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: #129757 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-08
• 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

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

Customer Reviews

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.

Shakespeare invented action films three centuries ago
Everything and even more has been written on this play, even that it was not authored by Shakespeare himself, as if it had any kind of weight in analyzing and appreciating the play. It has a perfect shakespearian pattern. Titus Andronicus, a victorious Roman general, comes back home and yields the emperor's throne that is proposed to him to the legitimate heir Saturninus. He also presents the newly chosen Emperor with his prisoners the Queen of the Goths, Tamora, and her two surviving sons, after he has dispatched the third son to the sacrificing altar on which his own four sons cut him up in pieces, limb from limb, and ungut him before burning these offerings for the satisfaction of their twenty one dead brothers. Along with these three war prisoners, understood as slaves that can be dismembered any time for just any kind of rite, comes Aaron, a black Moor with a Jewish name. His skin color will systematically be transferred to his soul and he will be depicted as thoroughly evil, irreligious and misbelieving. The Emperor accepts the present but instead of keeping them as slaves, pleasure slaves, even for the pleasure of a sacrifice or dismemberment, which would have been normal, he marries Tamora and promotes the two sons to princedom and Aaron to counselor to the Queen-Empress. This disturbs the natural order of Rome and it sends the story reeling on the most devilish trail. But we must keep in mind that this barbarity is normal if performed within the canons of Roman society. They only become evil when they go against these canons. The play will run its bloody course till the final rehabilitation or restoration of just Roman order in the person of the last surviving son of Titus Andronicus. The whole play is thus a long depiction of violence justified and sanctified by power, treachery in the name of pleasure for the treacherous one and pain for the victims. The objective is to inflict pain and inspire horror, fear, awe. But the play is filled with references to Greek or Roman myths, Philomel's and Lucrece's first of all, and many others. In the Elizabethan context it's even quite in phase when we think of the standard death penalty spectacle of the time, drawn-hanged-quartered-eviscerated-all-parts-and-guts-burnt- beheaded-and-the-head-set-on-a-pole-for-public-exhibition. Can we say as has been recently written by JDWActor on Everything2.com (October 19, 2006) that it is a comedy of violence? I think it's more than that. It is the attempt to invent an all-sensory show that does not require any intellectual effort nor imaginary work. We are bombarded with the real thing all along. Shakespeare has invented here what he will rarely do again, viz. an action play in line with modern hollywoodian action films or TV news programs. The objective is to shock the audience into enjoying the grossness of the depiction and situation. We can just wonder how they did it without modern special effects: hands are cutoff, heads are decapitated, throats are slashed, even two men are decapitated and bled on the stage. But it is all, even if extreme, Shakespeare. Think of the five dead on the stage in Romeo and Juliet for one example, two killed with a sword, one with a dagger and two poisoned. What's more the poetic style is intense and rich and dominated by birds and tigers brought together in the last few lines: "But throw her forth to beasts and birds of prey/ ...let birds on her take pity." Even if at times slightly sickening: "Lend me a hand and I will give you mine" says Titus Andronicus meaning every single word of it.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne