Land sakes, man. This one was a slog to get through. It’s possibly also the only Shakespeare play where I felt mildly sick reading it, due to the graphicness of the violence.
Titus Andronicus is basically the tale of a Roman general (Titus) and the Queen of the Goths (Tamora) and how they do a bunch of horrible things to each other (mostly through family members) until at last everyone is dead except for Marcus, Lucius, and Young Lucius, with Lucius becoming the new general.
It’s kind of a downer, honestly. And possibly partially because this is the semester from Hell (I very literally have had a test every week from the 3rd week of February, and will continue to through the end of the semester in April), I actually can’t bring myself to scream about this one at all.
And perhaps that’s my takeaway from Titus; it’s not a play I hate, it’s not a play I love, it’s not a play I’ll read again if I can help it. But there was nothing in it that incensed me, that made me stand up and say “here is what is wrong”; there was nothing in it that I wanted to stand up and say “this is really good”, either. And ‘meh’ is the death knell of books — if I care, it’s because you did something right, whether it’s because it was good or bad.
This play is a catalogue of the horrible things people can do to each other. And I just — I don’t find that appealing. I love history — i’m minoring in it — but this play isn’t like the weird stories in history, where Xerxes attempts to whip and brand the Hellespont into submission, or the army of Liechtenstein, which set out with 80 men for a battle and somehow came back with 81. This isn’t a cool, interesting, or funny tale at all. It’s a record of atrocities, couched in five acts and iambic pentameter.
And I can honestly say I don’t think that’s something to scream about.
Something to Scream About 