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?