Titus Andronicus

July is now behind us… the laughter from The Comedy of Errors is fading… and the ugliness (or cool goriness, depending on your take on horrorshows) rises like an incoming tide…
OF BLOOD!

Titus Andronicus begins today!

A few quick hits:

  • This is a very early play (thus us reading it second)… and from the critical response, not a very polished piece.
  • Its incredibly high level of violence and brutality have made some critics (who love the Bard so much that they can’t picture this coming from him) believe that this is the work of someone else.
  • It’s another short play (not quite as short as last month’s Comedy [the shortest in all of Shakespeare], but still shorter than average).
  • It has the longest Act One, Scene One in the Canon (but then again, there’s only one scene in Act One).

While we get a first cursory reading out of the way (unlike Comedy, which I taught in a past life career, I’ve never read Titus before), we’ll hit upon some related topics (Senecan and Jacobean tragedy, Kyd and Marlowe, Moor-ship, etc) before we dig deeper in the text.

So, if your tastes run more toward Saw V and Taken than the Three Stooges, join us for a bloody good August!

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