Titus Andronicus: Act II

[Scheherazade]

Please post your thoughts and questions on Act II here.

Scene I (http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/titusandronicus/4/)

Scene II (http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/titusandronicus/5/)

Scene III (http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/titusandronicus/6/)

Scene IV (http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/titusandronicus/7/)

[xman]

This Act has got to be the primary reason people dislike this play. Scene iv is easily the most grotesquely violent* in all of Shakespeare and that's saying something. Poor Lavinia. She breaks my heart. I weep almost as hard for her as I do for Juliet.

Aaron and Tamora expose themselves to us as villains. Seems to me it was a bad idea for Saturninus to take her as his queen after what happened to her sons in the first act. Aaron has often been compared to Iago in his cunning and I'm beginning to see that clearer than ever.

The thing which astonishes me is that Demetrius and Chiron declare love for her at the top of the act and enact hate upon her by the end of it. These boys are clearly emotionally confused. Love and Hate are practically the same thing for them and it might be argued that it is this way for most of the characters in this play for one reason or another.

Odd that this was one of Shakespeare's greatest successes and early enough in his career that it cemented him in company with Marlowe and Kyd. At least we can say that while Shakespeare couldn't fathom how we would react, he knew well what his own audience liked.

X

*Honourable mention to the maiming of the pledges in the apocryphal Edmund Ironside.

[Virgil]

You know, I really liked Act I and was wondering why this was not considered a good play. After reading Act II, I got to say I didn't like it much. It's awkward. Here are some thoughts.

The act starts with tamora's sons passionately fighting each other over who loves Lavinia:

AARON
Young lords, beware! and should the empress know
This discord's ground, the music would not please.

CHIRON
I care not, I, knew she and all the world:
I love Lavinia more than all the world.

DEMETRIUS
Youngling, learn thou to make some meaner choice:
Lavinia is thine elder brother's hope.
But later on (actually minutes later) the two brothers are talked into gang raping her, and then in scene III gleefully do it and then cut her hands off and her tongue out. How do you go from loving her "more than all the world" to commiting such acts? There's a psychological disconnect here; it's incongruous.

The mechanics of the act seem clunky to me. Aaron digs a pit, buries money, runs off to get Tamora's sons, the sons just meet up with Bassianus and Lavinia, has a letter written and handed off that indicts Titus's sons, the sons show up and fall into the very pit where Bassianus's body lays, the money is found as evidence, and they are easily blamed for the murder.

Plus the brutality is gruesome.

Not a very artistically drawn Act if you ask me.

[Redzeppelin]

This is one of the reasons that I'm not wild about the play. Shakespeare's later plays use violence a bit more sparingly (and for greater effect); here, he seems to be trying too hard (but as this is often claimed to be an early work, that's understandable). I just found the play lacking Shakespeare's particular grace.

[xman]

Yeah, but it just goes to show that he was always trying to push his own boundaries. I've got to agree though. It's curiously unlike him in many ways.

X

[Virgil]

Actually Petrarch explains where Shakespeare was coming from with this play very well. You can find it here: http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23286