Titus Andronicus is one of Shakespeare’s bloodiest and least
frequently produced plays. Whether
penned by a player from Stratford or a nobleman, it is generally agreed to be
an early and simplistic play. I had not
been wild about seeing it, but we have a local company that has been producing
the plays for a long time, they are only one of four companies in the U.S. to
have produced the entire canon of 38 plays, and they have recently moved into a
new building – their old theater was terrible.
The new one is a smaller scale version of the Globe and it is lovely. We have been wanting to see a performance in
the space for some time and this nicely fit into our need to have a date. As a kicker, this play has been produced recently
at the Stratford Festival in Canada – where they often choose plays with an eye
towards helping the U.S. think about just what the heck it is currently doing.
If it is true, as Allan Bloom claims, that Shakespeare
invented the human – at least on the stage, but perhaps more generally – this plays
counts very few humans in its cast. This
makes sense from the perspective that it is a play from a playwright who is not
just learning his craft, but is about to set about upending it. But first he has to produce something
recognizable. And the odd thing was that
this play was easier to watch for me, a person who is far from a Shakespearean
specialist, than many of the later, greater plays (Hamlet
as perhaps the greatest) have been. The
language was more immediate. The plot is
straightforward, and the characters are cartoons – with the exception of
Aaron – the moor. Aaron is a black slave who
creates chaos and disruption – and whose motives are unclear – unlike everyone
else on the stage.
I think that the pleasure we had – if you can call watching
people get brutally murdered one after the other for three hours pleasure – was
greatly enhanced by the staging. The
director chose to set the play in some nebulous time in the silent movie era –
and had witty silent film synopses projected ahead of each scene, as well as
using projection to let the players and the audience know what had occurred off
stage. We were also invited to
participate as Roman Citizens watching the play and rooting for various
characters – and helping others at various points – our votes were being
courted or we were hiding planted evidence that would lead to miscarriages of
justice. And the characters were played
as cartoons – they weren’t enhanced or complicated – in fact they were played
as types rather than as persons. It felt almost campy - but not in an arch way - instead it felt like camp was how this play was intended to be played.
Titus Andronicus returns from a war with the Goths. He has been successful, but at great
cost. He brings back Tamora, queen of
the Goths, her three sons and her moor/slave Aaron as a set of war trophies, but he also brings back the
ashes of 21 of his 25 sons, each of whom has died in battle, as well as his four remaining
sons who also fought. Titus' first act of celebration on
his return is to execute Tamora’s eldest son in front of her and the Romans as
a means of celebrating his victory. He
does this despite Tamora’s entreaties, and we see that she is bent on revenge.
While Titus was away, the emperor of Rome has died, and Titus brother has convince
the Senate to allow Titus to run against the two sons of the emperor in a three
way election for emperor, but Titus – demonstrating his fatal flaw of fealty to
authority – instead endorses and for all practical purposes enthrones the dead
emperor’s eldest son, Saturninus, a vain and shallow fool, as the next emperor. Saturninus was played with
somewhat effeminate airs in the production that we saw and they called attention to the essential silliness of the character. Titus’s choice is a bit of a surprise as the
younger son, Bassianus, is betrothed to Titus’ daughter Lavinia, and it would have
been a better family based choice to have nominated the younger son, and this underscores that, for Titus, there was no real choice. The eldest son will lead. And, more centrally, Titus will do what is called for by culture, tradition, and those who are in power.
No sooner does Saturninus get elevated to the throne than he
plucks Lavinia from his brother and insists that he will marry her despite her love
for Bassianus because he loves her and he is, after all, emperor. Bassianus, who is the
beloved of the people, and who is annoyingly and simperingly good natured and
well intentioned, is, despite his conflict avoidant style, mortified by having
his bride stolen from him – as are Lavinia’s brothers – Titus’s remaining
children. Titus sides with the emperor,
continuing to be the dutiful and rule bound man that he is – and is so furious
with Bassianus and his children that he fights with them to convince them to
support the emperor, and, in the process, kills his youngest remaining son (I
did say the play was bloody, didn’t
I? Just wait...). After Saturninus has set Titus’
family against itself he recants and decides instead to marry Tamora, who is elevated
from war trophy/slave to empress by this move – and Titus is now ruled by and must, according to his own code, show fealty to the woman he has
defeated, and to the woman who has sworn vengeance against him.
As in King
Lear, all of this set up to the motion of the play takes place in the
opening scene and before we have really settled into our seats. And, as in King Lear, the rest of the action
is an untangling of these events and the seemingly preordained way that this must needs happen. This play, though,
really does that ruthlessly. In due
time, Tamora’s remaining two sons murder Bassianus and frame Titus’s younger
two remaining sons. After they have done
this deed, they rape Lavinia who implores Tamora not to let them do it, but Tamora,
intent on revenge, eggs the boys on.
After raping her, they rip out her tongue and cut off her hands so that she can neither speak nor write about what they have done to her. Meanwhile Titus is told that he can save his
boys who have been sentenced to death by cutting off his hand and sending it to
the emperor – which he does, but this turns out simply to be a ruse cooked up
by Aaron to increase Titus’ pain. The
emperor sends the boys heads and Titus’ hand back to Titus in bags and Banishes
Titus’ remaining son from Rome.
Not surprisingly, next time we see Titus, he appears to be
mad. He is, however, still, underneath
it all, the crafty general and he has discovered that it was Tamora’s sons who
raped his daughter and killed her husband, and he knows that the emperor killed
his children, so he has hatched his own plan for revenge, sending his one
remaining son – somewhat crazily, in my mind – to lead the Goths back to Rome
to fight the emperor (why would the Goths welcome as their leader one of the
people who just defeated them in order to go on a quest to kill their
queen?). In any case, when Tamora comes
calling dressed as revenge and brings her sons dressed as rape and murder,
Titus, playing the mad man, appears to be taken in, and allows the sons to stay
with him – where they plan to cause more mischief, but he turns the tables on
them and kills them, bakes them in a pie, and invites the emperor and his wife –
their mother, for dinner.
Meanwhile, Tamora has given birth to a child but that child
has black skin. The child is Aaron’s –
and Aaron is, completely uncharacteristically, totally taken by it. He falls in love – as father’s do – and becomes
an idiot, cooing and loving on it.
Tamora’s plan had been to kill the thing, but Aaron will have none of
that and, instead, he substitutes a white baby from some local Goths and kills everyone who knows
anything about the actual child. He then
heads back to Goth, all in love with his child.
Unfortunately, he runs into Titus' son, who apprehends him. Before he is put to death, he entices the son
with information that he knows – so the son gives him a temporary reprieve to
hear the information, and Aaron confesses to being behind the killing of
Bassanius, the framing of Titus’s other two sons, the cuckolding of the emperor
with Tamora, and seems to be quite proud of all this.
The final scene is a doozy.
Dinner at Titus’ place – the emperor and empress eating crow pie. When they discover what it is, Titus kills
his daughter in order to undo the shame that he feels at her having been
defiled by the empress’ sons before killing the empress, then he is killed by
the emperor, the emperor is killed by Titus’ son, and the son, crowned emperor
by his uncle, sentences Aaron to be buried up to his neck and left to starve to
death – an ancient Greek means of killing the most evil of people. Order is restored. The end.
Wow. I think that is
the most time that I have spent in any post spitting out the plot of a movie,
play or book. I think that is because I
really wasn’t interrupted by much that was of psychoanalytic interest, and I think that, in turn, is because this is a very plot driven rather than character driven
play. The people here just aren’t that
interesting.
I think it is mildly interesting that there are two prominent
female characters. Lavinia is mostly a
prop though, and her suffering – as anguishing as it is – is not understood or
appreciated by her father. Despite their
appearing to be of one mind about the revenge (not hard to appear to be in
agreement when you can’t speak any lines), the harm that has been done to
Lavinia is experienced by Titus as having happened to him – not to her. His daughter – his pride – his property – was
despoiled. Her chastity was violently
broken – as if her unwillingness were not at issue. I think this can help us appreciate how
deeply and for how long women have been blamed for rape and have borne the
disgrace of it. Lavinia's death, of the many
deaths on the stage, was the only one that truly surprised me. I suppose that is good – and a sign that we
as a culture have moved along a bit – but it is also concerning, because I
should have known that she would be blamed – including by her father – for this
action. If you want to know why more
women don’t come forward about such things, we need look no further than this
play.
Tamora is also interesting because of her duplicity, but
that is relatively straightforward. She
is called forth to be the vain and foolish newbie emperor’s bride and she, no fool herself,
knows how to use him. But it feels a
little like putting a formula one race car driver on a tricycle. Yes, the driver will win the race, but the
competition from six year olds is hardly a challenge.
So Aaron becomes the character of interest, but largely out
of curiosity. He is, at least in this
production, largely outside or above the idiots around him. He is, by far, the strongest and most lithe
of the players. He is also the smartest,
coming up with the plot to frame Titus' remaining sons. He is most off balance in his interactions
with Tamora, where he is more smitten with her than she with him, which seems
out of character. Or perhaps she is more
focused on revenge, which Aaron has some investment in – but he is, after all,
a slave of the Goths, not a native of the country that was defeated by
Titus. We hear no pronouncement of his
attachment to Tamora’s son who is executed – at least in this production his
body language suggests that he doesn’t have a dog in that race. Does he carry out the revenge plot just to
stay in the good graces of Tamora? Is he
merely trying to butter up his paramour?
At the end, he is, as the reluctant wife pointed out,
unrepentant. He cares not a whit that he
has been directly responsible for the deaths of three men, about whom he cared
little, and that he has cut the hand off a fourth. Though he thought that the rape of Lavinia
was a childish act on the part of Tamora’s boys, he did not prevent it. We might think that he is cunning – or perhaps
psychopathic – meaning unmoved by the experiences of others. But he is so totally taken with his own child
– we realize that a human heart beats under that black exterior. And the issue of his skin color – despite those
(including myself) who consider race to be a US invention – is vivid in this
play. He is black – and this blackness
becomes a stain on his child – it marks his child, just as it has marked
him. And it is equated, in the language of the play,
with evil. But I think it is also
equated with his being an outsider – an other – the excluded one. The one who has no legitimate seat at the
table.
Part of Aaron’s glee at having a child is general, but part
of it is specific. His child is the
child of a high born woman – the queen of the Goths and the empress of
Rome. His child is royalty. How could that have happened to a man who is a
commoner – indeed, a slave? On the one
hand, all of his machinations as an outsider have bought him the ultimate
insider ticket. His progeny is in the
inner circle and carries not just free but royal blood. He, who has been the target of racist erasure
of who he is – he who has lurked outside the wheels of power, has been able to
exercise puppet master expertise in manipulating situations and he does not
feel guilty – he feels proud. If murder
and mayhem be the cost of inclusion, give me the bill, and I will pay in full.
So why do the Canadians want us to pay attention to this
play? Do they see us, at this time when
impeachment is in the air, as having the fatal flaw of fealty? Do they want to remind us that just because
someone has the title of emperor or president, that doesn’t mean they deserve
the title? That was my initial thought –
that they identified us with Titus and wanted to remind us to watch out for the
king. But I think that, perhaps, they
may also have wanted to warn us that there might be an Aaron in our midst. Aaron, the second son of Adam. Aaron, the one who was passed over – and who
responded with murder. The one who was
blinded by his having been excluded from the family, and so destroyed it. Are they pointing a finger at our president
who pursued the office not to do good or out of any kind of ideological verve,
but rather out of a wish to finally be included – to be considered up to
snuff. Were they exposing the snake in
the grass?
My hunch is that this is what they had in mind – or should
have had in mind. That said, I am worried about the
use of race as a means of marking outsiderness.
I think that we have done this since, well, I guess at least since the time
of Shakespeare. But I think that this is
a vehicle for a deeper truth. Yes there
is enmity between races, and between Goths and Romans, but this play is about
the enmity of an individual being excluded from a family – even though he was
able to demonstrate that he was not only up to snuff but above the members –
and attractive to the queen. I think
that whites (whatever they are) have long projected their disowned aggression
against oppressed others – frequently people of color – and then justified
their continued aggression as a need to contain the projected aggression.
If this play is a flat footed first attempt at tragedy – it was, I
don’t doubt – popular with those who lusted for blood and revenge (as referred
to in Shakespeare
in Love). Perhaps more importantly,
it portrayed quite clearly the prejudice and aggression of a culture against
those most disempowered within it – the women and the slaves. It is shocking but not surprising to find
this so clearly spelled out in a play from so long ago.
I have posted about other Shakespearean Plays including: Hamlet,
King
Lear, The
Taming of the Shrew, and a fanciful and lovely film about an imaginary Shakespeare
in Love. I have also posted about
the controversy about who Shakespeare might really be based on the books Will
of the World and Shakespeare by Another Name.
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