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Amazon.co.uk Review
Shakespeare's most violent and gory play, Titus Andronicus was written in 1592, and represents the dramatist's first foray into the popular genre of revenge tragedy (many editors argue with at least one other collaborator). The result was spectacular, including scenes of murder, human sacrifice, rape, bodily mutilation and cannibalism. Set in late-imperial Rome, the action begins with the Roman general Titus Andronicus and his triumphant return from wars with the Goths. Leading Queen Tamora and her sons as prisoners, Titus stumbles into a power struggle between Saturninus and his brother Bassianus. Titus fatally backs Saturninus, who rapidly turns on the old general and marries Tamora. The implications for the Andronicus family are disastrous. More of Titus' sons are killed, his daughter Lavinia is brutally raped by Tamora's sons, and as Titus begins his descent into madness and despair he even has his own hand cut off in an act of awful trickery. As Titus plots his bloody revenge, he reflects that "Rome is but a wilderness of tigers". The ending is one of the most gruesome conclusions to any dramatic tragedy, and leaves Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs looking quite restrained. Although the play has put audiences off for centuries due to its apparently gratuitous violence, more recently critics have discerned something more to it than pure shock, but that might say more about us than the Elizabethans. .--Jerry Brotton
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Review
"This is an outstanding edition of "Titus", especially for its treatment of textual questions and of recent performance history. It supersedes all previous editions."--Dr. Paul Hartle, St. Catharine's College, Cambridge "Bate makes a really positive virtue of his treatment of the play in performance . . . putting a vigorous account of "Titus" on stage at very stage-centre in his Introduction. Using this section as a means for raising fundamental questions as to the play's style, coherence, and meaning, Bate achieves a remarkable fusion between performance history and criticism."--John Jowett, "Shakespeare Survey"
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First Sentence
When the notices of Titus Andronicus came out, giving us full marks for saving your dreadful play, I could not help feeling a twinge of guilt. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Copyright | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
When the notices of Titus Andronicus came out, giving us full marks for saving your dreadful play, I could not help feeling a twinge of guilt. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Copyright | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In some respects I think it'd be rather presumptuous of me to attempt to review Shakespeare. Someone so well known and influential wouldn't benefit from my opinions on their work, plus there are more scholarly and concise reviews out there. But I can comment on these Arden versions. Of all the Shakespeare I've read I've always found the Arden copies to be well laid out and to have excellent commentary and notes on the text. They really add to your understanding of Shakespeares outstanding plays and introduce you to the depth in his work. They have superb paper quality and are bound well, withstanding repeated readings and intensive study. For your collection of Shakespeare you can't do much better than Arden publications, some are quite hard to get hold of but it's worth the effort.
Feel free to check out my blog which can be found on my profile page.
Feel free to check out my blog which can be found on my profile page.
Format:Paperback
Titus Andronicus is probably one of Shakespeare's lesser known plays to most; I only read it as an outreach to something different, and to, hopefully, be surprised. I was very pleased with my choice as I enjoyed more than I did Othello (possibly just me, but I did none-the-less). However, I am not going to review Shakespeare as there are those far more qualified than I; I will just say that it is not your average Shakespeare play, lots of gruesome parts and no real love story going on.
I will review the Arden edition that I have purchased though: a fantastic set of explanatory notes, the indroduction by Jonathan Bate is one of the best by Arden I've read, with plenty of interesting topics to discuss and mull over and the appendices are another great set of notes. The publishing quality is very good, as always with Arden, too.
Overall, a great purchase, at an ever-Arden low price.
I will review the Arden edition that I have purchased though: a fantastic set of explanatory notes, the indroduction by Jonathan Bate is one of the best by Arden I've read, with plenty of interesting topics to discuss and mull over and the appendices are another great set of notes. The publishing quality is very good, as always with Arden, too.
Overall, a great purchase, at an ever-Arden low price.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Titus Andonicus is often regarded as something of a joke: crude juvenilia, bloodthirsty sensationalism, tasteless exploitation. Consequently, it has frequently been excised from the canon. TS Eliot, for one, thought it 'one of the stupidest and most uninspired plays ever written'. Here, in this Arden 3rd edition, Jonathan Bate unapologetically champions the play and argues that it is authentically Shakespearean, structurally complex and, contrary to Eliot, 'one of the dramatist's most inventive plays'.
Bate certainly makes a persuasive case. He combines an easy, conversational eloquence with penchant analysis. What is made clear is that for a fuller appreciation of the play, we need to understand a contemporary audience's response to episodes which may seem puzzling to us. For example, the barbarian Goth who contemplates a monastery isn't so much a clumsy example of anachronism but an instructive image of escape from Roman tyranny - doubly so, firstly by means of the Goths' defeat of a decadent Rome, secondly through the Reformation's liberation of religion from an equally decadent Papacy. Bate reminds us, in this example, of how perceptions of Romans and Goths have changed over the intervening 400 years. The Goths, from an Elizabethan perspective, were not primarily destructive, shaggy-haired barbarians but a positive, reinvigorating people who helped European culture to flourish after centuries of imperial greed and misrule.
This edition is unconventional in its analysis of Elizabethan attitudes to revenge. I'd always thought that this was quite plain and unequivocal (' "Vengeance is mine, I will repay," said the Lord' being the commonly quoted Biblical text telling us that retribution is a divine, not human, prerogative.) Bate, however, refers to an essay by Bacon which presents an alternative, more ambivalent, view in which the public good is a key consideration. He follows this point up with a demonstration of how Titus, the avenger, is in some sense the embodiment of the legal process, and not simply an individual citizen taking the law into his own hands to right private wrongs.
And what does Bate say about the play's 'excessive violence'? Again, putting Titus in its historical context, he argues that, compared to the real horror and bloody spectacle of public execution, the play's violence is often sublimated through the artifice of masque.
The Arden 3rd edition has established a reputation for being thought-provoking and eloquent as well as authoritative. This, one of the earlier titles, is one that helped to establish that reputation.
Bate certainly makes a persuasive case. He combines an easy, conversational eloquence with penchant analysis. What is made clear is that for a fuller appreciation of the play, we need to understand a contemporary audience's response to episodes which may seem puzzling to us. For example, the barbarian Goth who contemplates a monastery isn't so much a clumsy example of anachronism but an instructive image of escape from Roman tyranny - doubly so, firstly by means of the Goths' defeat of a decadent Rome, secondly through the Reformation's liberation of religion from an equally decadent Papacy. Bate reminds us, in this example, of how perceptions of Romans and Goths have changed over the intervening 400 years. The Goths, from an Elizabethan perspective, were not primarily destructive, shaggy-haired barbarians but a positive, reinvigorating people who helped European culture to flourish after centuries of imperial greed and misrule.
This edition is unconventional in its analysis of Elizabethan attitudes to revenge. I'd always thought that this was quite plain and unequivocal (' "Vengeance is mine, I will repay," said the Lord' being the commonly quoted Biblical text telling us that retribution is a divine, not human, prerogative.) Bate, however, refers to an essay by Bacon which presents an alternative, more ambivalent, view in which the public good is a key consideration. He follows this point up with a demonstration of how Titus, the avenger, is in some sense the embodiment of the legal process, and not simply an individual citizen taking the law into his own hands to right private wrongs.
And what does Bate say about the play's 'excessive violence'? Again, putting Titus in its historical context, he argues that, compared to the real horror and bloody spectacle of public execution, the play's violence is often sublimated through the artifice of masque.
The Arden 3rd edition has established a reputation for being thought-provoking and eloquent as well as authoritative. This, one of the earlier titles, is one that helped to establish that reputation.
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