7. Gregory Doran's 1995 production for the National Theatre and Market Theatre of Johannesburg with Antony Sher as Titus: "Tony was in his mid-forties when he played the role but he played him as an old man. The advanced age of Titus was a great help, because he's one step behind everybody else."
Tony was in his mid-forties when he played the role but he played him as an old man. The advanced age of Titus was a great help, because he's one step behind everybody else. In that astonishing roller-coaster first act, where everything in the world happens, Titus is constantly one step behind and clinging on to what he knows, which is the status quo. That is ultimately his fatal flaw. And I think that's what Tony brought out in the part.
YN: When I direct plays I try my best not to have to answer such questions as this. You should find the answer yourself when you see the production. To answer by using words is not sufficient. What I as a director ask for and the eventual production results will not necessarily be in accord with each other.
What's the place of women in the play? How do you see the characters of Tamora and Lavinia? Are they powerfully opposed or do you see connections between them?
GD: To some extent opposed. Lavinia is a bit of a princess, I don't think she's such a sweetheart. The way she laughs at Tamora and regards her as a sort of subspecies is a very unattractive quality and certainly that was brought out in a postapartheid production in South Africa, where there are very defined social gradations and separations between the different strata of society. Dorothy Ann Gould who played Tamora rooted her part in the moment right at the beginning when she sees her son Alarbus sacrificed by Titus. The Goths had dog tags around their necks and she kept her son's dog tag so that she could constantly bear witness. The reason she was doing what she was doing was not because of being defeated after ten years of war but to get back at Titus and his family for the humiliation that her son and her family was put through. She rooted her as a woman who is driven to violence, which quickly topples over into excess, from a very real standpoint of grief over her children. In the moment when she tells her sons to rape Lavinia, and then Lavinia appeals to her, you do see this in the context of Lavinia having been incredibly rude and vicious to Tamora. I'm not saying Lavinia gets what she deserves because I hardly think that's the case. She tries to appeal to Tamora as another woman but Tamora by that time has been too degraded and humiliated by the violence she has experienced.
YN: This is a question I choose not to answer.
The appearance of Lavinia onstage after Chiron and Demetrius have raped and mutilated her has famously had people fainting in the aisles even when the violence has been presented in a very stylized manner (Peter Brook's use of red ribbons for blood, for example). Why do you think this moment is so devastating for audiences and what were your experiences of it?
GD: Somebody in our audience projectile vomited over the four rows in front! It is a devastating appearance. I think that one of the most difficult speeches in Shakespeare is Marcus Andronicus' discovery of Lavinia. One of the musicians in our production described it as like that dull zoom in Jaws when Roy Scheider suddenly realizes that his kid is in the lagoon and so is the shark. The camera zooms in on Scheider and the background is zoomed out at the same time. It's an intensification, it's like the world stops, it's like time freezes. Jennifer Woodburne, who played Lavinia, had done some very specific groundwork and had been to see a man who had had his hands chopped off in a violent episode and a man who as a result of cancer had no tongue. She looked at how these people coped and one of the things she discovered was that if you don't have any tongue you have a huge buildup of saliva in your mouth. We had presented Lavinia as a Grace Kelly-style princess and one of the humiliating things was that suddenly she was dribbling. There was a sense of her father's tenderness toward her mopping up her dribble, but also she is possibly pregnant as a result of the rape and she has this terrible severing of her limbs. Jenny discovered that victims of this type were hypersensitive about being touched. Her presentation of Lavinia was so devastating in its "reality" that it was amazingly moving to watch. The tenderness between her and her father was heightened by his protectiveness toward her. Then when he chops off his own hand there is a moment of very black comedy when he says "Thy niece and I, poor creatures, want our hands / And cannot passionate our tenfold grief / With folded arms." It was very potent.
8. Yukio Ninagawa's production, which visited Stratford as part of the RSC's Complete Works Festival in 2006: "I used red ribbon as blood ... It is an image that came from inside my body." Hitomi Manaka as Lavinia.
YN: I used red ribbon as blood--similarly in my original production of Medea twenty-five years ago. It is an image that came from inside my body. I have heard that Peter Brook once used the same device, but for me I just hate liquid blood.
Hamlet is usually thought of as the greatest revenge drama, but Titus Andronicus is much more direct in the way it dramatizes revenge. Do you think it's too much neglected in that respect, and, if so, why do you think that may be?
GD: I saw Deborah Warner's production in 1987 and it felt as though she was really taking it seriously, as Peter Brook had taken it seriously in 1955. Titus was the last of Shakespeare's plays to be done at Stratford; it took until 1955. Its depiction of violence is so real and graphic that it is an uncomfortable play to look in the face. It's an easy play to ridicule, an easy play to send up, an easy play to dismiss as being just Chamber of Horrors, but I think its depiction of a society in meltdown is very vivid. The years of appalling violence that South Africa had been through made you honor that violence and I think the play speaks now to the modern world in a way that perhaps it didn't speak before. We found echoes of Beckett. Beckett couldn't have written Waiting for Godot if we hadn't had two world wars and atomic bombs. Suddenly the world made no sense anymore. In Titus it's a world which no longer makes sense. There are no strict moral borders. Titus is surnamed "Pius": piety toward the state, religion, and family, a Roman sense of piety. What Titus knew as a world of order was collapsing around him. When the Goths got in the chaos would follow. I think white South Africa to a large degree clung onto its order because it feared chaos. That's what we were able to explore through the play. It's very easy to dismiss it as an early play. I think it's a great play.
YN: Any play pales when compared with Hamlet, including Titus Andronicus. I have directed Hamlet seven times already and I am still trying to get it right.
The final scene involving the pie is one of the most striking in the whole canon. What was your approach to that scene? How did you try to negotiate the balance between morbid humor and poignant tragedy?
GD: It's all about how Titus plays it. He is in control of that scene. He's the MC, the host at this grisly party. We want Saturninus to get his comeuppance and Lavinia to be revenged. We've fallen out of love with Tamora as a result of her revenge plot, so we're quite glad when she gets what's coming. The boys we've come to hate because of their rape of Lavinia, so we're quite happy to see them baked in the pie in the new rules of this society. There is a grisly black humor to it but it's a very satisfactory and very enjoyable humor. Then there's a rawer, blacker element to the play when we have to deal with Aaron at the end. That feels as though the society hasn't learned the lessons and has degraded Aaron so badly that the cycle of violence can only continue. That makes it a prophetic play as well.
YN: It was my aim to address the pathological aspects of the humor and the severity of this tragedy at the same time. I was looking for some kind of salvation, or at least the suggestion of it. In spite of the tragedy that unfolds in this play, I was eagerly searching for a fragment of hope. That is all. I think I have said too much, so I bid you farewell.
KEY FACTS:
TIMON OF ATHENS
AUTHORSHIP: Long considered to be an incomplete Shakespearean work, Timon of Athens has been shown by modern scholarship to be, in all probability, a collaboration between Shakespeare and THOMAS MIDDLETON, with the following likely distributi
on of scenes:
1.1 Shakespeare, perhaps with some brief additions by Middleton
1.2 Middleton
2.1 Shakespeare
2.2 mixed authorship
3.1-3.6 Middleton
3.7 mixed (beginning and end by Middleton, middle by Shakespeare?)
4.1 Shakespeare
4.2 mixed authorship?
4.3-5.1 Shakespeare, with some Middleton additions (especially to the encounter between Timon and Flavius)
5.2-5.4 Shakespeare
MAJOR PARTS: (with percentage of lines/number of speeches/scenes on stage) Timon (34%/210/8), Apemantus (10%/100/4), Flavius (8%/41/6), Alcibiades (7%/39/5), Poet (4%/30/2), First Senator (4%/27/4), Painter (3%/30/2), Second Senator (3%/14/4), Lucilius (2%/13/2).
LINGUISTIC MEDIUM: 75% verse, 25% prose.
DATE: 1604-06? No firm evidence for date, but stylistic similarity suggests proximity to King Lear and Middleton's A Trick to Catch the Old One (1605); this was the period when Middleton was writing for the King's Men, so is likeliest for a collaboration. The shared source with Antony and Cleopatra (see below) supports such a date. The masque and the concern with flatterers are more Jacobean than Elizabethan (i.e. after the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603); the absence of a clear five-act structure implies composition before the King's Men began playing the indoor Blackfriars theater (i.e. before 1608).
SOURCES: There is a general outline of the Timon story in Plutarch's "Life of Marcus Antonius," which was Shakespeare's main source for Antony and Cleopatra; Plutarch's Lives of the Most Noble Grecians and Romanes also included a biography of Alcibiades, providing material for the subplot. The other major source is a dialogue on Timon by the second-century Greek satirist Lucian of Samosata (probably in the 1528 Latin translation by Erasmus). There are close resemblances, especially in the second banquet scene, to an anonymous university or Inns of Court comedy of Timon, which may be a source. It is possible that Shakespeare worked from Plutarch while Middleton brought knowledge of the academic play and Lucian. The character of Apemantus may also be indebted to the misanthropic philosopher Diogenes in John Lyly's comedy Campaspe (1581).
TEXT: The relative brevity of the play and a plethora of internal inconsistencies, such as the interview between Flavius and Ventidius that is arranged at the end of Act 2 Scene 2 but never materializes, led to the hypothesis that Timon was an incomplete work. Coauthorship is now considered a much likelier explanation for the textual problems. Most scholars believe that the copy was set from the dramatists' rough draft; though this is not known for certain, most of the difficulties are attributable to problems with the copy rather than the quality of the printers' work.
TIMON OF ATHENS
TIMON of Athens
FLAVIUS, steward to Timon
ALCIBIADES, an Athenian captain
APEMANTUS, a churlish philosopher
Timon's servants
LUCILIUS
FLAMINIUS
SERVILIUS
A POET
A PAINTER
A JEWELLER
A MERCHANT who trades in silks
A FOOL
An OLD Athenian MAN
A PAGE
flattering lords
LUCIUS
LUCULLUS
SEMPRONIUS
VENTIDIUS, one of Timon's false friends
Servants to usurers
CAPHIS
VARRO
PHILOTUS
TITUS
LUCIUS' SERVANT
HORTENSIUS
SENATORS
CUPID AND MASQUERS
BANDITTI
whores with Alcibiades
PHRYNIA
TIMANDRA
Three STRANGERS, the second called
Hostilius
Two MESSENGERS
Other LORDS
Servants, Attendants
Act 1 Scene 1
running scene 1
Enter Poet, Painter, Jeweller, Merchant (a Mercer) at several doors
POET Good day, sir.
PAINTER I am glad you're well.
POET I have not seen you long. How goes the world?3
PAINTER It wears, sir, as it grows.4
POET Ay, that's well known.
But what particular rarity? What strange,6
Which manifold record not matches7? See,
Magic of bounty, all these spirits8 thy power
Hath conjured to attend9. I know the merchant.
PAINTER I know them both: th'other's a jeweller.
To Jeweller
MERCHANT O, 'tis a worthy lord.
JEWELLER Nay, that's most fixed.12
MERCHANT A most incomparable man, breathed13, as it were,
To an untirable and continuate14 goodness:
He passes.15
JEWELLER I have a jewel here--
MERCHANT O, pray let's see't. For the lord Timon, sir?
JEWELLER If he will touch the estimate18. But for that--
Recites
POET 'When we for recompense19 have praised the vile,
It stains the glory in that happy20 verse
Which aptly21 sings the good.'
Looks at the jewel
MERCHANT 'Tis a good form.22
JEWELLER And rich: here is a water23, look ye.
To Poet
PAINTER You are rapt, sir, in some work, some dedication24
To the great lord.
POET A thing slipped idly26 from me.
Our poesy is as a gum, which oozes
From whence 'tis nourished. The fire i'th'flint
Shows not till it be struck: our gentle flame
Provokes itself and like the current flies30
Each bound it chafes31. What have you there?
PAINTER A picture, sir. When comes your book forth?
POET Upon the heels of my presentment33, sir.
Let's see your piece.
Shows the painting
PAINTER 'Tis a good piece.
POET So 'tis: this comes off36 well and excellent.
PAINTER Indifferent.37
POET Admirable. How this grace38
Speaks his own standing! What a mental power
This eye shoots forth! How big40 imagination
Moves in this lip! To th'dumbness of the gesture41
One might interpret.
PAINTER It is a pretty mocking43 of the life.
Here is a touch:44 is't good?
POET I will say of it,
It tutors nature: artificial strife46
Lives in these touches livelier47 than life.
Enter certain Senators
They pass over the stage
PAINTER How this lord is followed.48
POET The senators of Athens, happy men.
PAINTER Look, more.
POET You see this confluence51, this great flood of visitors.
Shows the poem
I have in this rough work shaped out a man
Whom this beneath world53 doth embrace and hug
With amplest entertainment: my free drift54
Halts not particularly55, but moves itself
In a wide sea of wax -- no levelled56 malice
Infects one comma57 in the course I hold --
But flies an eagle flight, bold and forth on,
Leaving no tract59 behind.
PAINTER How shall I understand you?60
POET I will unbolt61 to you.
You see how all conditions62, how all minds,
As well of glib and slipp'ry63 creatures as
Of grave and austere quality, tender down64
Their services to Lord Timon: his large fortune
Upon his good and gracious nature hanging66
Subdues and properties to his love and tendance67
All sorts of hearts; yea, from the glass-faced68 flatterer
To Apemantus, that few things loves better
Than to abhor himself -- even he drops down70
The knee before him, and returns71
in peace
Most rich in Timon's nod.72
PAINTER I saw them speak together.
POET Sir, I have upon a high and pleasant hill
Feigned75 Fortune to be throned: the base o'th'mount
Is ranked with all deserts76, all kind of natures
That labour on the bosom of this sphere77
To propagate78 their states, amongst them all
Whose eyes are on this sovereign lady79 fixed
One do I personate of Lord Timon's frame,80
Whom Fortune with her ivory hand wafts81 to her,
Whose present grace to present slaves and servants82
Translates his rivals.
PAINTER 'Tis conceived to scope.84
This throne, this Fortune, and this hill, methinks,
With one man beckoned from the rest below,
Bowing his head against87 the sleepy mount
To climb his happiness, would be well expressed
In our condition.89
POET Nay, sir, but hear me on.90
All those which were his fellows but of late,91
Some better than his value92, on the moment
Follow his strides, his lobbies fill with tendance,93
Rain sacrificial94 whisperings in his ear,
Make sacred even his stirrup, and through him95
Drink the free air.
PAINTER Ay, marry97, what of these?
POET When Fortune in her shift and change of mood
Spurns down99 her late beloved, all his dependants,