Titus Andronicus, an early tragedy and Roman play, is not the best loved of Shakespeare's output. It's crudely written in places, it's ultraviolent, and it's a problem play if problem means 'how are we supposed to get all that blood out of the costumes before tomorrow's matinee?' HOWEVER I think it's equal parts ace and totally underrated and here I plan to sell you on its vices and virtues. Certainly, it's hardly got the nuance or poetry of Hamlet or King Lear, both of which are also violent and revenge-y, but that's like saying you shouldn't watch Bad Taste or Meet the Feebles just because The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won a bunch of Oscars. I see the play as the American Horror Story of the Shakespearean canon: a gory, blackly funny, kinda queer exercise in 'throw it all at the wall and see what sticks' (sometimes literally), which is nonetheless underpinned by some serious pathos and a healthy serving of meaty family drama (oh see what I did there)(you will see if you don't know)(oh ha ha ha)(I am a very funny person).
We are in Rome and the Emperor has died. His two sons are vying for his spot - younger brother Bassianus, square-jawed good guy, and elder brother Saturninus, slimy creep - but the people want war hero and model Roman citizen Titus Andronicus to rule. Enter Titus, his four remaining sons, and some captured Goths - Tamora, the Queen, her lover Aaron the Moor (stay tuned for some vintage racism) and her sons Alarbus, Chiron and Demetrius.
"We need an offering to appease the spirits of my 21 sons who died in battle!" says Titus, noted horndog. "Sacrifice Tamora's eldest."
"Be merciful- you're a parent too!" cries Tamora. "Don't slaughter my son for shits and giggles!"
"Mmmmm nope hard luck" says Titus and Tamora's eldest gets the chop.
ATROCITY 1: Alarbus the Goth - limbs lopped off and entrails chucked in the sacrificial fire.
... and Titus's stone cold inability to show mercy - his view that to be noble is to be rigid, not empathetic - is where all the bad business starts, for in this first section Titus loses just about everything. His hard-on for playing things completely by the book leads to a few more fuck ups, and it's worth laying out the extensive machinations of the first act:
A succession: Titus's brother, Marcus, implores Titus to become emperor - but no, that's not the rules, so Titus says I'm a bit old and soldiery for that and Saturninus should take his father's place. Mistake #2, because Saturninus is seven kinds of awful.
A wedding?: Saturninus insists that Lavinia, Titus's lovely daughter, marry him. Titus says yes sure thing Emperor.
An elopement / abduction: Problem is, Bassianus and Lavinia are betrothed. Titus's family, who are looking at Titus increasingly like the mad uncle who no one wants to sit next to at Christmas, help the two love birds run away. (NB: much has been made of the fact that Lavinia doesn't seem to have a say in anything, and that rape also means the violent seizure and abduction of a woman: foreshadowing!) Titus is furious and kills one of his own sons for being so dishonourable, then disowns the rest.
ATROCITY 2: Mutius Andronicus - stabbed by his dad for being disobedient #jeezdad
A wedding!: Saturninus gives a big "fuck you!" to Titus, by rescinding all honour and telling him to disappear with the rest of his traitorous family, then a bigger "fuck you!" to Rome, by asking the captive Tamora to be his empress.
An interment: Titus's family comes back and convinces him to let Mutius be buried in the family tomb. "Thou art a Roman: be not barbarous" says Marcus, words that are written in neon and surrounded with flashing lights. Titus continues to struggle with the whole 'doing right by Rome' vs 'doing right by actual human beings' thing.
A set-up: Tamora comes across all pious and even-minded and asks Saturninus to show mercy and forgive Titus et al. for their misdemeanours... only to tell him in a great villainous aside that she plans on staging a violent revenge: "I'll find a day to massacre them all!" Saturninus and Tamora invite all their nice new friends on a hunt, because nothing ever goes wrong when vindictive people are stumbling round the woods with weapons. <<End of Act I>>
From here it's safe to say that everything turns to shit.
Over the course of the play Titus's world crumbles around him as Saturninus and Tamora's grip on the capitol increases, and he goes mad, or feigns madness, or rolls around in a sloppy combination of the two. Tamora's evil scheming is massively amplified by the machinations of her lover, Aaron the Moor. He is as villanous a character as you are likely to find and has just about zero redeeming qualities - see his lurid description of his hobbies in Act V Scene 1 - because, as he frequently tells us, his soul is as black as his skin #racism #reallyracist #itsquiteracist.
RACIST.
(In fairness, he makes a pointed comment later about the nature of institutional racism, but by then the evil black horse has bolted.)
The most terrible thing he does is encourage Chiron (dumb) and Demitrius (dumber) to rape Lavinia during the aformentioned hunt - something that Tamora goads on too. This draws from the story of Philomela from Ovid's Metamorphoses: Lavinia's hands and tongue are cut out so that she can't communicate the names of her attackers, but she eventually writes their names in the dirt by dragging a big stick around with her mouth #suggestive #literary.
That's getting ahead of things though - time to catch up, in order:
ATROCITY 3: Bassianus is stabbed and thrown in a pit
ATROCITY 4: Lavinia is raped and mutilated
ATROCITY 5: Titus cuts of his hand in ransom for his sons, wrongly imprisoned for Bassianus's murder...
ATROCITIES 6 & 7: ...but ha ha, Quintius and Martius Andronicus are executed anyway, and their heads and hands are delivered to their father #sickburn
ATROCITY 8: A nurse is stabbed because she knows Aaron is Tamora's baby daddy
ENTERTAINING DIVERSION: Aaron outlines all the violent, horrid and batshit crazy things he does for fun, such as dig dead people up and leave them by their loved ones' doors #punkd
ATROCITY 9: Titus takes Chiron and Demetrius, who are dressed up as Rape and Murder, and cuts their throats
ATROCITY 10: Chiron and Demetrius are baked into a pie and fed to all and sundry, including their mother! #mykitchenrules
ATROCITIES 11+: Half the remaining top billed cast are killed, Aaron is buried up to his chest and left to die, and no one has second helpings
So lots of terrible things happen and loads of critics say that this play is a bit pants. However, if the court will hear me out, the thing I like about this play is that, at the rotten stinking heart of it, it's all about family, the limits of honour and the need to connect with and protect one's own. Titus's myriad sorrows and their often affecting expression are placed centre stage for much of the piece in a manner that moves beyond two hours of 'why me?' Titus Andronicus plays domestic trauma and tragedy out on a much broader, more audacious stage and charts an equivalence between civic and domestic corruption that culminates in a big serving of (humble) people pie. The play is very blunt in showing that there's not a lot of difference, ultimately, between Tamora and Titus's ruthlessness, cruelty and bloodthirsty devotion to what they think is right; if anything, Tamora's foreignness only serves to heighten the audience's appreciation for the sort of awfulness that Titus has been up to out in the field by demonstrating that brutality knows no borders.
Also, the special effects people use up loads of chocolate sauce and that pie scene is pretty ace.
Verdict: Roman Grand Guignol is a dish best served piping hot. #tasty
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