Titus Andronicus

After reading Titus Andronicus, viewing at least one production, and listening to the audio lecture, you are now ready to discuss elements of the play here in discussion board virtual space. Choose just 2 of the questions below to write a 100 word minimum response to each question, quoting at least once from the play, citing the Act, Scene, and Lines. Use standard formatting for this--for example: (2.3.44-47) means Act Two, Scene Three, Lines 45 to 47.
Once you have posted two responses, then respond with a substantive answer to two of your classmates (not a compliment or a criticism per se, but a response to the content of the play as viewed by a classmate).

1. The play involves two cycles of revenge: Tamora's against the Andronici and Titus's against Tamora and her sons. We have talked about revenge and due proportion - how do the cycles of revenge fit in with this pattern? Does the play demonstrate that revenge only serves to cause more revenge - is this a pattern of violence that can only spiral out of control?
2. How do you respond to the character of Titus throughout this play? Does he develop as a character or is he essentially static? Compare him to Hecuba - both suffer what seem to be an endless succession of blows in a short space of time - do they respond to the situation in similar terms, is one more deserving of their suffering than the other?
3. Parent-child relationships play a large role in the play: Titus and his children; Tamora and her sons; Aaron and his child. Compare these relationships with each other - how can these relationships be characterized, how do they inform the action?
4. What do you think of the character of Aaron? Is he a quintessential villain? What are his motivations for doing what he does? Does he have any redeeming features?
5. How do racism and hate feature in the play? How do they motivate and enable the action?
6. What picture of Roman society emerges from the play?
7. There are many classical references in this play. How do myths and examples from Rome's legendary past influence characters in the play?
8. The play, although tremendously popular in Shakespeare's own day, has generally been panned by critics from the 18th cent. onwards. It has enjoyed something of a revival recently with Julie Taymor's screen version. Why do you think the play has generally not been well received and do you see something in the work that might appeal particularly to a contemporary audience or speak to concerns of the present?
9. Titus Andronicus follows the conventions of the Elizabethan revenge play; yet in its massive excess the play seems less an imitation of the Elizabethan revenge drama than a deliberate parody of that form. Agree? Or not?
10. Evelyn Waugh said, "Titus is an arduous part. He is on stage almost continuously as heroic veteran, stoic parent, implacable devotee of barbarous pieties, crazy victim, adroit revenger." Given the various roles Titus plays, how are we to understand him as a hero? Is he more tragic or Senecan? Does he exhibit any growth or healing in the course of the play, or is he just a physical manifestation of revenge?
11. More than just a setting for the drama, the city of Rome in Titus Andronicus is a highly charged and deeply symbolic landscape that reflects the bodily and mental states of its main characters. Should Rome itself be included in the cast of characters? How does Shakespeare represent Rome in the play, and to what effect?
12. Dover Wilson called Titus Andronicus"a huge joke which, we may guess, Shakespeare enjoyed twice over, once in the penning of it, and again in performance, while he watched his dear groundings, and most of those in the more expensive parts of the theatre also, gaping ever wider to swallow more as he tossed them bigger and bigger gobbets of sob-stuff and raw beef-steak." Is there any evidence in the way the play is written that Titus Andronicus is no more than a parody of a revenge play? Is there any way in which it is an original work that does more than parody?