Parasite Revenge, and other Pretentious Titles
Intro:
Ok, this will be the last of the Essay posts for a while. I promise to be back to writing on writing and talking about good (or bad) books/ movies by next Wednesday. This was the final paper I wrote for my Shakespeare class in my second term at College. I have a fondness for Titus Andronicus… probably because it is batshit crazy and doesn’t have the same level of annoying characters in it that I usually have to fight through with Shakespeare.
Yes, I am making a comment that I think a lot of the “bard’s” work is overrated and often filled with annoying characters who just can’t do the right thing, who make everything more difficult than it needs to be. But I digress… This is the first paper where I really started playing around with the titles of my papers, the more pretentious they sounded the more I liked them.
M.A.D (Mutually Assured Destruction), Parasite Revenge, Or:
Revenge from Titus Andronicus to the Modern Era.
Revenge is a long enduring theme that seems to always find favor with the masses, though not always with the critics. While many romanticize the revenge story as a kind of avenging, at its heart it is a portrayal of humiliation and redress, sometimes in highly violent acts. Revenge is a motive so old it is literally biblical and one could run on for hundreds of pages. To focus, Revenge is almost a character on to itself, taking a parasitic life as it ruins characters and spreads its infection amongst all the players in the story. Nothing is left unaffected by revenge and its touch lingers long after. Titus Andronicus is a prime example of the theme of revenge and shows how revenge is a self-perpetuating cycle that destroys or corrupts all in its path, eventually destroying the originator.
Titus Andronicus has long been considered the trashy B-movie of Shakespeare’s oeuvre, with many people even debating whether or not he even wrote it. It contains gallons of blood, dismemberment, human sacrifice, cannibalism, rape, and betrayal. The material is very shocking, very overt, and critics of the times were not kind. But despite this criticism the play was well liked, having three publications; 1594, 1600, 1611; and it was included in Shakespeare’s First Folio (Weber 702). As Willis remarks in “The Gnawing Vulture”, “Revenge plays became popular in England at a time when Protestant reformers and state authorities were energetically denouncing the private revenges of aristocratic clans and “brawling” at all social levels,” (23). Basically “dueling” and public fighting were beginning to become penalized in England as it tried to reform its legal system, as such people found release in more violent plays and entertainment. Articles of the times show Elizabethan people to be rather bawdy, ribald, and coarse of language; swearing and calling each other names were par for the course. As such a play filled with revenge and bloodletting fits right in with the common folk. It’s among the higher classes, “Ben Jonson (in the induction to 1614’s Bartholomew Fair) as an example of the type of old-fashioned play still much loved by those of simple and antiquated tastes” (Weber 702) and later during the Victorian Era where Titus gets the most of its criticism and gets dismissed as “trash”. Even to this modern-day people love to separate “low brow” and “highbrow” entertainment, modern movie critics still dismiss a movie labeled as “horror” as “low-grade” and not culture. They even invented a new genre just to avoid calling something horror, along comes “thrillers”, interestingly enough many of these so-called thrillers happen to be revenge based movies. It wouldn’t be until after World War II that genuine criticism and the depth of the work would truly be appreciated.
Continuing with the play’s context in the Elizabethan era there are several other alternate takes on the basis for the play itself. A large part of the play is based on Ovid, as a matter of fact Ovid is mentioned in the book and his story is the basis for both the rape scene and in Lavinia finding the strength to accuse her attackers. Ovid and other tales of ancient Rome and the Trojan War also teaches us about, “Beliefs about honor and revenge are part of a transnational inheritance that informs the identities of most characters in the play, whatever their ancestry (Willis 30-1). This means that some of the actions in the play are “forgiven” as the nature of Rome and barbarous Goths, how could they act against their basic nature? Under this conceit the play, and thus the playwright, could get away with his atrocities in the way of delivering historical fact as his fiction. In “Headless Rome” there is some discussion that Titus might be based on a Persian story about Cyrus the Great, and how he was destroyed by a woman’s revenge, Tomyris (Tamora) and that perhaps there is an underscore of criticism for woman as rulers. While there are some great parallels between the two stories, it seems more likely that Titus himself might have been based on an English noble, the Flodden Duke, Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, second duke of Norfolk, and that the entire play was an indictment of Elizabeth and her treatment of Catholics in England (Merkel 76). The story of Howard and his family is also a tale of revenge, with the entire family nearly wiped out, their family tomb closed and partially looted. The fact that only the first Quarto contains the lines that allude to Lord Howard: “… and at this day/ To the Monument of that Andronicy/ Done sacrifice of expiation/ And slain the Noblest prisoner of the Gothes. (I.i.35-38)” (Merkel 76). Also, Titus was awarded the surname of Pius, in this copy of the text, and several other words leaning toward the Papacy, and Catholic Rome. A copy of the first (1594) Quarto was discovered in Sweden in 1904, the omitted lines must have been removed from the next two printings and subsequent productions of the play so as to remove the anti-Elizabeth sentiment. So, the bloodiest revenge play in history might also have been penned in revenge of the Howard family, as a slight against Elizabeth, and a rallying cry for underground Catholic resistance.
Back on track, revenge is more than just a simple motive to give a character. While revenge is a simple motive that pretty much anyone can understand, it is not a lazy way to go about making an audience understand a character. Revenge has deep roots in psychology and sociology, and a good writer will plume the depths of a character to make them true—live and breathe. “Violence generally its roots in humiliation, that the vengeful response has less to do with an evil spirit than with a symbolic struggle to remake the damaged self, to achieve psychic survival rather than material advantage” (Watson 286). So, the revenger is not normally an evil person, or possessed of evil needs, but is a damaged person trying to correct what’s been inflicted upon them. Looking back at the play we can see that Titus is a worn-out man, just home from ten years of war with the Goths. He is about to bury twenty of his sons in the family tomb when one of surviving sons demands that they sacrifice one of their prisoners. Thus does all the revenge start off in Titus Andronicus, a weary Titus allows this sacrifice despite the “contradiction of well‐known Roman mores” (Grogan 1) and with the death of one of her sons, Tamora becomes the first to catch the parasite revenge and the horror starts. While the Queen of the Goths, in this single instance, seems deeply wronged and thus “right” in her vengeance, her motive is not as clean as it first appears. Going back to the root of revenge is found in humiliation, it is not the death of her son but more to do with her humiliation at being captured and dragged back to Rome. Within minutes of her son’s death she flirting with the Emperor and already planning wickedness. Continuing in Act 1 we then have an argument between the brothers Saturninus and Bassianus, arguing about who should rule, and Saturninus is particularly upset by the public acclaim for Titus, the returning hero of the Gothic Wars. Again, Saturninus humiliation lies in the fact that he is the eldest son of the late-emperor and yet he is not publically acclaimed. Titus, again tired from the war, is gracious and makes a public speech declaring Saturninus as emperor and gives the man his daughter. But within minutes of receiving that praise and being crowned as emperor, Saturninus decides to take Tamora as bride, allows his brother to take Lavinia, and leaves Titus to deal with the fallout. From this point forward it is a case of atrocity after atrocity. The amount of humiliation, pain, and suffering heaped on Titus is more than any one person should endure, and his revenge, as twisted and overwrought as it is, comes across as more justified, cleaner, and pen-ultimately more cathartic then the petty vengeances of the other characters in the story. However, it does still consume him, though after all his suffering and the torture and madness that is perhaps for the best that he dies in the act of his final vengeance. Much can be said that Shakespeare gave us the first story to accurately portray the PTSD, nearly four hundred years before PTSD was listed in the DSM. His ability to understand people, to create “real” characters, with understandable motives and desires, is what has led to him enduring for centuries, and why he’ll still be taught for centuries yet to come.
Enduring until today, with universal themes that all can relate to modern media is absolutely running over with so many examples that keeping the choices to minimum is nigh impossible. There are long running soap operas that constantly have characters backstab, manipulate, and swear vengeance on each other. There is currently a show called Revenge on TV. The list of movies where someone swears undying revenge against those that have wronged them is too long to include in this short paper. But, to focus on two examples; Joe Abercrombie’s Best Served Cold and the Marvel Netflix series The Punisher will work best. In Best Served Cold, we have a woman mercenary who gets betrayed, tortured, and murdered in the opening chapter. However, she survives the murder, and broken in both body and mind she drags herself to civilization with only one thing fueling her; killing all the men that betrayed and tried to kill her. Now this book takes it further in that she recruits a handful of men to help her mend and wreck her revenge. One of them stays at her side completely loyal and devoted to her, but not quite endeared to her cause. At first, he is willing to hurt some of the men that hurt her, but the level of extremity she is willing to go to bothers him. As the book continues his pleas for her to find peace and stop slowly disappear as she has asked him to perform atrocity after atrocity. Eventually all the rage and hate in her is sated and she is willing to stop, but her companion has been so consumed with rage and murder that he is now the twisted one and spits on her new mercy. In the end all the killing has broken her emotionally again, and the one man who started this out of love for her feels abused and he is full of hate and leaves her. In this book “revenge” is almost a living character, a parasite that has feed off our main character while slowly infecting her companion and then finally abandoning her to take on with the new rage filled person.
The arrival of the Punisher on Netflix just a week ago was a blessing in disguise. While the comics that the character is lifted from are morally grey with the main character driven to kill criminals, the Netflix series decided to give full depth to the crimes against Frank Castle. The murder of his family in a rival gang park shootout is only one trigger. The fact that Castle is a marine veteran with severe symptoms of PTSD before that event (and greater symptoms after) is very important to the story they tell. Titus Andronicus and his sons are also returned from a long war, 10 years battling the Goths, who were always touted by the Romans as extremely savage, leads back to the point about Shakespeare writing about PTSD. Castle’s mission to kill everyone involved in the death of his family may come across as psychotic, but it is always placed as a just price for the death of his children, and there is a certain morale fortitude to Castle. There are moments where characters say that Castle would never do illegal things, and yet he’s murdering those who wronged him. He wouldn’t steal or deal drugs, but kill drug dealers and murders is ok, people try to talk him into finding evidence and charging the murders with their crimes, but Castle only sees his way, kill them all. Briefly a third example, the great Khan Noonien Singh said it best, “To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee; For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.”(Herman Melville) Khan so locked in gaining his revenge, at death’s very door makes the decision to take his nemesis with him. Mutually assured destruction. Madness and Revenge seem to go hand and hand; both are a large part of Shakespeare’s work and persist in all forms of modern media. As long as there are bullies, as long as people feel humiliation and helplessness, there will always be revenge and those that can understand it completely. At first blush many of these characters are reprehensible; Frank Castle, Titus, and even Tamora, all of them have done horrible deeds and the gut rejection is that they are horrible people. When their actions are traced back to the source, that source is inevitably some abuse that they suffered, the extremity of their reaction can sometimes be understood, even agreed with. Revenge is a human trait that exists at a genetic level, engrained with emotional responses.
To bring it all together, so much more can be said on the subject of revenge and how it destroys those who use it. Titus Andronicus is not the Bard’s first foray into revenge as a theme, his plays are filled with vengeful characters. From his historicals, Henry V takes the Dauphin’s joke quite to heart and while he had other reasons this still was a motivation to war on France, to even his comedies weren’t free of revenge, take Malvolio in Twelfth Night who ends the play by swearing vengeance on everyone who wronged him. The depth of the subject is as equal as the depth of each of Shakespeare’s plays and would require volumes. Tamora’s humiliation and hatred drove her to acts of pure evil, and her ego allowed her to believe that it was just and right. Titus suffering much under a ten-year war, the loss of most of his family, and the jealousy of his Emperor; to then become the target of Tamora’s wrath and to lose two more sons and have his daughter mutilated and raped. Revenge infected Tamora, her acts of evil then tainted Titus, destroyed his sons and daughter, the parasite revenge took Titus to the final acts and in the final act we have the confession and execution of Aaron the Moor, and Marcus Andronicus and his nephew Lucius as the last standing members of the house. Revenge destroys all. Titus fell killing the source of his torment. Monza Murcatto, from Best Served Cold, loses all taste for killing and is left alone with her self-loathing, and the fact that she destroyed a good man. Frank Castle will never have a semblance of normalcy; he’ll always be a fringe character living in whatever bolt-hole he can find and locked in an eternal war against criminals who just “need to die.” While revenge may have its roots in redressing wrongs, in humiliation, and severe mental trauma; it offers no healing or solace to those maladies. It only contributes to the damage already done and keeps the bearer going until their inevitable end or complete breakdown. Titus Andronicus at first blush is a play filled with blood, violence, and death; but it is so much more than that once the layers are peeled back and revenge is revealed as a parasite feeds on its bears, offers them no solace, and eventually destroys them.
Work Cited
Grogan, Jane. “Headless Rome” and Hungry Goths: Herodotus and Titus Andronicus,” English Literary Renaissance 43, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 30-61. Academic OneFile, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A322062067/AONE?u=9211haea&sid=AONE&xid=1b559912. Accessed 1 Dec. 2017.
Merkel, Marie. “Titus Andronicus and the Treasonous House of Howard.” Oxfordian, vol. 12, Dec. 2010, p. 76. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.snhu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edo&AN=60685206&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Shakespeare, William. Complete Plays. Fall River Press. 2012.
Watson, Robert N. “The Shapes of Revenge: Victimization, Vengeance, and Vindictiveness in Shakespeare.” Shakespeare Studies, 1997, p. 285. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.snhu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsglr&AN=edsgcl.20028860&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Weber, William W. “Worse Than Philomel”: Violence, Revenge, and Meta-Allusion in Titus Andronicus.” Studies in Philology, vol. 112, no. 4, Fall2015, pp. 698-717. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.snhu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=110616579&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Willis, Deborah, author. “The Gnawing Vulture”: Revenge, Trauma Theory, and “Titus Andronicus.” Shakespeare Quarterly, no. 1, 2002, p. 21. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.snhu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.3844038&site=eds-live&scope=site.