37 Days of Shakespeare, Day 37 (The Series Finale!): Titus Andronicus

The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus, first broadcast April 27th, 1985 (a year after the previous one)

• When was it written? Perhaps sometime between 1588 and 1593. Maybe his 6th play and probably his first tragedy.
• What’s it about? I’m too disgusted to regurgitate this loathesome plot. Suffice it to say that it has a horrific rape, a woman forced to eat her own sons, and not one, not two, but three behandings.
• Most famous dialogue: None
• Sources: Bits of the Gesta Romanorum, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Seneca’s play Thyestes, etc.
• Best insult: The only insult that stood out was really racist and I don’t want to reprint it here.
• Best word: None stood out.
• Best production of this play I’ve seen: I’ve never read it or seen it.
• Notable Names in the BBC Adaptation: Trevor Peacock returns as Titus.

How’s the cast? 

• They’re all fine. They actually cast a Black man as the Moor this time (unlike when they cast Anthony Hopkins as Othello) and Hugh Quarshie relishes the evil role.

How’s the direction by Jane Howell?

• Howell, who did such a great job with the Henry VI plays, can’t save this terrible, terrible play. Unlike those plays, the set and production design here are drab and unimaginative. The pseudo-spooky cross-dissolves between scenes feel tacky in that BBC Doctor Who sort of way.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: There Are Always Good Reasons to Go Chronologically

So now that we’re all done, let’s return to a question we began with, all those years ago when we began this series: Should I have done these plays in the BBC order or in the order they were (maybe) written? In some ways, it’s worked out to do the BBC order, but in other ways it hasn’t.

It’s a real problem when it comes to a play like this, which is in conversation with Othello (almost surely a later play). In retrospect, I can see how Othello revisits this play and tries to do a better job. Both plays feature white women in love with Moors, but in this early play Shakespeare clearly finds that union inherently revolting, while in Othello, though the relationship is equally doomed, the possibility that it could have been a good thing is very present. Othello is a deep, rich, three-dimensional character, capable of both good and evil, whereas Aaron the Moor in this play is as black-hearted as he is black-skinned, in a two-dimensional all-too-easy way.

Likewise, when we did our penultimate play, Love’s Labour’s Lost, I found myself wishing I’d seen it before A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which replicates elements of it. And I’d become convinced that all of Shakespeare’s wives were innocent of adultery before I finally watched his first three plays (the Henry VI plays) and found that he started his career with a very untrue wife indeed. And there are other things I could have traced the development of, such as his feelings toward democracy or homosexuality.

So, in the end, I think I probably made a mistake, and would have gotten more out of this series if I’d read the plays in their probable order. (But it sure would have been rough beginning with three four-hour Henry VI plays. I ended up really enjoying when I got to them later, but if I’d had to start with them, this thing might have ended before it started.)

Storyteller’s Rulebook: If Something Is Tasteless, Can It Still Be Tasty?

I had been warned about this play for years, but nothing could have prepared me for how stomach-churning and tasteless it is. Utterly gruesome and deeply unpleasant to watch.

If you’ve been listening to my new podcast “A Good Story Well Told,” you know that I couldn’t stand the Kill Bill movies because of the rape and other violence toward women. Well this play makes those movies look like Strawberry Shortcake. The only reason I finished watching the Kill Bill movies was because I felt I had to for the podcast, and, to put it mildly, the only reason I finished watching this play was because I felt I had to for this blog, especially because it was the last one and I was already massively invested in this project.

But here’s the thing: The Kill Bill movies are wildly popular and even this play has its defenders. When Julie Taymor moved from Broadway to movies she was given a blank check to do anything in the world she wanted. She used up that whole check and then some on an adaptation of this play.

She seemed to be saying, “Sure, it’s tasteless, but also tasty.” Surely, as a mature adult, she must have found the play revolting on some level, but she seems to have found it revolting in an appealing way.

Personally, I don’t get it. For me, tasteless almost always means taste-less. I never enjoy feeling revolted, or revolting others. James Kennedy kept trying to get me to watch Rick and Morty and I couldn’t even handle that (though, once again, it’s very popular). If you write something like this, you’re going to lose a lot of good people as fans (not all good people, but some). To what end? I don’t understand the impulse.

I am hereby declaring this to be Shakespeare’s worst play. I would say that it’s a bummer to end this way, but it’s not surprising. The BBC let directors choose their favorites, which is why we ended up with a lot of duds towards the end. This was the figurative bottom of the barrel, and you can tell from that broadcast date that it aired a full year after episode 36, bringing the series to a belated, revolting end.

But this has been a good series! I’ve learned a lot and I hope you have, too. If you haven’t read the whole thing, now’s a great time to explore them.  And I may have a few wrap-up posts coming next.

After that: I launch a new(ish) 89 part series. I’m not even kidding.