First let me stop and say that it is somewhat distressing that I have now put more time and effort into this Shakespeare project than I did in 90% of my undergraduate courses. Combined.
Now, on to what was really not all that terrible. The introductory reading made me think that this would be a [Titus kills X] every third line kind of play. The actual body count wasn’t even close to "Die Hard" (which for a violent movie has a really low death-toll). The only death I found objectionable was that of the Clown towards the end, who was hanged for delivering a message - which content the audience never learns.
Otherwise all death and mayhem is plot driving or plot driven. The heroic general Titus returns to Rome to find the emperor has died, and is elected emperor. He refuses the honor, and instead lends his support to the elder of the two sons of the former emperor: Saturninus. In grief of Titus’ loss of 21 of 25 of his sons in battle, (or in honor of their deaths) he sacrifices the son of the queen of the Goths, despite her fervent pleas. For this act, she spends the remainder of the play plotting and driving revenge on Titus. She marries the new emperor, encourages the rape and disfigurement of Titus’s daughter Lavinia, and conspires in the murder of the emperor’s brother. Of course, she’s not at all alone in her plotting, as she is encouraged and assisted by the evil Aaron, her lover. Aaron, a Moor, for his part, incites the sons of Tamora (the Gothic queen) in their murder of Basianus (Saturnine’s brother), their rape of Lavinia, and silencing her (I interpret his encouragement to be an incitement to murder her, but the brothers instead cut out her tongue[a la the rape and disfigurement that happens in Ovid’s Metamorphosis], but take the extra step of cutting off her hands to keep her from writing down the names of her attackers. (This tactic fails when Lavinia writes their names in the dirt with a stick between her stumps.) Aaron also lures Titus’s two sons into the pit where Basianus was killed, gives Saturninus a letter which implicates them, and buries gold to make them look like hired murderers, gets them condemned to death, then tricks Titus into cutting off his own hand to save his sons. Aaron returns Titus’s hand to him along with the heads of Titus’s sons.
Titus’s revenge follows a few scenes of madness, when he directs his remaining son, who has been banished for trying to save his brothers, to bring back the Goth army. When the army comes, Tamora tries to trick Titus by acting in disguise, but is tricked by Titus into leaving her sons with him. A parley (negotiation) is held at Titus’s home, along with a feast. At the feast Titus reveals to the emperor that Tamora’s sons raped and disfigured Lavinia - whom Titus kills to save her from her shame - and the emperor demands that they be brought to him to be punished. It is then that Titus reveals that the feast is actually the sons baked into pies (which all had been eating), Titus kills Tamora, Satuninus kills Titus, and Titus’s son (Lucius) kills Saturninus. Lucius is then made emperor, and orders Aaron buried up to his chest and left to die and Tamora’s body to rot, while Titus and Saturninus are given proper burials.
There are many memorable lines throughout Titus. When Tamora comes to trick Titus, he recognizes her and her sons instantly. But, playing along with their ruse, which Tamora claims to be Revenge, and the sons Rape and Murder, orders them out to find and kill Tamora and her sons. He tells Murder "Look round about the wicked streets of Rome, And when thou find’st a man that’s like thyself, Good Murder, stab him; he’s a murderer." To Rape: "Go thou with him, and when it is thy hap To find another that is like to thee, Good Rapine, stab him; he is a ravisher." And to Tamora: "Go thou with them, and in the Emperor’s court There is a queen attended by a Moor. Well shalt thou know her by thine own proportion, For up and down she doth resemble thee. I pray thee, do on them some violent death; They have been violent to me and mine."
And earlier, Tamora convinces Saturninus not to bring Titus to account for Titus’s harassment of Saturninus in his madness, not out of pity, but so Tamora may continue to enjoy the torment of Titus, stating in an aside: "But, Titus, I have touched thee to the quick." I just think that line sounds really cool.
Finally, Aaron refuses to repent his crimes after he confesses them all to Lucius, saying his only sorrow is "that I had not done a thousand more. Even now I curse the day - and yet I think few come within the compass of my curse - Wherein I did not some notorious ill, As kill a man, or else devise his death; Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it; Accuse some innocent and forswear myself; Set deadly enmity between two friends; Make poor men’s cattle break their necks; Set fire on barns and haystacks in the night, And bid the owners quench them with their tears. Oft have I digged up dead men from their graves And set them upright at their dear friend’s door, Even when their sorrows almost was forgot, And on their skins, as on the bark of trees, Have with my knife carved in Roman letters ‘Let not your sorrow die though I am dead.’ But I have done a thousand dreadful things As willingly as one would kill a fly, And nothing grives me heartily indeed But that I cannot do ten thousand more."
I found Titus to be an enjoyable, fast and easy read. There were a few elements that I found disturbing: Titus kills his son at the beginning for attempting to rescue Lavinia from the emperor, who chose her as his empress though she was betrothed to Basianus (and then scorned by Saturninus when he chose to marry Tamora instead.) Second, Titus kills Lavinia to keep her from her shame of being raped (following the example of a character in Ovid’s Metamorphosis who kills her daughter [either to save her from a threatened rape or to save her from the shame of a rape]). Third, the evil character of the play is Aaron, the Moor, who is identified as being evil either because of his blackness or is black because of his evilness. Finally, the hanging of the Clown, who does no worse than deliver an offensive message, and who does not protest his doom.
Next up? I Henry IV. Finally.
