To the extent that most people have heard of Titus Andronicus at all, it is through its reputation as Shakespeare's bloodiest play. That reputation is deserved: this is a play where the main character chops off his hand after his daughter is raped and mutilated, and he subsequently bakes her rapists into a pie, which he makes their mother eat before killing her. By S. Clarke Hulse's famous counting, "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."
Titus definitely has the air of Shakespeare going through what might subsequently be called his Tarantino phase, although drowned out in the controversy which the blood-soaked play has stirred up over the centuries are the potent themes about the self-destructive ways people treat those they deem different and inferior, how violence towards others invites violence back, and the dangerous illusions of those who believe themselves good, civilised people fighting an inhuman enemy.
Titus is the earliest of Shakespeare's 'historical' plays and the only one to be a work of fiction: the time period in which it is set is clearly the fading days of the Roman Empire, although the characters are all inventions and none of the events depicted having any known parallels in Roman history. The play tells of the eponymous general returning victorious from a long campaign against the Goths. Titus makes a public display of killing the eldest son of the Goth Queen (Tamora) as revenge for his own losses, leading her to vow revenge against him.
With the Roman Emperor recently deceased, there is a succession challenge. Titus is offered the throne, but refuses, so it is instead taken by the former Emperor's son, Saturninus. An argument breaks out over Saturninus trying to claim his brother Bassianus' betrothed, Titus' daughter Lavinia, for his own wife, and in the heat of the argument, Titus kills his own son and an appalled Saturninus chooses to marry Tamora instead.
Tamora puts her plans for revenge into action, leading her two sons to kill Bassianus and rape and mutilated Lavinia in the woods. Titus' sons are charged with Bassianus' murder and Titus allows Tamora's lover, Aaron, to chop off his hand under the false pretense that it will save one of his son's lives. After Lavinia identifies her rapists, Titus captures Tamora's sons and bakes them into pies, which he serves to Tamora during a feast. He then kills Tamora and is killed by Saturnius, who is himself killed by Lucius, Titus' only surviving son.
Not exactly Twelfth Night, then.
Although often accused of being sadistic for the sake of it, the violence in Titus is tied into one of the play's key thematic statements. It is not simply the characters in the play who are violent, but the audience too. One does not go to see a play like Titus without a certain lust for bloodshed and while the characters perform violence where the audience watches, the difference is one of perception: the audience view themselves as more moral than the characters for not participating in the slaughter, yet are deriving pleasure from it all the same. That hypocritical illusion is woven into the very fabric of the play. The Romans, exemplified by the Andronicus family (or the Andronicii, as they are sometimes referred to), view themselves as civilised and the Goths are barbarous, yet it is Titus who commits the needless murder of his prisoner-of-war, Tamora's son, Alarbus, which instigates the violence that follows.
As the main character and audience surrogate, having Titus spill the first blood on-stage is a statement about the audience's complicity with what follows, whether they celebrate it (the play was hugely popular during Shakespeare's lifetime) or denounce it, per the prudish critics of subsequent centuries who were horrified by the play and deemed it immoral. The critics' position is no more morally tenable than that of the baying crowd, if anything more hypocritical. They are using their disgust as a means of demonstrating their heightened sensibilities while calling for the abolition of art which makes them uncomfortable. Like the decadent Romans of the play, they seek to preserve a sense of order which places them as civilised superiors as the play and its audience as barbarous Goths to be condemned and destroyed.
The illusion of civilisation runs throughout the play, with the word 'nobility' used as an ironically recurring motif. The play tears down the idea of power as a means of demonstrating civility and higher virtue, from Titus' hubristic murder of Alarbus to Tamora and her allies committing acts of unspeakable horror from the moment she marries into the highest echelon of Roman power. The play presents its violence through the lens of how it is justified by so-called civilised cultures, whether debating the morality of revenge or the act of honour-killings, as when Titus asks the Emperor, Saturninus, whether a father should kill his daughter if she has suffered the shame of being raped. Saturninus answers in the affirmative, leading Titus to cut Lavinia's throat in front of him.
Despite the many acts of violence perpetrated by the play's characters, Shakespeare conspicuously avoids depicting any of them as anything less than completely human. Whether Tamora begging for Titus and Lucius to spare her son's life in the opening scene or Titus himself expressing the profundity of his grief upon seeing his daughter raped and brutalised, Shakespeare foregrounds grief and the human cost of violence every bit as much as the violence itself.
This takes its most nuanced form in Aaron, nowadays the play's most controversial character. Aaron is a dark-skinned Moor and Tamora's secret lover. He not only commits gross acts of evil, but frequently states the pleasure he takes in doing so and desire to do more. He encourages Tamora's sons, Chiron and Demetrius, to rape Lavinia, frames Titus' sons for Bassianus' murder (which he instigated) and then cuts off Titus' hand on a false promise. Consequently, Aaron is often accused of being a racist creation due to the only black character in the play not only being the plotter behind many of its worst atrocities, but the only one who actively relishes in them.
What this reading neglects is Aaron's reaction to the birth of his son as a result of his secret tryst with Tamora in Act Four. To protect the dark-skinned baby from Saturninus' anger, he kills the nurse and goes on the run, later bargaining away his own life to save the child. From the moment of his son's birth, Aaron's actions are placed firmly in the context of his race, but from the opposite perspective to that of his critics. Aaron is frequently dismissed and diminished by other characters and despite his proclamations of his own inhumanity, it becomes clear how much of his cruelty is born of his treatment by others and the self-hatred it has engendered in him. Aaron's race is emphasized as he protects his son from being killed to alleviate Tamora's humiliation at their affair. Where the Nurse talks of the baby as a 'joyless, dismal, black, and sorrowful issue', Aaron challenges her racism right back, asking: 'Is black so base a hue?'
(He also tosses out a 'yo mama' joke, which only makes him more likeable.)
Aaron is an example of what is sometimes referred to in modern parlance (often over-zealously, but I digress) as 'stereotype threat'. Those around him treat him as a lowly, lesser and immoral creature, so his only means of gaining agency is to live down to those expectations. Once again, Shakespeare uses the audience's expectations against them, initially playing up the villainy of a supposedly 'uncivilised' character before turning the tables to reveal how it is the evil of those believing themselves civilised which caused the villainy he now commits. In his newborn son, Aaron sees a part of himself untouched by hate (from others or himself) and sacrifices himself to protect it. He is both the character who does the most evil, but in giving himself up to Lucius to ensure the survival of his son, also the one unblemished act of kindness. Aaron is a creation of racism, but contrary to his critics, the racism is not that of Shakespeare.
Far from its reputation for nihilistic violence, Titus is a reflection on the self-destructive nature of that violence and its fallout on societies and their people. The disparity between the play's reputation and its actual values was most potently demonstrated by reports following Donald Trump's election that Steve Bannon, creator of far-right news aggregator site, Breitbart, was obsessed with the play and wanted to adapt it to film during his days trying to become a producer in the nineties. Bannon, like many others, likely saw a play about evil Goth outsiders bloodily destroying a civilisation from within, aided by a black man relishing in his own cruelty. What Bannon missed is that the real villains of the play are men like him and Trump, those who seek to elevate themselves by dehumanising others. Though criticised for the bloody violence it presents on-stage, Shakespeare's real target is the barbarity lurking within us all and the illusions of civility we create to justify it.
Tamora puts her plans for revenge into action, leading her two sons to kill Bassianus and rape and mutilated Lavinia in the woods. Titus' sons are charged with Bassianus' murder and Titus allows Tamora's lover, Aaron, to chop off his hand under the false pretense that it will save one of his son's lives. After Lavinia identifies her rapists, Titus captures Tamora's sons and bakes them into pies, which he serves to Tamora during a feast. He then kills Tamora and is killed by Saturnius, who is himself killed by Lucius, Titus' only surviving son.
Not exactly Twelfth Night, then.
Although often accused of being sadistic for the sake of it, the violence in Titus is tied into one of the play's key thematic statements. It is not simply the characters in the play who are violent, but the audience too. One does not go to see a play like Titus without a certain lust for bloodshed and while the characters perform violence where the audience watches, the difference is one of perception: the audience view themselves as more moral than the characters for not participating in the slaughter, yet are deriving pleasure from it all the same. That hypocritical illusion is woven into the very fabric of the play. The Romans, exemplified by the Andronicus family (or the Andronicii, as they are sometimes referred to), view themselves as civilised and the Goths are barbarous, yet it is Titus who commits the needless murder of his prisoner-of-war, Tamora's son, Alarbus, which instigates the violence that follows.
As the main character and audience surrogate, having Titus spill the first blood on-stage is a statement about the audience's complicity with what follows, whether they celebrate it (the play was hugely popular during Shakespeare's lifetime) or denounce it, per the prudish critics of subsequent centuries who were horrified by the play and deemed it immoral. The critics' position is no more morally tenable than that of the baying crowd, if anything more hypocritical. They are using their disgust as a means of demonstrating their heightened sensibilities while calling for the abolition of art which makes them uncomfortable. Like the decadent Romans of the play, they seek to preserve a sense of order which places them as civilised superiors as the play and its audience as barbarous Goths to be condemned and destroyed.
The illusion of civilisation runs throughout the play, with the word 'nobility' used as an ironically recurring motif. The play tears down the idea of power as a means of demonstrating civility and higher virtue, from Titus' hubristic murder of Alarbus to Tamora and her allies committing acts of unspeakable horror from the moment she marries into the highest echelon of Roman power. The play presents its violence through the lens of how it is justified by so-called civilised cultures, whether debating the morality of revenge or the act of honour-killings, as when Titus asks the Emperor, Saturninus, whether a father should kill his daughter if she has suffered the shame of being raped. Saturninus answers in the affirmative, leading Titus to cut Lavinia's throat in front of him.
Despite the many acts of violence perpetrated by the play's characters, Shakespeare conspicuously avoids depicting any of them as anything less than completely human. Whether Tamora begging for Titus and Lucius to spare her son's life in the opening scene or Titus himself expressing the profundity of his grief upon seeing his daughter raped and brutalised, Shakespeare foregrounds grief and the human cost of violence every bit as much as the violence itself.
This takes its most nuanced form in Aaron, nowadays the play's most controversial character. Aaron is a dark-skinned Moor and Tamora's secret lover. He not only commits gross acts of evil, but frequently states the pleasure he takes in doing so and desire to do more. He encourages Tamora's sons, Chiron and Demetrius, to rape Lavinia, frames Titus' sons for Bassianus' murder (which he instigated) and then cuts off Titus' hand on a false promise. Consequently, Aaron is often accused of being a racist creation due to the only black character in the play not only being the plotter behind many of its worst atrocities, but the only one who actively relishes in them.
What this reading neglects is Aaron's reaction to the birth of his son as a result of his secret tryst with Tamora in Act Four. To protect the dark-skinned baby from Saturninus' anger, he kills the nurse and goes on the run, later bargaining away his own life to save the child. From the moment of his son's birth, Aaron's actions are placed firmly in the context of his race, but from the opposite perspective to that of his critics. Aaron is frequently dismissed and diminished by other characters and despite his proclamations of his own inhumanity, it becomes clear how much of his cruelty is born of his treatment by others and the self-hatred it has engendered in him. Aaron's race is emphasized as he protects his son from being killed to alleviate Tamora's humiliation at their affair. Where the Nurse talks of the baby as a 'joyless, dismal, black, and sorrowful issue', Aaron challenges her racism right back, asking: 'Is black so base a hue?'
(He also tosses out a 'yo mama' joke, which only makes him more likeable.)
Aaron is an example of what is sometimes referred to in modern parlance (often over-zealously, but I digress) as 'stereotype threat'. Those around him treat him as a lowly, lesser and immoral creature, so his only means of gaining agency is to live down to those expectations. Once again, Shakespeare uses the audience's expectations against them, initially playing up the villainy of a supposedly 'uncivilised' character before turning the tables to reveal how it is the evil of those believing themselves civilised which caused the villainy he now commits. In his newborn son, Aaron sees a part of himself untouched by hate (from others or himself) and sacrifices himself to protect it. He is both the character who does the most evil, but in giving himself up to Lucius to ensure the survival of his son, also the one unblemished act of kindness. Aaron is a creation of racism, but contrary to his critics, the racism is not that of Shakespeare.
Far from its reputation for nihilistic violence, Titus is a reflection on the self-destructive nature of that violence and its fallout on societies and their people. The disparity between the play's reputation and its actual values was most potently demonstrated by reports following Donald Trump's election that Steve Bannon, creator of far-right news aggregator site, Breitbart, was obsessed with the play and wanted to adapt it to film during his days trying to become a producer in the nineties. Bannon, like many others, likely saw a play about evil Goth outsiders bloodily destroying a civilisation from within, aided by a black man relishing in his own cruelty. What Bannon missed is that the real villains of the play are men like him and Trump, those who seek to elevate themselves by dehumanising others. Though criticised for the bloody violence it presents on-stage, Shakespeare's real target is the barbarity lurking within us all and the illusions of civility we create to justify it.
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