TITUS

After Titus Andronicus
Not improbably by/after the possibly young (15 yrs.) William Shakespeare

A general returns to Rome a human wreck after a war of many years and ends up in the middle of an election struggle. He becomes sucked in through his meddling, causing the suffering he thought he had left behind to manifest itself at home. This play is regarded as Shakespeare’s least successful and most violent piece, written as entertainment after London was scourged by the plague, in  an attempt to entice the public back to the theatre.

What do you do when twenty-one of your sons
Have been killed in battle
You’ve killed the twenty-second in a fit of pique
Your daughter has been raped
And her hands cut off
Her tongue cut out
Two other sons have been falsely accused
Of murdering your son-in-law
And the single remaining son has been sentenced to exile
You’ve been told that the two
Condemned to die will be pardoned
If you chop off your hand
And so you do so
Only to have the hand and the heads of your two sons
Sent back to you as a sick joke
Dramatic decorum dictates that you should recite theatrically

“Now is a time to storm”

TITUS is a play about violence and lust, hate and envy, war and traumas, jealousy and revenge, murder, fathers and sons, trickery and deception, flora and fauna, cause and effect