Product Description

Titus Andronicus was the young Shakespeare's audacious, sporadically brilliant experiment in sensational tragedy. Its horrors are notorious, but its powerful poetry of grief is the work of a true tragic poet. Introducing this edition, E.M. Waith provides a fresh view of the play in its historical context as well as an original discussion of the famous `Peacham' drawing - the only surviving contemporary Shakespeare illustration. An illustrated account of performances, notably Peter Brook's production with Oliver as Titus, leads to an assessment of the play's qualities in the light of its critical reception. The eighteenth-century version of the play's probable source is given in one of the appendices.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #311101 in Books
• Published on: 1998-09-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Shakespeare's most violent and gory play, Titus Andronicus was written in 1592, and represents the dramatist's first foray into the popular genre of revenge tragedy (many editors argue with at least one other collaborator). The result was spectacular, including scenes of murder, human sacrifice, rape, bodily mutilation and cannibalism. Set in late-imperial Rome, the action begins with the Roman general Titus Andronicus and his triumphant return from wars with the Goths. Leading Queen Tamora and her sons as prisoners, Titus stumbles into a power struggle between Saturninus and his brother Bassianus. Titus fatally backs Saturninus, who rapidly turns on the old general and marries Tamora. The implications for the Andronicus family are disastrous. More of Titus' sons are killed, his daughter Lavinia is brutally raped by Tamora's sons, and as Titus begins his descent into madness and despair he even has his own hand cut off in an act of awful trickery. As Titus plots his bloody revenge, he reflects that "Rome is but a wilderness of tigers". The ending is one of the most gruesome conclusions to any dramatic tragedy, and leaves Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs looking quite restrained. Although the play has put audiences off for centuries due to its apparently gratuitous violence, more recently critics have discerned something more to it than pure shock, but that might say more about us than the Elizabethans. .--Jerry Brotton

Review
"[An] excellent edition."--Linda Anderson, Virginia Tech

About the Author
Eugene M. Waith is Professor Emeritus at the Department of English, Yale University.

Customer Reviews

Arden Shakespeare
In some respects I think it'd be rather presumptuous of me to attempt to review Shakespeare. Someone so well known and influential wouldn't benefit from my opinions on their work, plus there are more scholarly and concise reviews out there. But I can comment on these Arden versions. Of all the Shakespeare I've read I've always found the Arden copies to be well laid out and to have excellent commentary and notes on the text. They really add to your understanding of Shakespeares outstanding plays and introduce you to the depth in his work. They have superb paper quality and are bound well, withstanding repeated readings and intensive study. For your collection of Shakespeare you can't do much better than Arden publications, some are quite hard to get hold of but it's worth the effort.

Excellent
Some critics have dismissed Titus Andronicus as immature; if this view has put you off picking the play up and reading it, I'd say: don't listen to the critics! I personally think Titus is an amazing play, absolutely macabre, most of the time you don't know whether you should laugh or cry. If you like dark, black humour this will surely appeal to you. Consider the reaction of Titus when he sees his daughter Lavinia with her hands chopped off - rather than flying into rage or tears or hysteria, he delivers an elaborate recital of rhetorical poetry brimming with metaphors of blood and grief. Yes, it is violent, and yes, the word blood appears very frequently, as do mutilations and cannibalism, but the contrast between what happens and the beauty of the poetry that emerges out of that savageness is really striking. And those accusing Shakespeare of heartlessness should remember that he did not create the plot, but based his play on a story well-known to all Elizabethans, as he did with all his plays.

Very good edition, with useful and helpful notes, and an informative introduction to the play.

An Invitation to the Hunt
Titus Andronicus was hardly thought of in English theatrical circles until Laurence Olivier mounted a production in the 1950's. Olivier had a superb cast, including Vivien Leigh as Lavinia and Anthony Quayle as the Moor, Aaron.

The production toured all over Europe, and those who saw it tended not to forget it. In a continent that had recently experienced carpet-bombing and the death-camps the resonance of Titus was obvious.

We cannot argue that the violence perpetrated by Titus and his opponents is implausible. Peter the Great of Russia killed his own son, as Titus does. In Shakespeare's England it was commonplace to be branded for certain crimes, and noses and ears were regularly lopped (this is not to mention injuries from sword-fighting). Today we would expect to survive the loss of a hand, even if it were not sewn back on. In Shakespeare's time such an injury might easily be fatal, due to shock, loss of blood and poor hygiene.

Shakespeare seems to have seen in Titus a subject very close to that of Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, a very popular play at the time. Both plays have an old man as the central character, both old men are driven crazy by grief and revenge.

Titus is yet another Shakespearian work where a man is wooed by an older woman (think of Twelfth Night, Venus and Adonis, and Henry VI where King Edward marries a widow). Shakespeare himself married an older woman, Anne Hathaway. Unfortunately the alliance between Saturninus and Tamora in Titus Andronicus does not end well: they are both murdered, having first accidentally eaten part of one or two of her sons.

It's easy to regard Lavinia, who is pruned like a rose-bush in this play, as an innocent victim. Well, she's certainly not as innocent as the heroines of some of the later plays, such as Miranda in The Tempest or Marina in Pericles. She gives as good as she gets, verbally when she has a tongue and, when she hasn't, she takes part in her father's crimson revenge.

Throughout the play, Shakespeare uses a regular, tight blank verse that seems to march to an inevitable dark conclusion.

The recent film, Titus, starring Antony Hopkins, is warmly recommended. It looks like it is set in a nightmarish alternative future, where the Roman Empire continued into the 20th Century.