the 15th-century Scottish makar Robert Henryson. It is his best known poem. It imagines a tragic fate for Cressida in the medieval story of Troilus and Criseyde which was left untold in Geoffrey Chaucer's version. Diomedes, an Achaean hero with whom Cressied begins a romantic relationship after being separated from and subsequently losing romantic interest in Troilus, banishes Cresseid from his company thereby leaving her destitute. After wandering for a while amongst the Greek soldiers, seeking their company, she returns to the home of her father Calchas, a keeper of the temple of Venus. Though Calchas welcomes her heartily, Cresseid desires to hide away from the world and encloses herself in a private oratory, where she weeps and rages against the cruelty of Venus and Cupid in, as she sees it, leading her on. The gods take offence at this blasphemy, and assemble to pass judgement on her, and the poem features graphically-realised portraits of the planetary pantheon of gods in the dream vision at its heart. They remove her youth and good looks, leaving her ill and ugly. Her symptoms being similar to those of leprosy, she is thus considered a social outcast, and decides she must join a leper colony. There she laments her fate until a fellow leper woman encourages her not to sigh over things which cannot be changed, but instead to take her cup and clapper and seek help from any kind passers-by. In time, however, cold and hunger wears her down and she is forced to beg for a living. One day, whilst she is begging, Troilus and the garrison of Troy pass by. Recognising Cresseid, Troilus is greatly moved, and he gives up a great deal of wealth to the lepers before riding off, almost fainting for grief when he reaches Troy. Upon finding out her benefactor's identity, Cresseid is also overcome with emotion and her health takes a turn for the worse. She berates herself for her treatment of him, before sitting down to write her will, dying soon after. However, despite Cresseid's ultimate disgrace and tragic end, Henryson is not without pity for her misfortune, as seen in the lines:
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Henryson's cogent psychological drama makes the poem one of the great works of northern renaissance literature.
A modern English translation by Seamus Heaney, which also included seven of his fables from The Morall Fabillis, was published in 2009.