The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus

by William Shakespeare

Overview

Blood and Revenge-- Titus Andronicus is by far Shakespeare's most violent play. Set in the later days of the Roman empire it follows a fictional succession to the throne. The play follows Titus, a great Roman general, who is thrown into one bad situation after another. Much blood flows and a cycle of revenge ensues and tragedy abounds. Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead. Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things As willingly as one would kill a fly; And nothing grieves me heartily indeed But that I cannot do ten thousand more.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781627556941
Publisher:	Wilder Publications, Inc.
Publication date:	06/10/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	96
File size:	224 KB

About the Author

Michael Drew is an Adjunct Professor in the English Department at Ohio University, where he received his PhD. He received a BA in Philosophy and MA in Literature from the University of Toledo. He co-organized the 2006 Ohio University conference, “Work, Play, and Humor in English Studies,” and has presented papers at “The Shakespeare Association of America” and “The Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference.”

Date of Death:

2018

Place of Birth:

Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom

Place of Death:

Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom

Read an Excerpt

INTRODUCTION to the Kittredge Edition

Titus Andronicus

On January 24, 1594, Henslowe’s Diary records “Titus & Ondronicous” as a new play acted by the Earl of Sussex’s men. On February 6th “a Noble Roman Historye of Tytus Andronicus” was entered in the Stationers’ Register by John Danter, who printed the First Quarto in the same year. The title page professes to give the tragedy “As it was Plaide by the…Earle of Darbie, Earle of Pembrooke, and Earle of Sussex their Seruants.” This identifies it with that recorded by Henslowe as “new,” and would fix the date of composition as not later than 1593.

In the Induction to Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, the Articles of Agreement between the spectators and the author (dated October 31, 1614) provide that “he that will swear Jeronimo [i.e. Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy] or Andronicus are the best plays yet, shall pass unexcepted at here, as a man whose judgment shows it is constant, and hath stood still these five-and-twenty or thirty years.” This would put The Spanish Tragedy back to 1584–1589; but twenty-five and thirty are obviously round numbers. It is certainly older than Titus Andronicus; and, if we date Kyd’s play about 1589, we are at liberty to put Titus Andronicus anywhere in the first half of the next decade. On the whole, it is safe to settle upon 1592 or 1593, with preference for 1592. For the text, the First Quarto (1594) is the authority. Two other quartos, which came out in 1600 and 1611, supply act 5, scene 3, lines 201–04. The second scene of act 3 appears for the first time in the Folio.

Shakespeare’s connection with Titus Andronicus has been a moot question for two centuries and a half, ever since the irresponsible minor playwright Edward Ravenscroft, in the Address prefixed to his Titus Andronicus, or the Rape of Lavinia (acted in 1678, printed in 1687), acknowledged his indebtedness to Shakespeare’s play and remarked, “I have been told by some anciently conversant with the Stage, that it was not Originally his, but brought by a private Authour to be Acted, and he only gave some Master-touches to one or two of the Principal Parts or Characters.” The idle gossip which he reports (or invents) cannot weigh against the positive assertion of Meres—made in 1598, when the play was only five or six years old—that it is one of Shakespeare’s ‘excellent’ tragedies. Nobody would have listened to Ravenscroft but for the feeling that Titus Andronicus is too horrible to be Shakespeare’s. But Shakespeare was always prone to try experiments, and it would be strange if he had not written one out-and-out tragedy of blood when Kyd had shown how powerfully such things appealed to playgoers…

Table of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Introduction to the Kittredge Edition
• Introduction to the Focus Edition
• The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus
• How to Read The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus as Performance
• Timeline
• Topics for Discussion and Further Study
• Bibliography
• Filmography

Interviews

Appropriate for all level of Shakespeare courses, including courses on Shakespeare, or drama, or Renaissance drama as taught in departments of English, courses in Shakespeare or drama taught in departments of theater, Great Books programs where individual volumes might be used, or high school level courses.

Editorial Reviews

Even as the New Kittredge Shakespeare series glances back to George Lyman Kittredge's student editions of the plays, it is very much of our current moment: the slim editions are targeted largely at high school and first-year college students who are more versed in visual than in print culture. Not only are the texts of the plays accompanied by photographs or stills from various stage and cinema performances: the editorial contributions are performance-oriented, offering surveys of contemporary film interpretations, essays on the plays as performance pieces, and an annotated filmography. Traditional editorial issues (competing versions of the text, cruxes, editorial emendation history) are for the most part excluded; the editions focus instead on clarifying the text with an eye to performing it. There is no disputing the pedagogic usefulness of the New Kittredge Shakespeare's performance-oriented approach. At times, however, it can run the risk of treating textual issues as impediments, rather than partners, to issues of performance. This is particularly the case with a textually vexed play such as Pericles: Prince of Tyre. In the introduction to the latter, Jeffrey Kahan notes the frequent unintelligibility of the play as originally published: "the chances of a reconstructed text matching what Shakespeare actually wrote are about 'nil'" (p. xiii) But his solution — to use a "traditional text" rather than one corrected as are the Oxford and Norton Pericles — obscures how this "traditional text," including its act and scene division, is itself a palimpsest produced through three centuries of editorial intervention. Nevertheless, the series does a service to its target audience with its emphasis on performance and dramaturgy. Kahan's own essay about his experiences as dramaturge for a college production of Pericles is very good indeed, particularly on the play's inability to purge the trace of incestuous desire that Pericles first encounters in Antioch. Other plays' cinematic histories: Annalisa Castaldo's edition of Henry V contrasts Laurence Oliver's and Branagh's film productions; Samuel Crowl's and James Wells's edition of (respectively) I and 2 Henry IV concentrate on Welle's Chimes at Midnight and Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho; Patricia Lennox's edition of As You Like It offers an overview of four Hollywood and British film adaptations; and John R. Ford's edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream provides a spirited survey of the play's rich film history.

The differences between, and comparative merits of, various editorial series are suggested by the three editions of The Taming of the Shrew published this year. Laury Magnus's New Kittredge Shakespeare edition is, like the other New Kittredge volumes, a workable text for high school and first year college students interested in film and theater. The introduction elaborates on one theme — Elizabethan constructions of gender — and offers a very broad performance history, focusing on Sam Taylor's and Zeffirelli's film versions as well as adaptations such as Kiss Me Kate and Ten Things I Hate About You (accompanied by a still of ten hearthtrobs Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles). The volume is determined to eradicate any confusion that a first time reader of the play might experience: the dramatis personae page explains that "Bianca Minola" is "younger daughter to Baptista, wooed by Lucentio-in-disguise (as Cambio) and then wife to him, also wooed by the elderly Gremio and Hortensio-in-disguise (as Licio)" (p.1). Other editorial notes, based on Kittredge's own, are confined mostly to explaining individual words and phrases: additional footnotes discuss interpretive choices made by film and stage productions. Throughout, the editorial emphasis is on the play less as text than as performance piece, culminating in fifteen largely performance-oriented "study questions" on topics such as disguise, misogyny, and violence.

Studies in English Literature, Tudor and Stuart Drama, Volume 51, Spring 2011, Number 2, pages 497-499.

From the Publisher