Titus Andronicus: an early invention

Titus Andronicus: it's bloody early, Allan Morgan (back), Russell Roberts, photo: David Blue

Titus Andronicus at Bard on the Beach last night…

I ran into Brendan after the show last night and here is our dialogue:

- Well?  Did you like it? (this is Brendan)
- It was clear, well paced, handsome and accomplished. (this is me)
- That still doesn’t answer my question – did you like it?
- They almost made me forget I was watching a show in a tent.
- Come on, it’s a simple enough question, did you like it?

I really had to think … did I in fact like it?  

Titus Andronicus is steeped in bloody revenge.  I’ve never subscribed to the various theories that someone other than Shakespeare wrote the plays that we know of as his but if ever there was a play to raise the question, Titus Andronicus is the one.  In fact, a quick scan of essays on the topic shows a decidedly undecided quorum, with a shaky consensus forming around the notion that if he did write it, it was a very early and unsophisticated attempt.  

For all that lack of sophistication (or maybe because of it – after all, plays had to compete with bear-baiting and the like in the south bank, pop-culture, world of London in the late 16th Century) it was a very popular play of its time, being performed by four different companies and rarely out of the early repertoire.  But Titus Andronicus has more in common with the Jacobean revenge plays that came along after Shakespeare than with the rest of his canon.  We don’t get the redemption we find in some of his great plays or the examination of the complexity of human life.  Instead, Titus Andronicus is a sensational orgy of revenge – something that if it were a current piece of theatre or film, I wouldn’t go to see.  

So, no, I didn’t really like it. But, I think you should see it.  As I said to Brendan – it is very well done.  Kim Collier, a director more known for her work on new scripts, brings that skill set along with more traditional directorial gifts to bear on this challenge: her edit and her staging serve to make the play completely understandable.  Along with the design team (Pam Johnson – set; John Webber – lights; Christine Reimer – costumes), and a company of skillful actors lead by Russell Roberts in the title role, Collier creates an engaging production.

All that said, there is a thread that seems to run through the play that I want to pluck at a little.  In Titus we see a man who has bought into and climbed up the ladder of societal values that are the markers of success in his culture.  As a general, he is skillful at tactics and organization, brutal when necessary and has a clear sense of winning and losing as it applies to him and the Roman Empire.  In Virgil’s Aeneid, Aeneas goes to the underworld to seek counsel from his dead father, Anchises.  Anchises’ words define the Rome we know and the one that Titus inhabits:

    Let others fashion from bronze more lifelike, breathing images –
    For so they shall – and evoke living faces from marble;
    Others excel as orators, track with their instruments
    The planets circling in heaven and predict when stars will appear.
    But, Romans, never forget that government is your medium!
    Be this your art: - to practice men in the habit of peace
    Generosity to the conquered, and firmness against the aggressors.

                        (Aeneid, VI, 845-852)

In almost all of the characters in Titus, we see that “firmness” against the aggressors – firmness being perhaps too mild a word. But in Titus we see a different side, one that is perhaps at odds with Anchises’ notion of the ‘Roman’, one that seems to yearn more toward art, culture and relationships than government and governing.  This opposition seems to bubble up within him at times and may offer that human dimension that is the hallmark of Shakespeare – complexity and internal conflict – that seems to be missing in this play.  Two instances of this potential are fresh in my mind.  The first is the remarkable scene at the start of Bard on the Beach’s second Act (Titus Andronicus, III,ii) where Titus gathers his family around the supper table and tries to restore domestic order by feeding and nurturing them, particularly his now tongue-less, handless daughter and his young grandson, the most vulnerable members of his family, and finally departs to read books with them.

This tenderness is a note that is not explored and might have provided a different and more complex nuance to the evening.  Further justification for this approach is found in the last scene when the grandson is reminded of his recently murdered grandfather by the phrase:

        …thy grandsire lov'd thee well:
    Many a time he danc'd thee on his knee,
    Sung thee asleep, his loving breast thy pillow;
    Many a matter hath he told to thee,
    Meet and agreeing with thine infancy…
(Titus, V,iii)

alluding to a grandfather we can all relate to, not a heroic general but a man full of love, caring, and knowledge. Throughout the play, in fact, there are several references to classical texts that lead us to muse on a culture that is more interested in learning and art than the one proposed for Rome, where “government … is your art.”

What about Titus, what does he want?  He is not ambitious for himself or his family – in the very first scene he turns down the crown of Rome.  He is not interested in bettering his world through a meritocracy – he opts not for the ‘best’ offspring of the previous Caesar but for the eldest.  He slays his own son for defying the orders of a sanctioned authority – proving that he is a ‘Roman’ through and through, upholding the law even to his own detriment.  He wants, it seems, to uphold the status quo, to maintain and honour the laws and customs of Rome.  And yet he has these yearnings - to impart culture to his grandson, to nurture his daughter – alongside equally strong, but more destructive yearnings, for violent revenge.  

At the end, the play itself lands firmly in the culture of vengeance – a promise broken, an infant slain and a villain exposed to a horrible death – all actions devoid of compassion.  So perhaps with this play, we get merely the first whiff of the “invention of the human” that Shakespeare is credited with.  I find myself wondering if perhaps the play is indeed by him; if in it we see the seedlings of complex psychology that flourish and bloom so gloriously and clearly in the later plays...  

Here’s what I suggest: see Titus Andronicus at Bard on the Beach; keep in mind that the authorship is disputable; watch for instances of human complexity and potentials for compassion and then decide for yourself (Brendan, this means you too):

  • Did this production maximize the potential for fully dimensional characters?
  • Did Shakespeare write this play?
  • Can I see the seeds of his more mature work in this attempt?

Then let me know at Plank Magazine.

By Wm B Dow