December 27, 1999 [Titus]

The child sits at his lunch and plays with both toys and food, and becomes more manic and smash-bang—until even he begins to look a bit dismayed—while explosions and sirens grow in the background, as though he were somehow in a Terry Gilliam movie, just a time bandit swept away from a world more full of weeping than he can understand—to a world, Rome, weeping even more, "victorious in thy mourning weeds"—and Titus "salutes his country with his tears"—to let us know that, long before the movie began, others have cried havoc and let loose the dogs of war—whose jaws grin at us cheerfully as they chew out our guts.

I glanced into my old Pelican edition of Shakespeare and read the introduction to Titus Andronicus to remind myself that the play is (or was) generally dismissed, even scorned, as the misfire of a young playwright.  One Gustav Cross begins his introduction by asserting that it is "a ridiculous play."

So why was I so moved?  Why did I compare it—like some dope, if Cross is to be believed—to King Lear, that unbreakable monument to broken hearts? Why was I not only horrified but tearful?  Is it because Titus did not choose wisely when he had to side with either his friend (worse yet, with his son) or his country?  Is it a mere principle whose breaking makes me bow my head? Or is it the complete horror of most of the souls darting about on fire, Goths and Romans both, even torn-apart Lavinia using her tongue one more time to scorn her enemy?  Or do I see myself, hoping for something I can stand by, choosing badly—but then chained to the choice, like Titus maddened by the very facts of his life?  Anthony Hopkins bullies us into recalling Hannibal the Cannibal—but with even more sick humor, the giggling mutters of a good soldier left to drop tears on the Appian Way, whose stones are already wet with how many others' mourning.

But what makes him laugh?  His lack of pity to Tamora (and what would such a role be without Jessica Lange, fiercer than her barbarian Queen could ever hope to be)?  The bludgeoning ironies of hands and tongues and virtues torn out by the roots—themselves replaced by roots and branches and stumps, poor utensils for the little cannibal holocaust Titus prepares, his chef hat jaunty as he serves up Satan's meatloaf?  Or is it simply the knowledge that someone like Julie Taymor, the bright puppeteer of Broadway, could pull this play from the scholars' dunk-tank?

I don't know what the canonizers think of Titus these days, but as a movie it jumps out at me like that little Thing from Alien and latches on and goes deep—while in that last long shot, simple astronomy swallows up the children—in love and protection? in obliteration?—or perhaps in promises of a Somewhere better than a country where duty bests love and love conquers all like an invading army.