|
Titus Andronicus--
Below you will find a large amount of texts and topics relevant to the play, as well as resources, which include links to outside sources, which may be used as guides, sources of information, etc. Click on each Section Title below to view the corresponding information.
Titus Andronicus (1588-94) is an early experiment in tragedy, and revenge tragedy in particular, a genre that Shakespeare would develop and complicate in Hamlet. Read Titus with care, as you will discover echoes of the play in a range of Shakespeare's later tragedies (particularly King Lear and Othello).
Reading Topics:
1. Language and Meaning
Titus Andronicus was immensely popular from the late-sixteenth to the early-seventeenth century. It fell into some disrepute with Shakespeare critics of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, who challenged the play on the basis of aesthetic form and dramatic power, and considered this play a far cry from the dramatic intensity and psychological searching characteristic of Shakespeare's later tragedies. As you read, however, consider the play's attention to aesthetic and rhetorical excess (lofty speeches, poetic grandeur, ornate or hyperbolic language), and consider the relationships between representational excess and the violent horrors that mark this early "tragedy of blood." Is this a case of indecorous composition, the signs of an immature Shakespeare experimenting with forms of speech at times jarringly at odds with the spectacle of death and dismemberment? Importantly, might there be a relationship between rhetorical excess and the violence that the play stages and that the characters within it consistently confront?
2. Genre
As you read Titus Andronicus, consider the specific strategies for the representation of violence. Does tragedy at any point in this play border on the comic or the absurd? If so, where and why? What is it about the representation of violence that may lead a potentially tragic and passionate situation into one that inspires laughter? (You might respond to this question with specific moments of the play in mind, but also with reference to your own framework for understanding the work of violence in a range of genres of film, literature and other media).
3. Film
The recent film of Titus by Julie Taymor (with Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange, Alan Cumming, and others) is highly recommended, but only after you have read the full play. The decisions Taymor makes provide an interpretation of the play as largely tragic. If you have a chance to see the film this week or over the weekend, what decisions might you make (in terms of casting, cuts, camera angles, scenic juxtapositions, recurrent imagery, line-delivery, etc.) that differ from Taymor's? What decisions did she make that made you think twice about themes, characters, and imagery within the play?
"Renaissance": rediscovery or "rebirth" of texts from the classical past.
Central classical influences in Titus Andronicus:
--Seneca (Lucius Annaeus Seneca, lived between 4 BC and 65 AD). Seneca was an important classical precedent for Renaissance tragedy (as Plautus was for comedy). It is generally assumed that Seneca's ten Latin plays were meant to be recited in private groups, not "performed" (hence you'll find many long and declamatory speeches in his plays). For those interested in a Senecan drama of revenge, cannibalism and excess woe, see Thyestes (a short play that informs aspects of Titus Andronicus).
--Ovid's Metamorphoses (Ovidius Naso lived between 43 BC-17/18 AD). Particularly important for Titus is the myth of Philomela, marked by sexual violation by Tereus, loss of tongue or "voice," weaving story to communicate to sister (and wife of Tereus), Procne, followed by subsequent revenge by cannibalism (Tereus is made to dine on his own son). Allusions to this myth surface throughout Titus Andronicus (see, for example, 2.3.43, 3.4.26-7, 38-43; 4.1.47-48; 5.2.194). In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Procne and Philomela are transformed to birds, a "metamorphosis" and form of transcendence truncated in Shakespeare. But where do the birds emerge in the final lines of the play?. For the interested, the full text of Ovid's Metamporphoses is easily available online, and you can read sections of Ovid and more on the myth of Philomela at: http://www.webwinds.com/thalassa/philomela.htm.
--Mythology of Saturn/Chronos: Saturn castrated his father, usurped his position bringing time, motion and force into the world (ruling by "might"), devoured own children to secure his position. Saturn was dethroned by his surviving son, Zeus. Also, to be "under the sign of Saturn" in this period was to be subject to melancholy and grief. What might it mean, given these details, for a political and theatrical community to be under the rule of "Saturninus" in Titus Andronicus?
Further questions to consider: How does Shakespeare alter the myth of Philomela in Titus? How does Ovid's Metamporphoses come into play throughout the drama? Just a few of many details you might consider: instead of one man violating Philomela, two men violate Lavinia; instead of one son, two sons are cooked in a pie; Philomela loses tongue, Lavinia loses tongue and hands (weaving and other forms of manual agency cut off). The concept of "revenge" encodes violent repetition always bordering on excess. Excess is built in, not only to the structure of revenge in Titus, but into Shakespeare's revival of the classical past.
As you consider the structure of repetition integral to "re-venge," take note of Shakespeare's use of repetition in smaller linguistic and dramatic units throughout the play (words, phrases, scenes, "stories"). How many actual revenges are there in the play (hint: Titus, Tamora, Chiron and Demetrius, Aaron, Saturninus, Lucius, all imagine their actions as acts of "revenge." Have I missed any?) What might be the significance of the piling up of revenge plots in this play? Why do you think the central events of the play are re-narrated by Titus, by Aaron, and by Lucius-at separate moments-toward the end of the play? This aspect of re-narration will resurface in Hamlet.
Tragedy: Whereas Seneca, rather than Aristotle, was the central model for English Renaissance tragedy, it is worth noting that Aristotle's Poetics (a response to his teacher Plato, who wrote in The Republic about the dangers of tragic imitation in the ideal republic), recuperated the value of tragedy as an edifying device for the representation of probability, the logic of cause and effect, and "error." Importantly, Aristotle's model of tragedy is hierarchical (hence the tragic "fall" of kings vs. tragic stumble of clowns or cobblers). For Aristotle, comedy is a socially and conceptually inferior "genre," but Shakespeare often mixes comedy and tragedy, not to mention history, revenge, and romance. Keep an eye out for genre mixing throughout the plays this quarter.
Revenge Tragedy: Revenge pivots around confusions between "justice" and "revenge" and tends to feature injury done to the socially dis-empowered by those in power, such as kings or emperors (calling into question the very relationship between "public" social justice and "private" anti-social revenge). For a crucial essay on revenge, see Francis Bacon's "Of Revenge". Note in particular relationship between revenge and law, and revenge and the perpetuation of psychological injury (the revenger keeps his own "wounds green," hurting himself in the process of conspiring to hurt another).
Initial observations on Titus Andronicus:
Notice striking symmetries of action in the play (note, for example, multiple pairs of opposing "brothers," symmetrical acts of revenge, uses of the side entrances/exits of the stage to render opposing camps visual, the attention to rising and falling, ascending and kneeling, rhetorical forms of elevation and decline). But also, consider the blurring or confusion between clear oppositions in the very opening act (and throughout the play). In class, we noted blurred distinctions between:
Romans / Goths
civilization / barbarism
"irreligious"/ religious piety
justice / revenge
learning / ignorance
villainy / artistry
military action / domestic interaction
honorable action / homicidal fury
deliberative actions / rash behavior
As you read, consider the significance of recurrent metaphors in the play: the body politic, for example, disorganized and "dismembered" without "a head on headless Rome" (1.1.189). Note the "broken limbs" of the politic to be sewn again "into one body" toward the close of the play (5.3.72), including hands, tongues, tears, blood, and other aspects of embodiment lacking order or moderation (including bodily acts such as eating and starvation).Other images to keep an eye out for include animal imagery, hunting metaphors, ravenous appetites, animate scenery (the woods, pit, "swallowing womb," as if nature has a will and agency of its own), acts of reading, writing, and "acting" or instances of metatheatricality (a revenge play, for example, featuring characters "performing" the character of Revenge, Rape and Murder), relations between children and parents; inverted process of "birth" and regeneration.
Please continue to ponder the questions above and work to understand the complexity of the character of Aaron. How does Aaron complicate the logic of color in the play, and the logic of succession? How might Shakespeare call into question the "otherness" of Aaron in both cultural and moral terms? How does the refusal of "pity" and of proper burial of Aaron and Tamora in Act V echo earlier moments in the play, and how might you stage the restoration of order end of the play?
|
