Titus Andronicus

Not Shakespeare's finest hour, Titus Andronicus is a stodgy and tasteless piece of drama so variable in quality that scholars struggle to place it chronologically in Shakespeare's artistic development, and many come to believe it was a collaborative effort with other playwrights, or perhaps not even written by Shakespeare at all. So over-the-top and ham-fisted is the play that the critic Harold Bloom was able to make a reasonably sound argument that Shakespeare intended it as a Mel Brooks-style spoof.

On the face of it, it's a crowd-pleaser: an orgiastic revenge story with scheming and torture and blood-lusting soliloquies. However, unlike, say, the later Macbeth, there's no real art, finesse or plot to give the violence some structure, show more and the result is a grimy stew of gore and bile. Its revenge arc is simplistic and unreflective, and yet simultaneously hard to understand. Much of the drama is resolved in abrupt stage actions [x stabs y, y falls] than in the ingenious confluence of plot, theme and lyricism for which the Bard was to win eternal renown. Titus Andronicus is Shakespeare's video nasty; a footnote in the finest career. show less

The once was a Roman named Titus
Who thought that his cause was righteous,
But he brought in the Goths,
Then the deaths came in swaths;
I guess that’s one way to end this bloody crisis
(Of a play, that is)

Did we write a bullshit limerick in response to Shakespeare’s alleged first tragedy? Yes, yes we did. The tale of Titus Andronicus is so full of seemingly pointless violence and brutality that it’s almost impossible to treat it as a play with any sort or moral compass or seriousness, and instead we must accept that we’re here to see a bunch of people wreak vengeance on eachother from start to finish in a never ending cycle of (military) might doesn’t make right. Unlike Shakespeare’s other Roman plays, Titus isn’t based on any show more historical account, and the character depth that comes to define the Bard’s more mature work hasn’t yet been developed, so what we’re left with is a play that relies on a pastiche of myths, moments of violence, and a barely developed political schema to drive the narration. I’m sure Elizabethan audiences were as entranced by this shellac as modern day viewers of staged wrestling are (same vapid entertainment for the masses), but damn, William, this is some ridiculous tripe! show less

Hamlet is better-written; but Titus is more fun.

Okay, but really. The characters are cruel and sarcastic. After his daughter is raped and tortured, his son dead by his hands, his son-in-law murdered, and his own hand removed in a wicked, failed plot to save the life of (yet more) sons - after all this, and I skipped over a good bit - Titus mocks the hell out of his brother, the good Marcus, who kills a fly at the dinner table.

A deed of death done on the innocent
Becomes not Titus' brother: get thee gone ...
But how, if that fly had a father and mother?
How would he hang his slender gilded wings,
And buzz lamenting doings in the air!
Poor harmless fly,
That, with his pretty buzzing melody,
Came here to make us merry! and thou hast kill'd show more him.

And then in the next scene, Titus kills two young men, their mother, and his own daughter - he probably would have gone on murdering but he's killed himself before he gets the chance - so is this "alas the poor murdered fly" bit sarcasm? insanity, real or feigned? neither? both? DOES IT MATTER?

The Tamor film is my favorite (aside from the play itself); the actors are marvelously unaware of their IMPENDING DOOOOM (with the exception of Anthony Hopkins who always looks like he's near death, in a spiritual sense) - and the lush texture of scenery and costuming and decadence heightens heightens heightens.

The best bit, cinematic-ally speaking, is the little petty cruelty of Lavinia and Bassianus, who - lest you should think they are good people! - mock Tamora in her adulterous ways. Since Tamora's marriage was forced and Lavinia herself was almost forcibly married to the same man, one would expect her to have some sympathy for the poor exiled Queen. HOWEVER. NO.

Under your patience, gentle empress,
'Tis thought you have a goodly gift in horning ...
Jove shield your husband from his hounds to-day!
'Tis pity they should take him for a stag.

-- and are roundly punished for it. Bassianus is murdered and Lavinia left to scream and beg and plea -- not for life, "for poor I was slain when Bassianus died" - but that Tamora kill her at once. THIS IS NOT TO BE. As Demetrius puts it (so chillingly)

"First thrash the corn, then after burn the straw."

No one in this play is getting out alive. show less

My godfathers, this is bloody! The cast count at the end is barely a fraction of the beginning. I can imagine actors eyeing up how far they survive rather than a measure of how many lines they get.
Titus Andronicus returns to Rome with the Queen of the Goths and her sons as prisoners. He has lost 21 sons in the 10 years at the wars, and his first act is the sacrifice the Queen's eldest son to the gods and honour his own dead. It doesn't really get a lot better from there on in.
I listened to this and it was actually really easy to follow because the characters have a habit of announcing themselves by name, so that it's usually pretty clear who our of this predominantly male cast was speaking. The subject matter is so very grim that I show more can't imagine that this is easy to watch (I barely coped with seeing the King Lear eye scene, this would have been worse). Difficult to rate, it's so terribly violent that it almost becomes cartoonish. I suggest some of the others as better plays and more enjoyable subject matter. show less

The pornography of violence is writ large in this early play by Shakespeare. It was considered too shocking for a Victorian Audience, but was a success in 1592 when it hit the Elizabethan stage. Recent modern revivals have also succeeded which may say more about the 21st century than Shakespeare and the Elizabethans. The amount of violence in the play is listed in the wikipedia article. I lost count of the incidents way before the end:

The play is saturated with violence from its opening scene, and violence touches virtually every character; Alarbus is burned alive and has his arms chopped off; Titus stabs his own son to death; Bassianus is murdered and thrown into a pit; Lavinia is brutally raped and has her hands cut off and her show more tongue cut out; Martius and Quintus are decapitated; a nurse and a midwife are stabbed to death by Aaron; an innocent clown is executed for no apparent reason; Titus kills Chiron and Demetrius and cooks them in a pie, which he then feeds to their mother. Then, in the final scene, in the space of a few lines, Titus kills in succession Lavinia and Tamora, and is then immediately killed by Saturninus, who is in turn immediately killed by Lucius. Aaron is then buried up to his neck and left to starve to death in the open air and Tamora's body is thrown to the wild beasts outside the city. As S. Clark Hulse points out, "it has 14 killings, 9 of them on stage, 6 severed members, 1 rape (or 2 or 3 depending on how you count), 1 live burial, 1 case of insanity, and 1 of cannibalism – an average of 5.2 atrocities per act, or one for every 97 lines

This run down does not reveal the whole picture however, because it is Shakespeare's depiction of his characters seeming to revel in the violence that is most shocking for audiences and readers of the play. This is Marcus coming across his sister Lavinia in a forest who has just been raped by two Goths and has had her hands cut off and her tongue cut out:

Why dost not speak to me?
Alas, a crimson river of warm blood,
Like to a bubbling fountain stirr'd with wind,
Doth rise and fall between thy rosed lips,
Coming and going with thy honey breath.
But sure some Tereus hath deflowered thee,
And, lest thou shouldst detect him, cut thy tongue.
Ah, now thou turn'st away thy face for shame!
And notwithstanding all this loss of blood-
As from a conduit with three issuing spouts-
Yet do thy cheeks look red as Titan's face
Blushing to be encount'red with a cloud.

This is what happens to Aaron at the end of the play:

Set him breast-deep in earth, and famish him;
There let him stand and rave and cry for food.
If any one relieves or pities him,
For the offence he dies. This is our doom.
Some stay to see him fast'ned in the earth.

We only have to wait until line 130 for the first violent act: Lucius has demanded that one of the prisoners be sacrificed to appease the Roman dead and selects the eldest son of the conquered queen Tamora. She pleads with Titus Andronicus for mercy; the first of the characters kneeling in supplication. Her plea is dismissed out of hand and Lucius gives the order:

Away with him, and make a fire straight;
And with our swords, upon a pile of wood,
Let's hew his limbs till they be clean consum'd.

This is the murder that starts the chain of the murder and revenge cycle.

The play is set in Roman times where it could be argued that there was violence and spectacle enough to warrant this graphic rendition. With the amount of action that takes place it is a wonder that Shakespeare can tell a coherent story, but he does and significantly his character have no time to develop, the only soliloquy's are by the arch villain Aaron. It is a story of power and vengeance. Titus Andronicus has returned to Rome from a ten year campaign against the barbarian goths. His return coincides with the election of a new Roman emperor. Saturninus claims the throne as the eldest son of the dead emperor, but his brother Bassianus also lays claim: the people favour Titus, but he declines saying he is too old and too weary and supports Saturninus. Lavinia is chosen by Saturninus as empress to unite the two families, but Bassianus seizes her claiming they are already married. Saturninus therefore turns to Tamora who has already sworn vengeance against Titus and his family. Aaron the Moor and lover of Tamora plots to destabilise the regime and instigates two of Tamora's sons to rape and disfigure Lavinia and kill Bassianus. War breaks out between the families as each murder leads to more bloodshed. It can only end when most of the principal characters are dead, but their is no moral to this story, the violence continues to the end of the play and the audience is left with the impression that violence is endemic.

Shakespeare was following a tradition of earlier successes in the theatre: Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy and Christopher Marlowe's the Jew of Malta were both revenge tragedy's, but Shakespeare took this theme and ran with it further into the darkness and darkness is the overall impression that I got from this play. The BBC production starring Trevor Peacock as Titus stays true to the text and there is no light at all in the 2 and a half hours playing time. It does show how well the play can be made to work. An evening in the theatre with this play cannot fail to depress the viewer. No thoughts of better times ahead, no optimism, just blackness piled on blackness. Perhaps it was a play of its time with the theatres on the verge of being closed due to the plague. It does not make for cheerful viewing during the covid 19 epidemic. It is a powerful unrelenting play and I can understand why it might be well thought of by some, but for me at this moment in time I could quite cheerfully pass it by 4 stars, but 5 stars for the BBC film. show less

Shakespeare's earliest, starkest, bloodiest tragedy, Titus Andronicus is among a handful of nearly everyone's least favorite Shakespeare plays - mainly for the unmitigated violence, racism, and misogyny that fills it. The body count is staggering - perhaps 14 corpses in all - along with multiple dismemberings, decapitations, and gang rape. The theatrical spectacle is amazing and virtually unmatched in all of the First Folio.

Julie Taymor, noted interpreter of Shakespeare for the stage and screen, says Titus is about what makes great, noble people turn violent. In that respect it has more in common with the most famous classical Greek tragedies than with most of Shakespeare’s plays. It is in the verbal style of Seneca – oratorical show more declamation – or of Shakespeare’s early contemporaries Kyd and Marlowe, using what Ben Jonson referred to as their “mighty line” – not naturalistic but heightened speech.

The play is set at the time of the late Roman Empire. Unlike in Yeats’ “Second Coming,” in Shakespeare’s play of apocalyptic horrors both the best and “the worst are full of passionate intensity.” At breakneck pace we are subjected to a series of catastrophic errors by the most powerful and respected man in Rome, the conquering general Titus. 1) Ignoring a mother’s pleas for mercy, he has the son of his conquered opponent Tamora killed, dismembered and sacrificed; 2) declining to rule Rome himself, he selects the wrong candidate, Saturninus, to be emperor; 3) disregarding a prior claim by the emperor’s brother Bassianus, he agrees to wed his daughter Lavinia to the emperor; 4) accusing his own son of treason for supporting Lavinia, he kills son Mutius; 5) believing her deceitful peacemaking, he expects friendship and gratitude from Tamora even as she plots the demise of his entire family. And that’s all in the first scene. By the play’s end, only three Andronici (two men and a boy, and virtually no other named characters) are left alive – all the result of unchecked villainy combined with blind adherence to principles of honor.

Early in his career Shakespeare discovered the powerful attraction of articulate, scheming villains. In Tamora and Aaron he created two of the best, and ironically they are also two of the best parents in the play, in their unflagging loyalty to their children. The play’s final irony is that Rome is saved only by an invasion of barbarians. show less

This play (apparently considered one of Shakespeare's weakest) is still a force to read. Disregarding the specific lens you choose to interpret it through (some critics say look at as a parody, others doubt Shakespeare even wrote it), there's no doubting the chilling rage and disturbingly cathartic satisfaction it conveys through the mutually destructive actions of it's morally ambiguous (even bleak) characters who seem to only want horror for horror's sake. The actual moral imperative, the supposed point of revenge being eventually only incidental and placed a distant second to the bloody act itself.