ABSTRACT
Certainly one of the most tantalizing and least digestible of Shakespeare’s plays, Titus Andronicus (1594) has often generated a kind of discomfort for the bardolaters who have at best regarded the tragedy with spasmodic interest and often with embarrassment. Repeatedly staged and appreciated by theatregoers in Shakespeare’s time, in the centuries that followed Titus came to be progressively disregarded until it was almost entirely forgotten. While Renaissance audiences showed great interest in the tragedy, being well used to violence and blood – it was a time in which large crowds were drawn to public places as spectators at savage punishments – the following centuries did not record a significant number of performances of the tragedy and Titus had been almost completely forgotten by the nineteenth century. Thus, the play was ignored for about 350 years and scholarly works before 1920 went so far as to question Shakespeare’s authorship of the tragedy.2 Critical interest did not return until the 1940s, and a more decisive wave of interest followed in the next decade with Brook’s 1955 staging which caused a significant revival of interest in Shakespeare’s blood-curdling tragedy. Brook’s version toured Europe and when Jan Kott saw it on the Polish stage, he wrote an enthusiastic review praising Brook’s direction and outlining the possible reasons for Titus’s renewed appeal to contemporary audiences.
