Customer Reviews

Titus Andronicus (3rd Series)

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On a superficial first reading, 'Titus Andronicus' is lesser Shakespeare - the language is generally simple and direct, with few convoluted similes and a lot of cliches. The plot, as with many contemporary plays, is so gruesome and bloody as to be comic - the hero, a Roman general, before the play has started has lost a wife and 21 sons; he kills another at their funeral, having dismembered and burnt the heroine's son as a 'sacrifice'; after her husband is murdered, his daughter is doubly raped and has her tongue and hands lopped off; Titus sacrifices his own hand to bail out two wrongfully accused sons - it is returned along with their heads. Et cetera. The play concludes with a grisly finale Peter Greenaway might have been proud of. The plot is basically a rehash of Kyd, Marlowe, Seneca and Ovid, although there are some striking stage effects.

Jonathan Bate in his exhaustive introduction almost convinces you of the play's greatness, as he discusses it theoretically, its sexual metaphors, obsessive misogyny, analysis of signs and reading etc. His introduction is exemplary and systematic - interpretation of content and staging; history of performance; origin and soures; textual history. Sometimes, as is often the case with Arden, the annotation is frustratingly pedantic, as you get caught in a web of previous editors' fetishistic analysing of punctuation and grammar. Mostly, though, it facilitates a smooth, enjoyable read.

I purchased this particular edition of Titus Andronicus because I was teaching it (undergraduate-level Shakespeare elective), and as I reread it, I was struck by how entertaining it was. This is a fantastic text for the beginning of a Shakespeare class -- it's short, it's outrageous, it's shocking, and, above all else, it's GREAT writing. This is classic revenge tragedy, full of awfulness and bleak realizations about humanity (or the lack thereof in many cases), but also with some incredibly effective black comedy that doesn't get nearly as much attention as it deserves. My students LOVED it.

This particular edition has very good notes on textual issues as well as some early performance history (even if it was published too early to include Julie Taymor's wonderful 1999 film). The excerpts at the end from The Spanish Tragedy, The Jew of Malta, and Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses were also extremely handy for contextual questions.

Titus is the play for our day of crumbling and self-destructing empire; this fable has much to teach us now. As the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. warned us: Either we learn to live together as brothers or we die apart as fools.

Here we find fool brother killing brother, citizen killing citizen, the extreme abuse of the most vulnerable and pure, the excessive cruelty of wealth and power, a fable for our age.

Here in the Third revision series from Arden (the first presentation nearly one hundred years old and thus this represents one of the most ancient, traditional and continual series of Shakespearean texts, unlike certain far more recent and much less reliable usurpers of the "traditional" crown) we may discover a nearly impeccable edition of this four hundred year old much maligned and frequently orphaned text, a fable for our present times.

The editor Jonathan Bate presents strong and nearly undeniable reasons for his selection of readings from Quarto, Folio and emended editions, including of course Theobald and Capell but also the most recent scholarship and productions. His use, for example of "Muly lives" rather than "Mulietus" is admirable, as is his conflation of false starts, later additions, and other lines always clearly indicated in other typeface and explained fully in the footnotes and introduction.

Nevertheless, I found some of his interpretation unfortunate. I believe this play not a comedy but an exposure of the absolute corruption to which power and wealth lead us. It is not comedy but an exposure of our depravity. It is not to laugh but to weep, and to repent, and to resolve to live in peace and communal cooperation and compassionate concern, to learn to live together as brothers, although not as these. It is thus a morality play, not a comedy; yet we now have no concept of such a thing, and thus laugh where we must repent, and revolt.

His continual praising and uncritical reference in the footnotes to the televised BBC and to the Warner productions also calls into question his judgment. I cannot imagine, for example, admiring bringing in the cannibal banquet table singing as did the Warner = "Heigh ho it's off to work we go!" as anything other than an inappropriate, anachronistic indulgence.

In short about half of the footnotes might easily and gratefully find blue pencil from a compassionate and wise editor of this edition who can distinguish personal interpretation and opinion from scholarly fact. As well, a basic rule for those who wish to define or explain words is never to make the definition more complex nor obscure than the word being defined, nor make the definition so general as to be useless. Thus we find the terms suffrages and tyrannies in Act Four defined completely as "key terms in the political lexicon" rather than explaining their significance in terms of Act One. This is neither helpful nor necessary.

In short, about half of the footnotes may be eliminated to the benefit of this great book, as they cast doubt upon the reliability of the edition itself, and this edition seems nearly impeccable.

He presents a clear reasoned text. Heavy with footnotes. Raises questions about the text as well. Based on the Q1 text (which is the basis of all subsequent texts). Keeps the reader linked to textual questions rather than leaving the reader in the dark as to choices made.

Considering this was likely Shakespeare's first attempt at a tragedy, I found it full of action, easy to read, albeit graphic in terms of its violence. I guess you could say it's a real page turner that should appeal to a modern society accustomed to blood and guts on cinema and television. However, only Shakespeare possesses the gift to paint such horrific happenings in beautiful, magical prose.

Jonathan Bate has done a brilliant job of editing this play. It is by far the finest of the Arden3 editions. The notes are excellent - not schlarly nonsense but helpful for the reader or actor. Highly recommended.

Michael Hordern did a superb acting job. I was very impressed with him, Anthony Qyayle as well. I first heard this performance on tape cassette and was thrilled to hear Judy Dench. She impressed me very much in Hamlet, Henry the 5th also. For a late bloomer (now 67) in the classics I really started gorging Shakespeare after Hordern, Dench, Brannah, Quayle and many others performances. I should have known better being raised in New Orleans but the school systems there was absorbed in jazz, rock and roll i.e. Pete Fountain, Al Hirt, Fats Dommino, Dixieland Jazz, Gospel,gut-wrenching Blues and sort of shaped me for 60 years which led me to listening to the Classics starting with Sabastian Bach.