Tragedy of Titus Andronicus (version 2)

About this recording

Perhaps no play in William Shakespeare's body of work is more divisive than his first tragedy Titus Andronicus, wherein the titular Roman general, freshly arrived back home after a decade-long crusade against the Goths, refuses to ascend to the emperorship and quickly sets off a bloody campaign of vengeance when he orders the death of the eldest son of Tamora, Queen of the Goths, to avenge the deaths of his own sons during the war. Violence gives way to more violence as more and more bodies are maimed, violated and dismembered in an agonizing symphony of bloodlust and retribution for the sins of both Titus and Tamora, with Shakespeare capitalizing on the success of other practitioners of the revenge tragedy in his time, such as Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe, to deliver a gruesome spectacle that has simultaneously fascinated and repulsed audiences ever since. Whether you take Shakespeare's aims here to be sincere or parodic, and whether you side with critics like T.S. Eliot (who called it "one of the stupidest and most uninspired plays ever written") or artists like Julie Taymor (who directed the 1999 film adaptation with Anthony Hopkins and who has called the play the most…

• Tragedy