"Mad world! Mad kings! Mad composition!" (On "King John")

So, "King John!"

What an odd little play.

First up, we'll need to address how John was held in the imagination of the Elizabethan era, which is somewhat different from how we view him today. Thanks to Scott's Ivanhoe and Disney's thumb-sucking, scrawny lion whose stolen crown doesn't fit on his head, we picture John as a whiny and ineffectual regent for Richard the Lionheart, who was all things bold and courageous and who came home to support the hero Robin Hood.

Not so - there's no connection with John and Robin Hood until the literature of the 19th century, and Richard I was, frankly, a terrible king. He would have sold his own liver for a chance at a battle, any battle, and certainly would have auctioned off anyone else's. He butchered his own people in France (remember he was king of both England AND half of what we now know as France,) and he spent most of his reign leaving the administration of his affairs to others, among them his little brother John.

It's hard to say why Richard was viewed, even in Shakespeare's time, with such adoration. But John wasn't hated nearly as much, except by many of the nobility, who resented his taxation and his attempt at curtailing their powers (hence the Magna Carta, which is completely ignored in the play.) And yet John is certainly viewed with distaste, as a man who can't quite come out and say what he means. He can't bring himself to tell Hubert directly to murder young Arthur, his brother Geffrey's son and a threat to his crown, so he hints around it, later berating Hubert for taking his hints when Arthur's death is taken so ill by his nobles that they abandon him. And he promises much advancement to the Bastard Faulconbridge, though never in concrete terms, which prove illusory by the end of the play.

Corey Jones in the title role at the 2013 Utah Shakespeare Festival.

And yet the nobles love him, and grieve his wasting death at the end of the play. They acknowledge his nobility and right to kingship in view of the threat from France, but it turns out to be the church's intervention that saves John, not his own strength.

John was the youngest of four brothers to survive to adulthood, and was unlikely to ever become king, except he was born into the most warlike family known to man. His mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, was married to two kings, and makes an appearance as a sly, manipulative, yet powerful granddam in Shakespeare's play. His father was known for his temper tantrums and refusal to bow to the power of the church, ending in the murder of Thomas a Becket at the altar of Canterbury Cathedral.

A 1597 portrait of King John by an unknown artist.
While the portrait was completed many years after John's
death, it shows how an artist in Shakespeare's era would
have pictured him.

The truth is, the more that you read about medieval monarchies, the more you realize that the myth of primogeniture is just that - a myth. It was rare for more than two or three generations to remain stable on the throne based on inheritance of the eldest son. So what do you do? You marry your daughter to another prince of a nearby territory and hope their oldest son, your grandchild, will inherit both.

And this is where we end up early on in "King John" - England's king makes a deal with France's to combine their forces against Arthur's, using marriage between their youth to strike a deal. But the deal itself is not just against Arthur - both kings are thwarted in their attempts to enter the city of Angiers, which is barred against all comers and refuses to open to any but the true king.

But who is the true king? Both King John and King Philip of France claim it for themselves. When asked "Speak, citizens, for England; who's your king?" the citizens reply with "The king of England; when we know the king." When both kings try to claim the crown, the reply from the citizenry is:

"A greater power then we denies all this;
And till it be undoubted, we do lock
Our former scruple in our strong-barr'd gates;
King'd of our fears, until our fears, resolved,
Be by some certain king purged and deposed." (II.i.)

The citizens await the decision to be made before they will open their gates. They have the ability to add their power to one claim or another, and thereby strengthen that claim, but abstain instead. They want certainty, to only open their gates to whoever God (and brute force) claims as king. But by abdicating responsibility, they leave themselves open to the whims of fate. Who is to say that the winning king will be a good one? Could they not have assured the victory of a better king by getting involved? And yet they seem stymied by the choice, unable to decide, and so refuse to engage at all. 

Tim Sailer plays the title character in Texas Shakespeare Festival’s “King John," 2018.

Eventually, the citizenry are the ones who make the suggestion for the two kings to join their forces by marriage of the next generation (Blanche and Lewis.) They solve the problem through negotiation rather than force. And this seems to be the new paradigm - war by commerce and parley rather than sword and cannon. The Bastard in particular seems disgusted by the realpolitik of it all, but he is the illegitimate son of the Lionheart, after all, so battle is in his blood. 

From the balcony, the play seems to be about indecision and uncertainty, and what happens when no strong, legitimate hand emerges to rule. In that case, do we sit back and wait to see who is victorious, as do the citizens of Angiers? Or are we right to try to find new answers when the old ways no longer serve us? 

Yes, You Are Allowed to Wear a Blanket Today.

(Vulnerable moment.)

What's been really interesting to me about all of these very valid posts I've been seeing, like this one, about how it's okay to hunker down and just get through this, just survive, just deal with all of your emotions during this time, is that I realized that this is what I have been doing for two years now.

I had a meltdown a couple of weeks ago when the uncertainty of it all hit me, but then I realized the familiarity of that uncertainty and the frustration I felt with it. It's the same thing I've been processing since my whole world blew up two years ago, and so many things kept happening, one thing after another, so that it felt like there was no control over anything. In truth, there WAS no control over anything.*

Here's the thing about trauma: PTSD is caused (as far as science and doctors can tell) when you cannot escape a traumatic situation. Our bodies are designed to run away or fight a threat. When they cannot do that - when they are forced to just endure it - it causes deep-seated neurological issues that often manifest in anxiety, depression, lack of energy, jitteriness, lack of concentration, etc. When this goes on for a long period of time, or is repeated many times over a period, it becomes complex PTSD, which is lesser-known because it doesn't usually feature the flashbacks or nightmares so well known in regular PTSD.

Complex PTSD, or C-PTSD, is often exacerbated when people dismiss one's traumatic experiences as being simply normal. But just because something is widespread doesn't make it normal for our human bodies to cope with. This pandemic is a fantastic example - we're all dealing with it in some form (even the idiot 24-year-old next-door-neighbor who chose to have an ACTUAL party in her backyard last night until 2 am on a Sunday.) So because everyone is dealing with it, many people have a tendency to describe what is "normal" to them as the right answer for everyone.

But this is traumatic - for many people, they are watching in horror as their livelihoods slip away. Will they be able to pay their mortgages? Eviction relief is one thing, but if you are paycheck-to-paycheck, and suddenly three months' worth of rent comes due when the emergency order is lifted, and you haven't HAD a paycheck for that whole time, what do you do? We always knew that a day would come that there wouldn't be enough jobs to go around, but suddenly that day is here; what do you do when you've worked in retail for 20 years, and now there is no retail work to be had? What do you do if you are a nurse who has to face the reality of the risk of not just getting infected yourself, but bringing it home to vulnerable family members? What about plans for career movement or weddings or long-awaited vacations? These are all things we are losing and collectively grieving.

I read a piece by Roxane Gay in Medium where she sums up how I've really been feeling: "Will any of what I have to say even matter when this is all over?"

But this feeling is not unfamiliar to me in a strange way. And I can see how, repeatedly over the past two years, I have tried (and failed, miserably,) to try and establish some control over the waves of change that have just washed over me and knocked me down and filled my mouth and soul with fear and uncertainty. And I tried it again a couple of weeks ago. But this, like so many other things that happened to me in the past two years, is uncontrollable, and our world will be different in so many ways when it is all over, and it won't be all over at once, but in jolts and shudders and long, drawn-out sighs, and it is OKAY to let your body feel afraid, and to sit with those feelings and acknowledge them and pull your warm cup of coffee to your chest and get out your fuzziest blanket and ignore the call of your to-do list.** Because I'm speaking from experience when I tell you that if you run from it, it will still be there whenever you turn around, so you'll have to keep running forever. You don't have control over your future right now. All you can control is the one thing right in front of you, and sometime's that's simply your breathing.

So if that's all you can do right now, in this moment, because everything else is too scary, I'm giving you permission to just breathe.

*For those just joining me, here's the rundown:

• Jan. 2018: grandfather died
• Feb. 2018: end of 6-year relationship
• Feb. 2018: (just a handful of days later) hospitalized with flu, peeing blood from dehydration
• Feb. 2018: traumatized me seeks comfort in new relationship (like an idiot)
• May 2018: gets engaged to new relationship (like an idiot)
• May 31 2018: buys house with fiance (like an idiot)
• June 1 2018: sprains ankle moving in to house, spends three hours in urgent care, fiance DOES NOT CARE and makes me keep moving, grocery shop, and make dinner that night
• June 7 2018: break it off with jerk fiance, spend next 3.5 months living downstairs of new house in increasingly hostile environment, scared every day that something bad would happen to my cats
• Summer 2018 (not sure what month): stepdad diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer
• Sept. 2018: finally close on both old house and new house, move in to fabulous new house
• Nov. 1 2018: stepfather succumbs to cancer
• Nov. 2018: (two weeks later) abnormal pap smear
• Nov. 2018: (two weeks later) attempted biopsy reveals growth in uterus, 6-18% chance it's cancer
• Dec. 21 2018: surgery, no cancer, random growth the size of a man's pinky finger removed
• There was peace for a while; spring of 2019 went well.
• But then in July of 2019 I had to end a long-standing and close friendship when I discovered the deep dishonesty that underlay it. It hurts to lose one of your support systems, even though you've discovered that support is rotten to the core.
• Fall, 2019: workplace culture becomes untenable. Not ready to discuss that yet, but I rage quit without regret right before Christmas.
• Jan. 2020: completely change careers after a decade in education
• Late Jan. 2020: biological father dies. Even though we haven't had a relationship in almost 15 years, still a shock to the system.
• Feb/Mar. 2020: COVID-19 crisis hits

** (Yes, I know some people find comfort in creation; you do you, boo.)

To "love you 'gainst the nature of love" (On "The Two Gentlemen of Verona")

The big thing that everyone always wants to discuss in "The Two Gentleman of Verona" is its misogyny. And it's there, hoo buddy is it there! How many times can one play express that when women say "no," they really mean "yes?" We should make a drinking game out of it. Take a shot whenever a man says that women never say what they really mean, or whenever Proteus betrays somebody new. We'd all be drunk by the end of Act 2. (But really, doesn't Valentine perform the worst betrayal in the entire play when he gives his own beloved to Proteus after Proteus just tried to rape the poor woman? I can't smack my forehead hard enough.)

There is the question, of course, of whether or not this is Shakespeare's very first play, or at least his first comedy. It would go a long ways towards explaining its clunkiness, and the many stereotypes it relies on for its gags. Many scholars use that explanation to excuse the Bard's dreadful mining of stock character types and strong-arming of characters into marriages with distasteful matches. He was a man of his time, regardless of those who would claim him a proto-feminist. He did reserve his highest praise and most erotic poetry for men, after all.

So it's a difficult play to perform for an audience, because it's just so difficult to justify the ending. (Anybody else just want either Silvia or Julia to end up with Sir Eglamour? Just me?) But in a way, that's unfortunate, because some of Shakespeare's poetry in "Two Gentlemen" positively glitters.

When Valentine discovers the joys and penances of love, he both groans and delights in telling his friend:

"Ay, Proteus, but that life is alter'd now:
I have done penance for contemning Love,
Whose high imperious thoughts have punish'd me
With bitter fasts, with penitential groans,
With nightly tears and daily heart-sore sighs;
For in revenge of my contempt of love,
Love hath chased sleep from my enthralled eyes
And made them watchers of mine own heart's sorrow.
O gentle Proteus, Love's a mighty lord,
And hath so humbled me, as, I confess,
There is no woe to his correction,
Nor to his service no such joy on earth.
Now no discourse, except it be of love;
Now can I break my fast, dine, sup and sleep,
Upon the very naked name of love." (II.iv.)

Who has loved that has not felt that all-consuming need that devours your attention, keeps you from sleep and food, and tosses you from joy to sorrow and back again in an instant? And Valentine's love is requited, so his pains are not those of a rejected suitor, but simply those of a man in love, who can think of nothing other than his beloved. Early though it may be, Shakespeare's verse here shows his talent for slicing right to the truth of earthy emotions and simultaneously exalting them.

In a prose line, earlier, Valentine had mocked Proteus for his own lovelorn behavior, with as clear a portrait of a lovesick youth as any I've ever read:

"Marry, by these special marks: first, you have learned, like Sir Proteus, to wreathe your arms, like a malecontent; to relish a love-song, like a robin-redbreast; to walk alone, like one that had the pestilence; to sigh, like a school-boy that had lost his A B C; to weep, like a young wench that had buried her grandam; to fast, like one that takes diet; to watch like one that fears robbing; to speak puling, like a beggar at Hallowmas. You were wont, when you laughed, to crow like a cock; when you walked, to walk like one of the lions; when you fasted, it was presently after dinner; when you looked sadly, it was for want of money: and now you are metamorphosed with a mistress, that, when I look on you, I can hardly think you my master." (II.i.)

The women, too, know love's whip. Julia describes how the more you seek to ignore love, to dampen it, the more it rages:

"Thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow
As seek to quench the fire of love with words...
The more thou damm'st it up, the more it burns." (II.vii.)

And I think my favorite scene in the entire play is near the beginning, when Julia chases the torn pieces of Proteus' love letter about her windswept courtyard, after ripping it to shreds in a fit of pique. Shakespeare's imagery combines comedy and pathos to create something that we laugh at while all the while we feel the twinge of sweetness as Julia makes her name and Proteus' kiss on the pages:

"O hateful hands, to tear such loving words!Injurious wasps, to feed on such sweet honey
And kill the bees that yield it with your stings!
I'll kiss each several paper for amends.
Look, here is writ 'kind Julia.' Unkind Julia!
As in revenge of thy ingratitude,
I throw thy name against the bruising stones,
Trampling contemptuously on thy disdain.
And here is writ 'love-wounded Proteus.'
Poor wounded name! my bosom as a bed
Shall lodge thee till thy wound be thoroughly heal'd;
And thus I search it with a sovereign kiss.
But twice or thrice was 'Proteus' written down.
Be calm, good wind, blow not a word away
Till I have found each letter in the letter,
Except mine own name: that some whirlwind bear
Unto a ragged fearful-hanging rock
And throw it thence into the raging sea!
Lo, here in one line is his name twice writ,
'Poor forlorn Proteus, passionate Proteus,
To the sweet Julia:' that I'll tear away.
And yet I will not, sith so prettily
He couples it to his complaining names.
Thus will I fold them one on another:
Now kiss, embrace, contend, do what you will." (I.ii.)

This is one of the plays where you can't help but marvel at the combination of events that brought the Bard into being. His roots in his world are evident - the stock characters, the neatly wrapped up parallel marriages, the deeply rooted misogyny. But his ebullient verse exists already as well, shining through the traditional English Renaissance plot like stars in the night sky. His humanity is clear - how else could he write so irrefutably about the feeling of being in love? But his verse reaches so far beyond humankind as to make us marvel. It is perhaps, "a sufficient ransom for offence" (V.iv.).

Lindsey Wochley as Julia in the Utah Shakespearean Festival's 2008 production of "The Two Gentlemen of Verona."

"The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins Remorse from power" (On "Julius Caesar")

For this play, I'm always struck by the struggle between the face Caesar shows to the people of Rome, the one he shows to his friends, and the one he only shows to his most private self. Does he truly want to be a king? Or does he just want everyone to want him to be king? 

There is a difference: nowhere does Caesar or any of the other Romans discuss the duties that would fall to him, should he be crowned. In fact, there is not truly any deep discussion of him desiring any powers in particular, though that is the fear that underlies his murder. Brutus simply says that Caesar "when he once attains the upmost round. / He then unto the ladder turns his back, / Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees / By which he did ascend. So Caesar may." (II.i). But he isn't certain; he only knows that Caesar may turn his back on his friends and become a tyrant. But what is it that Brutus fears Caesar will do with his powers?

The people, too, seem torn. They clearly love Caesar. They cheer for him when Antony hands him a coronet, but they cheer even louder when Caesar refuses it (in a show of humility that he immediately regrets in a fainting spell.) Casca claims that "before he fell down, when he perceived the common herd was glad he refused the crown, he plucked me ope his doublet and offered them his throat to cut." And yet, immediately afterward, states that "if Caesar had stabbed their mothers, they would have done no less" (I.ii).

Later, right before his assassination, Caesar briefly bows to the exhortations of Calpurnia to stay home after her nightmare, but the conspirators draw him out with the lie that the senate hopes to crown him that day. He did not venture out on his own to be crowned, but the possibility that others would grant the crown to him leads him to his doom.

As I mentioned, there is a difference between wanting to be king and wanting others to want you to be king. Perhaps it's simply taken for granted that the audience would understand Caesar's ambition, but if so, why does Antony harp on the falseness of that accusation in his funeral speech? Does Caesar truly have ambitions to be king? Or does he simply want the accolades, the lauds, the coronets and applause and fawning of the crowd?

"If Caesar had stabbed their mothers, they would have done no less." 

What if he had stood in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shot someone? 

(By the way, I'm two years behind schedule on this thought. Bravo to New York's Public Theater.) 

Paterson Joseph as Brutus and Theo Ogundipe as the Soothsayer in the 2012 Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Julius Caesar, which is on my most list of most coveted productions to have ever seen. *sigh*

"If heaven have any grievous plague in store..." (On "Richard III")

It's really hard right now to feel up to blogging about Shakespeare, even with as great a play as "Richard III."

After all, our federal leadership must be pretty bad to make Richard III look like a better alternative. Richard is conniving, bloody, scheming, and ruthless...but at least he's intelligent and witty. He makes us laugh with him instead of at him. He craves power and the crown for its own sake, but he recognizes that urge within himself and smiles wryly at his own evil. As evil as he is, he's not a narcissist, because he can admit to himself what he is. A narcissist has no sense of self and constantly requires validation from others; Richard requires none of that. Just give him the crown and the throne. (In truth, the real Richard most likely was a fairly pious man who donated money to religious and educational institutions. One wonders what kind of leader he would have made had not Henry Tudor arrived on England's shores. What would history say then?)

I can't tell if it's comforting to read this play and realize once again that jockeying for leadership and power looks much the same now as it ever has. But there are fewer curses today, which seems a shame. So for this entry, brief as it is, I'll leave you with one of the greatest curses in the English language, the old Queen Margaret's maledictions towards those who led to her downfall:

QUEEN MARGARET 

What were you snarling all before I came,
Ready to catch each other by the throat,
And turn you all your hatred now on me?
Did York's dread curse prevail so much with heaven?
That Henry's death, my lovely Edward's death,
Their kingdom's loss, my woful banishment,
Could all but answer for that peevish brat?
Can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven?
Why, then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses!
If not by war, by surfeit die your king,
As ours by murder, to make him a king!
Edward thy son, which now is Prince of Wales,
For Edward my son, which was Prince of Wales,
Die in his youth by like untimely violence!
Thyself a queen, for me that was a queen,
Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self!
Long mayst thou live to wail thy children's loss;
And see another, as I see thee now,
Deck'd in thy rights, as thou art stall'd in mine!
Long die thy happy days before thy death;
And, after many lengthen'd hours of grief,
Die neither mother, wife, nor England's queen!
Rivers and Dorset, you were standers by,
And so wast thou, Lord Hastings, when my son
Was stabb'd with bloody daggers: God, I pray him,
That none of you may live your natural age,
But by some unlook'd accident cut off! 

RICHARD 

Have done thy charm, thou hateful wither'd hag! 

QUEEN MARGARET 

And leave out thee? stay, dog, for thou shalt hear me.
If heaven have any grievous plague in store
Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee,
O, let them keep it till thy sins be ripe,
And then hurl down their indignation
On thee, the troubler of the poor world's peace!
The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul!
Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou livest,
And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends!
No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,
Unless it be whilst some tormenting dream
Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils!
Thou elvish-mark'd, abortive, rooting hog!
Thou that wast seal'd in thy nativity
The slave of nature and the son of hell!
Thou slander of thy mother's heavy womb!
Thou loathed issue of thy father's loins!
Thou rag of honour! thou detested-- 

RICHARD 

Margaret. 

QUEEN MARGARET 

Richard! (I.iii.)

Seattle Shakespeare Company, Kate Wisniewski as Queen Margaret in an all-female production, 2018.

"Some consequence yet hanging in the stars..." (On "Romeo and Juliet" and COVID-19)

Well.

As a friend pointed out, it is quite in keeping when discussing Shakespeare to have all the theaters close for fear of plague.

And while there is no plague in "Romeo and Juliet," it seems strangely suited to our current time. I had been planning to write about my frustrations with how current "cooler than thou" culture sneers at the lovers' age and impulsiveness, ignoring how the adults around the central couple act with even more haste and emotion, (and how that may have been Shakespeare's subtle jibe at the way the nobility married off their children at such young ages,) or about the effect of fate and the stars and the humors underlies the action, leading to conjecture that perhaps the lovers and their families have no control over their destinies at all.

But instead, with the thread of COVID-19 hanging over our heads, I'm increasingly drawn to the play's double sense of time. The play feels both hectic and racing, and yet simultaneously like it's gelid, slow-motion, moving glacially from one inexorable moment to another.

Scholars debate the amount of time the play covers, but typically land on somewhere around 4-6 days, with the first day (Romeo's lamentations over Rosaline, and the fateful party meeting) happening on a Sunday, and the planned wedding morning (and faked death of Juliet) on a Wednesday, with debate about how many hours or days go by between Juliet's "death" and Romeo's arrival at the tomb. And much criticism has been lobbed at the two lovers and at the plot of the play itself for the events crammed into so little time.

But in between all of these events, the two lovers and the adults around them seem to discuss more about events that may come or will come, or have happened in the past, than participating in the events currently happening around them. Juliet begs her nurse for news, while the nurse spends line after line putting off the happy announcement of Romeo's marriage plans. The parents discuss their past days of violent fury, while either refusing the young's turn to engage in the feud, as when Capulet rages at Tybalt with his "Go to, boy!" (I.v.) or when Lady Montague castigates her husband with "Thou shalt not stir a foot to seek a foe" (I.i.). We never see Romeo and Juliet's reunification after their marriage, or their words to each other to smooth over the death of Tybalt, just their parting in the morning. Juliet's parents reprimand her for her ongoing grief over that selfsame death of her beloved cousin, but it has been merely hours before they arrange a marriage with Paris to soothe it.

In fact, the only character who seems to live in the moment and not attempt to escape it is Mercutio, who begs Romeo to "Come, we burn daylight, ho!...I mean, sir, in delay / We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day" (I.iv). And it is with Mercutio's death that the play's inertia grows inexorably, his murder the axis on which the chances of a happy ending turn and the wheel of fortune groans toward tragedy.

Which leads me to wondering about our own fate now. The world seems to hold its collective breath, suspended in time, held in slow motion between the time when the virus felt like a far away news story and the time when we shelter in place in our homes for an unknown period and words like "rations" and "ventilator shortages" hang in the balance, peeping through a hazy horizon over which extends a new time.

Moment by moment, the tragic events of "Romeo and Juliet" feel preventable, as if we could just reach through the verse and warn the characters, get the message to Romeo quicker, halt Tybalt's rage, have Juliet drink the poison five minutes earlier. I wonder, in the coming years, what events will we look back on and think "if only we could have...? If only someone had said...?"

"PRINCE: A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished..." (V.iii)

A 1975 illustration of "Romeo and Juliet" by Salvador Dali.

From the "Chief architect and plotter of these woes" (On "Titus Andronicus")

I LOVE THIS PLAY.

This play got such a bad rep for so long. But seriously, it almost completely redeems "Shrew."

I read this play for the first time in college, and then was lucky enough to get to teach it once, and and I've seen a couple of filmed versions, and it just boggles my mind that T.S. Eliot, who I also adore, ever once thought that Titus was "one of the stupidest and most uninspired plays ever written, a play in which it is incredible that Shakespeare had any hand at all." But he did think that, because Titus is a bloody mess, an operatic abattoir of revenge and rape and cannibalism AND I LOVE IT.

I love it because in it, Shakespeare does what he does best: entertain the masses on top, and say something really important underneath.

For those who haven't seen or read it yet (GO. FIND A PRODUCTION SOMEWHERE AND WATCH IT!), Titus Andronicus is the story of the triumphant return of the aforementioned General Andronicus to Rome from war, bearing as booty Tamora, Queen of the Goths, her sons (Alarbus, Chiron, and Demetrius,) and her Moorish lover Aaron. They arrive home and Titus promptly sacrifices Alarbus to the Roman gods, despite Tamora's pleading for his life. This sets off a chain of revenge, but first there is the election of the new Roman emperor: the commonfolk want Titus, but he abdicates in favor of the former emperor's eldest son, Saturninus. He also promises his daughter Lavinia to Saturninus in marriage but SURPRISE she's in love with Bassianus, Saturninus' younger brother, and they run off together. Saturninus gets a bit cranky, Tamora whispers in his ear, and voila, Tamora becomes Empress of Rome.

Oops.

The next day, a panther hunt is held, and everybody wanders around the dark and scary forest, where chaos and murder ensues. Aaron and Tamora are surprised mid-tryst, two of Titus' other sons are framed for murder, and Chiron and Demetrius rape Lavinia atop her dead husband's body, and then proceed to lop off her hands and cut out her tongue in order to prevent her from snitching on them.

Yes, I'm deliberately making light of the situation, because the play does as well. It delights in its goriness, in how close it steps to genuine madness.

Titus, of course, gets his revenge. Lavinia manages to communicate the name of her ravishers. Titus holds a dinner at his home and tricks the Emperor and Tamora into attending, where he serves them both pies made from the flesh and bones of Chiron and Demetrius before killing both of them. But not before also killing Lavinia, whose shame cannot be born.

Whose shame cannot be born. Think about that. "The girl should not survive her shame, / And by her presence still renew his sorrows." (V.iii).

The most horrifying thing in the entire play is not Lavinia's rape and maiming; it is the way the men around her turn her agony into their own pain. Stripped of any way of expressing her pain, from the moment they discover her, they treat her as one dead, a lifeless trunk, a shambling shadow. They grieve for themselves, not for her: "he that wounded her / Hath hurt me more than had he killed me dead" (III.i). They have no empathy for her pain, only anger that her honor (which belongs to them) has been stolen and grief that their daughter and niece is dead to them and can no longer sing or play the lute or embroider or comfort them. It's monstrous.

And then there's Aaron.

Shakespeare does something really beautiful here. Titus is a terrible father, but a virtuous Roman in all other ways. Aaron is a self-professed villain, but he risks everything to save the baby born to him and Tamora. He sacrifices himself for that child, confessing to every evil deed he has ever done and trying to come up with more, in order to ensure the child's safety. His honor is worth nothing next to the child's life, whereas Titus kills his own son when that son went against his orders in the first scene. And Shakespeare is brave enough to call out the racism that marks Aaron: "Why, there's the privilege your beauty bears" (IV.ii) and when asked if he can't blush for his deeds, answers Ay, like a black dog, as the saying is" (V.i.). Except a black dog may blush, but no one would ever see it for the darkness of his skin, and this is exactly the kind of joke that Shakespeare's audience loved; one where you could not be sure if the speaker intended it or not.

I love Titus Andronicus because it's a giant middle finger to questions of the worth of honor when honor means things like social hierarchy and the possession of women's sexuality. I love it for Titus' grief as he begs the stones of the Roman streets for mercy. I love it for Tamora's fierceness and for "make them know what 'tis to let a queen / Kneel in the streets and beg for grace in vain" (I.i). I love it for the glee in Titus when he serves the Empress a pie made from her sons: "'Tis true, 'tis true; witness my knife's sharp point" (V.i). Shakespeare was almost certainly slyly referring to himself in the line from Act V: "Chief architect and plotter of these woes." An excellent architect and plotter here, indeed, to slip under the radar for so many decades.

Are you gonna eat that? The Globe Theater, 2014
(L-R) Matthew Needham as Saturninus, William Houston as Titus Andronicus, and Indira Varma as Tamora