Going Roman: Richard III and Titus Andronicus compared

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Lake
Keyword(s):  
Richard Iii ◽  
Titus Andronicus ◽  
Revenge Tragedy

This chapter provides a comparison of Richard III and Titus Andronicus. Both Titus and Richard III have at their centre an elaborated picture of tyranny. While Titus comes off as a revenge tragedy, it also features a political under-plot, in which, as well as revenge being achieved by the Andronici, legitimacy is restored to a Rome ravaged by the tyranny of Saturninus and the Machiavellian atheism and evil counsel of Tamora and her lover Aaron, the Moor. While the radical purport of what actually happens in Richard III is obscured rather than highlighted by the heavily providential mix of prophecy and prodigy that suffuses the action, none of that is true of Titus Andronicus.

Succession and confessional politics combined

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-34
Author(s):  
Peter Lake
Keyword(s):  
Roman History ◽  
Richard Iii ◽  
Titus Andronicus ◽  
Revenge Tragedy ◽  
Central Elements ◽  
Henry Vi

This chapter focuses on the play “Titus Andronicus,” which is considered not merely a revenge tragedy. It explains how Titus is suffused with evocations and references to the Aeneid and central elements in the plot that are taken from Ovid. It also mentions how Titus was described as a “noble Roman history” when it was entered in the stationer's register. The chapter discusses the Titus' central concerns: succession, tyranny, resistance and the nature and origins of monarchical legitimacy. It shows how Titus contains echoes of and parallels with the Henry VI and Richard III plays and how it was set within a meticulously evoked and entirely fictional version of Romanitas.

(Re)Contextualizing gender representation in Hamlet

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Andrew Darr
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
Female Gender ◽  
Gender Representation ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Conduct Books ◽  
Titus Andronicus ◽  
Revenge Tragedy ◽  
English Translations

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] My dissertation "(Re)Contextualizing Gender Representation in Hamlet" argues that all Hamlets reflect their historically specific gender crisis, which helps explain why Hamlet remains the most adapted Shakespearian drama. Each Hamlet recontextualizes its representation of gender to reflect the gender norms of that historical period, beginning with Shakespeare's. My first chapter traces the ongoing conversation regarding male and female gender norms from Italian conduct books to their English translations, which in turn instigated an English counter-response. My second chapter interrogates gender representation in the English dramatic genre of revenge tragedy from its Senecan roots through Thomas Kyd's foundational play The Spanish Tragedy to Shakespeare's first revenge tragedy, Titus Andronicus. My third chapter explores twentieth century film adaptations of Hamlet as each film recontextualizes Hamlet and Ophelia within that period's dominant scholarly perception of the characters. My last chapter centers on the emergence of video game adaptations of Hamlet, which was made possible by the arrival of independently funded independent games. These innovative and interactive reimaginings of Hamlet participate within the larger, ongoing conversation concerning the representation of gender within the video game medium. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that the transitional moment that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet during accounts for the play's incredible afterlife, especially in regards to the representation of gender.

Care

2018 ◽  
pp. 280-294
Author(s):  
Neema Parvini
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
King Lear ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
Richard Iii ◽  
Titus Andronicus ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Henry Vi

This chapter assesses the extent to which harm is caused in Shakespeare’s plays when the moral order breaks down by focusing on plays in which the dramatis personae revert to the Hobbesian state of nature and unspeakable cruelty: Titus Andronicus, 3 Henry VI, Richard III, and King Lear. In such moments Shakespeare seems to invoke the image of the tiger, which he only uses fifteen times in all his works. In the constrained or tragic vison (Thomas Sowell), when there are no institutions with which to reinforce the morals that bind people together (authority, loyalty, fairness, sanctity), the worst aspects of humanity – as embodied in the tiger – are granted their fullest expression. However, in Shakespeare’s version of this vision, human nature provides the seeds of its own rebirth.

Pagan/Catholic/Protestant/Christian

2020 ◽  
pp. 179-191
Author(s):  
Peter Lake
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Religious Violence ◽  
Julius Caesar ◽  
Richard Iii ◽  
Titus Andronicus ◽  
Primal Scene ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter reviews the comparison between Hamlet and Titus Andronicus. It explains how Titus operated as an exercise in natural theology and thought experiment that is set in an elaborately evoked pre-Christian Rome. It also points out how Titus sets up a revenge-based primal scene, within which the relations between revenge, religion, and resistance are examined. The chapter highlights the great confessional conflicts of the 1500s that are evoked through the annihilating religious violence, attendant discourses of martyrdom, and persecution at the heart of the action. It also compares the relationship between the plays Titus Andronicus and Richard III to Hamlet and Julius Caesar. It argues how Williams Shakespeare's plays responded to the central issues of tyranny and resistance.

‘She’s Turned Fury’: Women Transmogrified in Revenge Plays

2018 ◽  
pp. 220-236
Author(s):  
Janet Clare
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Titus Andronicus ◽  
Revenge Tragedy ◽  
Henry Vi ◽  
Revenge Plays

This chapter explores early modern responses to Hecuba, arguing that whereas Euripides’ Hecuba is a sympathetic tragic heroine and successful avenger, this model was not replicated in early modern plays. Instead the two aspects of Hecuba’s role, that of lamenting mother and ruthless avenger, bifurcate in English revenge tragedy. Pitiful, mourning mothers such as Isabella from Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy are unsuccessful, while savage ones, such as Tamora from Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus and Queen Margaret in Shakespeare’s Henry VI trilogy, are abhorrent and aberrant, inflicting violence from a position of power. In contrast to Germany and France – where artistic treatments of the Biblical Judith decapitating General Holofernes offer a heroic, political image of female vengeance – the chapter argues that in early modern England revenge was definitively not a woman’s business.

scholarly journals Rethinking the ““Spectacle of the Scaffold””: Juridical Epistemologies and English Revenge Tragedy

2005 ◽  
Vol 89 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
LORNA HUTSON
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Jury Trial ◽  
Renaissance Drama ◽  
English Renaissance ◽  
Titus Andronicus ◽  
Revenge Tragedy ◽  
English Renaissance Drama ◽  
Lay Participation ◽  
Political Differences

ABSTRACT Michel Foucault's analysis of penal torture as part of a regime of truth production continues to be routinely applied to the interpretation of English Renaissance drama. This paper argues that such an application misleadingly overlooks the lay participation that was characteristic of English criminal justice. It goes on to explore the implications of the epistemological differences between continental inquisitorial models of trial and the jury trial as it developed in sixteenth-century England, arguing that rhetorical and political differences between these two models are dramatized in the unfolding action of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus.

Richard III, and: Titus Andronicus, and: Hamlet (review)

2007 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 121-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Montuori
Keyword(s):  
Richard Iii ◽  
Titus Andronicus
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