Titus Andronicus Presentation Teaser

For my presentation tomorrow, I would like to focus on the issues surrounding revulsion and consumption in both the text and performance of Titus Andronicus. In Titus, “consuming sorrow” (3.1.61) is transformed into literal consumption when Titus feeds Tamora “son pie.” What is striking to me about this last scene is the way that revenge in Titus is served hot to both Tamora and to the audience, which makes me wonder if there is a parallel between Titus’ gruesome pasties and Shakespeare’s violent play. After all, both the pie and the play are built from the bodies of actors. Like Tamora in 5.3, as readers and spectators we are merely the captive and silent audience of Titus/Shakespeare, being served up a bloody meal. In his introduction to the latest Arden edition of Titus, Jonathan Bate argues “Titus is an unusual dramatist in that he knocks up a pie rather than a curtain; he plays the cook, not the author and the actor” (23). But, what really makes the author and the cook different, particularly in a play like Titus that makes extravagant use of so many revenge tragedy ingredients? The stranger aspect of Shakespeare/Titus as chef is not the metaphor itself, but, rather, that Shakespeare and Titus have cooked up a play that is difficult to swallow. How does revulsion in Titus make us aware of our own consumption as readers and as spectators?

And so, in preparation for our class discussion tomorrow, some topics and scenes to consider are as follows:

• Aebischer’s discussion of obscenity: “Shakespeare thrusts obscenity upon readers, spectators and characters alike. The raped Lavinia is ob-scene, literally ‘off, or to one side of the stage’, in that her mangled, leaking, open body forces into our view ‘that which is just beyond representation’” (Aebischer 29-30).
• The OED definitions of revulsion http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/164997?p=emailAGIKmGq8CtJiY&d=164997; and consume http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/39973?p=emailAGF6uxPhRtRzA&d=39973.
• The two banqueting scenes (3.2 and 5.3).
• The image I have posted from Xavier Leret's 2001-2 production (described in detail in Aebischer's piece from page 49-52).