Titus Andronicus
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Titus Andronicus may be Shakespeare's earliest tragedy. It depicts a fictional Roman general engaged in a cycle of revenge with his enemy, the Queen of the Goths.
Synopsis
The Emperor of Rome dies, and his sons squabble over who will succeed him. The Tribune of the People, Marcus Andronicus, announces, however, that Titus Andronicus, a Roman general newly returned from ten years' campaigning against the foes of the empire is the people’s choice of successor. Titus Andronicus enters Rome to much fanfare, bearing with him Tamora, Queen of the Goths, her sons, and Aaron the Moor. Titus refuses the throne, abdicating in favor of Saturninus, and sacrifices Tamora’s eldest son to the memory of his own sons who died during his campaign, earning her hatred for the remainder of the play.Saturninus makes Tamora Empress of Rome, and she subsequently plots her revenge against Titus with the aid of Aaron, her lover. She frames Titus’s two sons for the murder of Bassianus, Saturninus’s brother. She then encourages her own sons Chiron and Demetrius to rape and mutilate Lavinia, Titus’s daughter, cutting off her hands and tongue so that she cannot testify against them. Soon after, Titus’s remaining son, Lucius, is exiled from Rome, later allying himself with the remaining Goths in order to lay siege to Rome. After cutting off his own hand in exchange for the promised return of his two imprisoned sons, Titus appears to grow mad with grief when he is sent back only their heads.
Lavinia manages to write out the names of her attackers in the dirt by holding a rod with her stumps and in her mouth. Armed with this knowledge, Titus begins exhibiting strange behaviors, such as tying written prayers to arrows and commanding his kinsmen to aim them at the sky, or to dig until they reach the realm of Pluto and deliver them. Marcus directs their kinsmen to aim their arrows so that they will land in a volley inside the palace of Saturninus. Meanwhile, Lucius captures Aaron and, by threatening to kill the bastard son he fathered on Tamora, learns that it was Aaron who plotted the murder of Titus' sons, the loss of his hand, and the rape and disfigurement of Lavinia.
Tamora, hoping to take advantage of his apparent madness, approaches Titus along with her two sons, dressed as the spirits of Revenge, Murder, and Rape. Tamora tells Titus that she will grant him justice if he will convince Lucius to stop attacking Rome. Titus, having but feigned madness, agrees, on the condition that "Rape" and "Murder" (Chiron and Demetrius) remain with him. Tamora agrees, and Titus kills Chiron and Demetrius, cooking them into a meal.
At the peace conference at Titus' home, he kills Lavinia before the assembled guests. When questioned by Saturninus, Titus reveals that Chiron and Demetrius had raped Lavinia, and that they had been baked into the pie which their mother had just eaten. Titus instigates a bloodbath which claims Tamora, Saturninus, and Titus himself. Lucius, ascending the throne with the blessing of the masses, rules that Saturninus' body be buried in his family crypt, that Tamora's body be thrown to wild beasts, and that an unrepentant Aaron be buried chest-deep and left to die of thirst and starvation.
Text of the play
Titus Andronicus was published in three separate quarto editions prior to the First Folio of 1623; these are referred to as Q1, Q2, and Q3 by Shakespeare scholars.Q1, published in 1594, is regarded by scholars as a reasonably "good" (complete and reliable) text, and is the basis for most modern editions, although it does not include some material found in the First Folio. Only a single copy is known to exist today.
Q2, published in 1600, appears to be based on a damaged copy of Q1, as it is a good reproduction of the Q1 text, but is missing a number of lines. Two copies are known to exist today.
Q3, published in 1611, appears to be a further degradation of the Q2 text: it includes a number of corrections to Q2, but introduces even more errors.
The First Folio text of 1623 seems to be based on the Q3 text, but also includes material found in none of the quarto editions, including the entirety of Act 3, Scene 2 (in which Titus seems to be losing his sanity). This scene is generally regarded as authentic and included in modern editions of the play.
Date and authorship
Most scholars date Titus to the early 1590s; it was certainly written prior to 1594, the date of its first published edition.None of the three quarto editions lists Shakespeare as the author. Francis Meres lists the play as one of Shakespeare's tragedies in a publication of 1598, and the editors of the First Folio included it among his works. There is evidence that the first act was written by George Peele, who may also have written the scene in which Lavinia uses Ovid's Metamorphoses to explain that she has been raped. The assertion of Peele's hand in the play is controversial, and those who admire the play tend to argue against it.
It has even been posited that Shakespeare didn't write Titus Andronicus at all; for example, the 19th century Globe Illustrated Shakespeare (still in print in 2005) goes so far as to claim there was a general agreement on the matter due to the un-Shakespearean "barbarity" of the play's action.
Reputation
Titus Andronicus is certainly Shakespeare's bloodiest tragedy; some measure of its matter can be gleaned from a single stage-direction: "Enter the empress' sons with Lavinia, her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out, and ravished." (Act II, scene IV). The play is frequently dismissed for its violence, and some Shakespeare lovers consider it childish, juvenile, or believe that it is populist trash written only to make money. However, it was an extremely popular play in its day, second only to The Spanish Tragedy, another bloody play of that period by Thomas Kyd.[[Citing sources citation needed]]Since the late twentieth century, however, the play has been revived frequently on stage and has been revealed to some as a powerful and moving exploration of violence that pre-empts King Lear in its bleakness, to others as a forerunner of the Hollywood slasher movie. The play can speak to modern audiences, who are used to violence in film, in a way that it could not to Victorian audiences; however modern audiences may still find the play's graphic cruelty absurd, unused as they are to attending public executions and dismemberment of the kind that were familiar to Shakespeare's audience. Literary critic and Shakespeare scholar Harold Bloom has claimed that the play cannot be taken seriously and that the best imaginable production would be one directed by Mel Brooks.
The character of Titus has been played by important actors such as Laurence Olivier, Brian Cox, Anthony Sher and Anthony Hopkins.
Adaptations
Literary adaptations
- Titus Andronicus. Komödie nach Shakespeare by Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt
- Die Schändung by German author Botho Strauss
Film adaptations
- Titus Andronicus (1985), a TV movie directed by Jane Howell for the BBC Shakespeare series. Stars Trevor Peacock and Eileen Atkins as Titus and Tamora.
- Titus (1999), directed by Julie Taymor. Stars Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange as Titus and Tamora.
References in popular culture
- South Park - Scott Tenorman Must Die (TV) (2001), Trey Parker and Matt Stone borrow from Shakespeare for the story of Cartman's revenge against the title character; Shakespeare, in turn, borrowed the same plot elements from Seneca's tragedy Thyestes.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion - One of the ships in Episode 8 is referred to by the name "Titus Andronicus".
External links
- [Titus Andronicus] - plain vanilla text from Project Gutenberg
- [The Tragedie of Titus Andronicus] - HTML version of this title.
- [Lucius, the Severely Flawed Redeemer of Titus Andronicus by Anthony Brian Taylor]
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