The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 25.321 Tuesday, 15 July 2014
[1] From: Markus Marti <
Date: July 14, 2014 at 1:30:46 PM EDT
Subject: Deranged or not deranged?
[2] From: John Drakakis <
Date: July 14, 2014 at 2:02:03 PM EDT
Subject: RE: SHAKSPER: Is Titus Deranged?
[3] From: Kirk McElhearn <
Date: July 14, 2014 at 4:27:20 PM EDT
Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: Is Titus Deranged?
[4] From: Lawrence Weiss <
Date: July 14, 2014 at 7:46:27 PM EDT
Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: Is Titus Deranged?
[5] From: Jim Carroll <
Date: July 14, 2014 at 10:19:43 PM EDT
Subject: Re: Is Titus Deranged?
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From: Markus Marti <
Date: July 14, 2014 at 1:30:46 PM EDT
Subject: Deranged or not deranged?
“Revenge is a kind of wild justice”, said Bacon, and revengers are “wild” persons. This applies to Hieronimo and to Titus, both mentioned in the same digest. Revengers pretending to be mad or being mad is a brand mark off Revenger’s tragedies. Whether they are really mad or not, is often hard to decide. Hamlet, one of the main characters of another revenge tragedies, announces it: he intends to “put an antic disposition on” (I.5.172), but we can never be quite sure whether this “antic disposition” is just “put on” or “real”—are not all revengers mad anyway? Titus as a cruel general of the Roman army and as a father who kills his sons he is certainly in many ways obviously mad from the beginning of the play . . .
Markus Marti
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From: John Drakakis <
Date: July 14, 2014 at 2:02:03 PM EDT
Subject: RE: SHAKSPER: Is Titus Deranged?
I am persuaded by Robert Appelbaum’s comments on Titus Andronicus’s alleged madness. The problem raises itself again in that other ‘revenge’ play, ‘Hamlet’ which is in some ways a more sophisticated return to ‘revenge’ as a motif. In both cases the hero appears ‘mad’ relatively speaking because many of those around him try to persuade themselves that they are sane. In Rome—the Rome that Titus has defended and fought for—there is no justice once Tamora’s influence begins to exert itself. What is Titus to do? In Denmark, the court honours custom more ‘in the breach’ than ‘the observance’. As Hamlet tells Gertrude in the Closet scene: ‘Lay not that unction to your soul that my madness not your trespass speaks.’ Hamlet’s excess of emotion comes, not from madness but from disgust with his mother’s disloyalty to his dead father. Similarly, Titus’s responses to the horrors inflicted upon him are a rational response to a viciously irrational form of behaviour that manifests itself in murder and rape. If Rome is a ‘wilderness of tigers’ then Titus’s comparative isolation looks like ‘madness’ but isn’t. The issue finally revolves around the extent to which he (like Hamlet) is tainted by the forms of revenge outside the institutions of ‘justice’ that he is forced to seek.
Cheers
John Drakakis
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From: Kirk McElhearn <
Date: July 14, 2014 at 4:27:20 PM EDT
Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: Is Titus Deranged?
>So here is my question: is Titus really, from the beginning,
>like Lear in the throes of disappointment, dementia and
>rage? Is Titus really deranged? During one critical aside
>Titus assures us that he is not deranged at all: ‘I know
>them all, though they suppose me mad, / And will o’erreach
>them in their own devices.’ It has in the past seemed to
>me that what Titus and his audience go through is truly
>horrible precisely because Titus is not mad, and that
>Titus’s own tragedy-inviting violence is the violence of
>man in full position of his wits, his authority, his military
>values. Titus's horror is the horror of his rationality.
I don’t think he is, and I don’t think he should be on stage. He does come back from war with a heavy heart, having killed many men, and lost many sons. So he may be suffering form PTSD. But what makes him snap is what happens to Lavinia.
I didn’t see the Globe production, but I did see last year’s RSC production twice:
http://www.mcelhearn.com/theater-review-titus-andronicus-by-the-royal-shakespeare-company/
I was able to meet with the director and there of the actors after the performance, and Stephen Boxer, who played Titus, said: “I think the key to Andronicus is the brutalization of war [ . . . ] and what it does to a human being.”
So he saw Titus as having seen and done things beyond what one should do. In the play, he portrayed Titus as fatigued in the beginning, then had him go over the edge after Lavinia’s rape and maiming. I found it very convincing; there didn’t seem to be any of the kind of madness that Simon Russell Beale played in his recent Lear.
I regret that the RSC hadn’t started filming the plays for that production of Titus.
Kirk
Kirkville: http://www.mcelhearn.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mcelhearn
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From: Lawrence Weiss <
Date: July 14, 2014 at 7:46:27 PM EDT
Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: Is Titus Deranged?
At the beginning of the play, Titus exhibits signs of a personality disorder characterized by over-rigidity, but no psychosis. He is certainly sent around the bend by the events of the play (who wouldn't be), a form of PTSD I suppose. But at no point does he evidence dementia, at least as Shakespeare wrote it. But a director can do what he or she likes, I suppose.
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From: Jim Carroll <
Date: July 14, 2014 at 10:19:43 PM EDT
Subject: Re: Is Titus Deranged?
I would say that Robert Applebaum is correct in his assessment of Titus’ state of mind. The play as a whole is a kind of pre-Lear in that both plays involve men who voluntarily give up power and suffer the consequences, but the character of Titus is more a pre-Hamlet, feigning madness in order to right the wrongs that have been suffered. And as with “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark”, Shakespeare’s tale is freely mis-interpreted by modern directors.
Jim Carroll