The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Stoll, Elmer Edgar

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1330332210 ISBN 13: 9781330332214

Publisher: Forgotten Books, 2017

Synopsis

Excerpt from The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus

IT was my purpose to omit Titus Ana'mm'em from this edition of Shakespeare, and I include it now only in deference to the'advice of many friends on both sides of the Atlantic. Most of them agree with me that Shakespeare probably had little to do with writing the play; and one eminent critic - an Englishman, not an Irishman - has suggested that I print the entire text in small type, like the non-shakespearianpor tions of Timon and Pericles. It seems to me, however, very like a bull to print a play as nominally Shakespeare's while allowing him no possi ble Share in its authorship. I prefer to put it all in the ordinary type, to allow the advocates of its authenticity their full Say in its behalf (as I have done in the Introduction), and to leave the student or reader to de cide for himself, if he can, how much of it is Shakespeare's.

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About the Author

Michael Drew is an Adjunct Professor in the English Department at Ohio University, where he received his PhD. He received a BA in Philosophy and MA in Literature from the University of Toledo. He co-organized the 2006 Ohio University conference, “Work, Play, and Humor in English Studies,” and has presented papers at “The Shakespeare Association of America” and “The Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference.”

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION to the Kittredge Edition

Titus Andronicus

On January 24, 1594, Henslowe’s Diary records “Titus & Ondronicous” as a new play acted by the Earl of Sussex’s men. On February 6th “a Noble Roman Historye of Tytus Andronicus” was entered in the Stationers’ Register by John Danter, who printed the First Quarto in the same year. The title page professes to give the tragedy “As it was Plaide by the...Earle of Darbie, Earle of Pembrooke, and Earle of Sussex their Seruants.” This identifies it with that recorded by Henslowe as “new,” and would fix the date of composition as not later than 1593.

In the Induction to Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, the Articles of Agreement between the spectators and the author (dated October 31, 1614) provide that “he that will swear Jeronimo [i.e. Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy] or Andronicus are the best plays yet, shall pass unexcepted at here, as a man whose judgment shows it is constant, and hath stood still these five-and-twenty or thirty years.” This would put The Spanish Tragedy back to 1584–1589; but twenty-five and thirty are obviously round numbers. It is certainly older than Titus Andronicus; and, if we date Kyd’s play about 1589, we are at liberty to put Titus Andronicus anywhere in the first half of the next decade. On the whole, it is safe to settle upon 1592 or 1593, with preference for 1592. For the text, the First Quarto (1594) is the authority. Two other quartos, which came out in 1600 and 1611, supply act 5, scene 3, lines 201–04. The second scene of act 3 appears for the first time in the Folio.

Shakespeare’s connection with Titus Andronicus has been a moot question for two centuries and a half, ever since the irresponsible minor playwright Edward Ravenscroft, in the Address prefixed to his Titus Andronicus, or the Rape of Lavinia (acted in 1678, printed in 1687), acknowledged his indebtedness to Shakespeare’s play and remarked, “I have been told by some anciently conversant with the Stage, that it was not Originally his, but brought by a private Authour to be Acted, and he only gave some Master-touches to one or two of the Principal Parts or Characters.” The idle gossip which he reports (or invents) cannot weigh against the positive assertion of Meres—made in 1598, when the play was only five or six years old—that it is one of Shakespeare’s ‘excellent’ tragedies. Nobody would have listened to Ravenscroft but for the feeling that Titus Andronicus is too horrible to be Shakespeare’s. But Shakespeare was always prone to try experiments, and it would be strange if he had not written one out-and-out tragedy of blood when Kyd had shown how powerfully such things appealed to playgoers...

Edition details

• Publisher: Forgotten Books
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1330332210
• ISBN 13: 9781330332214
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 178