Titus Andronicus notes

• introduction by Jonathan Bate
• Value of play
• Confront violence: shocking and playful
• Complicated and sophisticated
• Dramatic achievment
• Space and Structure
• Staging cues state fundamental meanings—opposite doors; goths and romans
• Triple layered performance—balcony, stage and pit
• Distinction dissolved—cruel irreligious piety
• Most crimes undertaken out of love of children
• Structure and setting: act 1 is rome and struggle for power; act 2 is woods and dominated by pit—place of sex and violence unritualized and uncivilized
• The woods
• Femaile genitals
• Disgust and threat and violence—mouths, pits, death
• Rape is characteristic
• Comedy and grief—chiron and demetrius
• Decorums of dramatic expectation disintegrate along with roman honor
• Titus plays the fool like Hamlet and Lear
• Symmetries: opening burial and final abuse of corpse of tamora and half burial of Aaron
• Romans and goths
• Representation of government is incoherent—election and heredity; all institutions crammed in
• Translatio imperii—england, rome, troy
• Trojan war, gallic war, trojans vs. latins; lavinia
• Goths vs italians—germanic protestants vs. roman catholics
• Tacitism--germania
• Revenge
• Titus takes over Tamora’s thatrical performance—all the worlds astage
• Revenge is not an allegorical god, but a human creation
• Titus as dramatist; the cook; the perverse tragedian; ritualized violence
• Revenge is set against justice, but also is justice; public revengers are legitimated—Augustus, Henry IV of france
• Revenge, revolution, sets new order in place—cf. English civil war, grand old cause
• Passionating grief
• Senecanism
• Death is rest
• Stoicism
• Furor
• Rhetorical tragedy: importance and value of expressing grief—expression through utterance, writing or pantomime
• Reading and rape
• Renaissance obsession with problem of meaning
• Interpreting signs
• Movement from speech to writing
• "when characters are not revenging or raping, they spend their time reading"…and writing
• signifying potential of language
• plays on words
• display of Lavinia’s raped body is second rape
• her rape and death may be read as price of Lucius knitting together of Rome
• women silenced, mutilated or demonized
• Theatrical Life
• Early stagings
• The peachum sketch—emblematic reading of emblematic situations
• The german staging with notes of 1620
• Ritualistic style
• Attention to 3.1.
• Adaptations
• Eighteenth century version gives more prominence to Moor—restoration refashioning that accentuates questioning distinction between romans and moors.
• Aron ends up eating the baby
• Aldridge’s victorian version is bowdlerized
• Stylization or Intimacy
• Post rape scene is problematic
• Visual stylization—vivian leigh with ribbons coming out of her mouth 59—Post Artaudian theatre—ritualization
• Most of language left out
• Deborah Warner left in all the words—Stanley wells commentary and Dessens 62
• Difficulty of looking at mutilated woman
• Rucker’s 1988 Santa Cruz production: tore robe to tourniquets as he spoke
• Our culture’s consciousness of vileness of rape
• Dessen’s book on Titus in performance
• Text notes
• 1.1
• Brothers --Saturninus vs. Bassianus-- contest throne—primogeniture vs. desert; freedom in choice
• Marcus says people have chosen Titus (Pius) the great general and benefactor ; rivals relinquish power peacefully
• Titus enters with Goth prisoners, to bury sons—decorous funeral—also 155; peace of death
• Luicius demands death of Alarbus; he’s the bringer of order at end
• Tamora begs mercy—the mother for her son: is sacrifice sacred or "cruel irrelgious piety" [Abraham story Gen 22]
• Romans called more barbarous than Scythians by Demetrius
• Alarbus limbs are lopped
• Lavinia apple of his eye
• Marcus offers and Titus abdicates throne for Saturninus who immediately turns rude, while Bassanius stays loyal to Titus and acts nobly
• Saturninus says he will marry Lavinia, takes prisoners offered by Titus, falls for Tamora and Lavinia says that’s fine 275
• Sat. frees prisoners
• Bassanius insists Lavinia is his bethrothed; Mutius and other brothers take away Lavinia; Titus kills his son Mutius out of outraged authority and loyalty to emperor
• Saturninus neverthess condemns Titus, rejects Lavinia and proposes to Tamora, who has seductive charms, contrasted to Lavinia’s virginal virtue
• Titus bewildered, first refuses then allows burial of Mutius at brothers entreaty
• Weird transition: My Lord—to step out of these dreary dumps—how comes it that the subtle queen of goths … 396
• Saturninus accuses Bassanius of rape, who tries to defend Titus, who begs forgiveness
• Tamora seems to convince Sat. to relent, advising him to only appear to do so, promising revenge on T. [Dissembling and trickery]. She plays the peacemaker
• Everyone invited to celebrate at a hunt.
• Aaron alone observes tamora’s rise credited to her wiles
• Demetrius and Chiron engage in brotherly squabble over Lavinia—a new triangle…the third
• Aaron brings them together with plan for double rape in the woods, which they relish 628
• 2.1 happy hunting preliminaries—morning after wedding nights for both new couples
• 2.2 lots of exits and entrances—the wood sequence as in MND
• aaron buries gold; tamora and he get cozy—babbling brook, Dido and Aeneas; aaron wants to plot rather than make love—gives her phony letter to give to Sat.
• at Aaron’s coaching she starts a fight with Bassianus and Lavinia who accuse her and Aaron of liason
• she tells her sons to revenge the insult; they kill B. and throw him into hole and threaten Lavinia who speaks more outage to Tamora, then begs her mercy first for life and then for death
• Tamora cruelly refuses and mocks L. "let my spleenful sons this trull deflower" 189
• Aaron tricks titus sons Quintus and Martius to falling into pit with dead Bassanius
• Saturninus feigns horror at B’s death; false letter and bag of gold presented to incriminate the brothers
• Titus begs mercy for them—Tamora feigns interceding for them
• 2.3
• Lavinia is mutilated; Dem and Chir have fun with her
• Marcus finds her, dumb; then long speech
• 3.1
• Titus begs pity for Quintus and Martiuus from Tribunes and senators after they’ve already left the stage
• He insists on continuing; appears mad—carried away with his own language, like richard 2
• Lucius is banished; Marcus brings in lavinia [we’ve already seen the rape and the aftermath
• Titus accepts her but Lucius cant look; Titus proclaiming his own griefs and comforting her
• Offers to kiss her; long flowery baroque speech—the spectacle of suffering and eloquence in its face
• Handkerchief business; all crying
• Aaron asks that Titus chop of hand to ransom sons; marcus and lucius struggle to give up their hands
• Titus gets Aaron to cut off his hand 192
• Titus turns back to his lamenting for Lavinia
• Messenger comes back with his sons 2 heads and his hand—marcus and lucius comment; Lavinia kisses the heads
• Titus laughs; they vow revenge; Lucius leaves to raise army of Goths.
• 3.2
• the fly scene
• 4.1
• lucius the boy followed by Lavinia—titus reads the story of her rape in Ovid and traced by her mouth in sand--in latin—a literary tragedy
• titus sends the boy with arms to chiron and demet
• 4.2
• boy delivers message; tamora delivered of child—aarons
• aaron protects his child and defends his blackness 100 and his offspring; aaron murders nurse and midwife and leaves rome with baby
• 4.3
• Marcus shooting arrows in air to try to bring back astraea; clown scene
• 4,4
• Saturninus kills clown; news of Lucius and goths; Sat threatened by titus
• Tamora thinks she can negotiate a truce through manipulating titus
• 5.1
• Lucius liberating army, mixing goths and romans
• They capture aaron who reveals all
• Invitation to truce feast
• 5.2
• Tamora tries to trick Titus masquing as revenge; he tricks her
• She goes away; he and lavinia ritualistically cut their throats 165; play the cook
• 5.3
• the feast; feeds them her sons and then kills Lavinia before them; tells hier its sons; then kills her
• Saturninus kills titus and lucius kills saturninus
• Baby saved titus mourned tamora thrown to birds aaron buried
• Order restored
• Class notes
• Photos from Globe
• Bear-bating; the liberties; three fold levels; audience participation
• The tiring house
• Titus andronicus in shakespeare in love—John webster’s favorite
• Public executions and dismemberment
• Law as theatre of revenge
• Ralegh poem—what kind of world is this
• A wilderness of tigers
• Shifting alliances
• Revenge
• Madness
• Cruel loving parents
• No justice
• Is there justice in this play—is Lucius punished?
• Why is this acceptable to us and not to 18^th century—not to 1950’s: perception of violence of state and of order—post Vietnam, post Enron
• Revenge principle of gratification; symmetry and order