Where Titus Loses Everything

Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

For me, the play is a 4, but the edition is a 5. That's what I'm scoring here.

I expected to kinda hate this. I put off reading this particular play for years because of the reputation it has. Specifically, one of my early teachers maybe 50 years ago described it in a very unflattering (but humorously horrible) way. I remember being told about a character (Lavinia, as it turns out) having to take a severed hand in her teeth to get it offstage when there is a scene change. There's no curtain, so you've gotta get the characters to remove all the props, so I get the need, but it does sound ridiculous. And I'm not sure that scene really works, but having read it now I don't think it sinks the play, either. It isn't that different from the rest of the play.

Is the play itself bloody? Yeah. Was Rome bloody? Well, yeah. Did Roman Empire nobility have terrible values? IMO, yeah. Slave-holding, empire-building, people-oppressing, misogynistic... Pretty bad. And that's how they are in the play. Shakespeare just presents their bloody heads in all their gore and horror.

The story is horrible, but I found it entertaining as long as I embraced it as representing people living in a terrible, brutal system. Imagine a father who has lost almost all of his sons in war and is just fine with it. And is willing to kill one of his sons and deny him proper burial for opposing him. Titus is horrible because he's almost the perfect Roman general.

The vengeance story, Titus and his family against those who framed his sons and killed them and raped his daughter, is mostly satisfying. I was pretty okay with almost everything--except Titus killing his mutilated daughter. After all his errors and seeming redemption, why did he do that? Grrrrr. Just more misogyny on display, I guess. It's better for a raped daughter to die than live to remind him of her shame, they believed. Horrible.

But accepting the ugliness as part of the story, part of the social critique, part of the satire--which maybe requires taking a step back from pure suspension of disbelief--the play is biting and the language often brilliant, and the revenge is absolute. A lot of bad stuff happens, to good guys and bad guys (they're all bad guys, but go with it) but the final son of Titus Andronicus outlasts the villains. It's like a football game where both teams are wiped out except for a single running back on one side, and he limps off the field alone at the end of the game. Where he becomes the new emperor. (Something seriously wrong with that simile...)

I liked it and enjoyed reading it. I hate the horrors, naturally, but I think the play hates the horrors, too, so we're not really on opposite sides there. I'm definitely glad I finally read it.

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