Look, I get it. The fifteen and sixteen hundreds were brutal. But what I don’t appreciate, William, is reading a play that includes a man being burned alive and his arms cut off, filicide, a man being murdered and thrown into a pit and also the brutal raping and mutilation of a woman.
Many of Shakespeare’s plays are saturated with violence – his most famous romance ends in two teenagers committing suicide, nine out of eleven central characters die in Hamlet and Macbeth ends in a beheading. But the difference in these plays is that the violence, whilst still being horrific, seems more intentional. The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet and Othello, for example, is the utter destruction left at the end, in both cases, completely preventable destruction. In Macbeth, you watch the steady decline of sanity in both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, their penance for killing for their own gain. Hamlet…look I’ve never been a fan of Hamlet, I admit some of the deaths feel a bit ridiculous and as though the script was due tomorrow. But there are still moments in that final frenzied act that have the raw emotion Shakespeare is so beloved for – Hamlet’s despair feels genuine. The same cannot be said for Titus Andronicus.
Honestly, the level of unchecked violence in this early play is uncomfortable to read, and not in the way other violent stories feel uncomfortable to read. Titus Andronicus seems to revel in cruelty itself. The raping of Lavinia is disgusting, so much so it was the first time I have genuinely read a Shakespeare play and wanted nothing to do with ever seeing a live version. The question of why Titus Andronicus is just so horrific is something scholars have dedicated much time to, with Alan Dessen in his 1989 volume of Shakespeare in Performance: Titus Andronicus, saying that the play is one of Shakespeare’s “most Elizabethan” plays.
Given the fact this is one of his earliest works, written in 1593, you could argue that Shakespeare wasn’t quite the cultural behemoth he would become, and therefore was trying to appeal to the plays and their audiences that had come before him. But I’m not willing to use that argument to justify the sheer level of grotesqueness in the play. Perhaps someone could say that I’m too naïve or gentle to appreciate Titus Andronicus for what it is, but honestly, I don’t really care if that is the reputation I gain from saying that seeing a woman mutilated isn’t for me.
The sole plot of Titus Andronicus appears to be ‘how far can we push an audience before they vomit.’ The plot (for me) lacks any actual emotional depth, leaving it more akin to murder porn, or cheaply made slasher films that care more about how horrifying they can make a death rather than tell a compelling story. My advice to you, dear reader? Just read Macbeth instead.
“Titus Andronicus, by William Shakespeare” by Make It Old is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0