Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus
The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus
The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus
Ebook163 pages1 hour

The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars

()

Read preview

About this ebook

Titus Andronicus is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1588 and 1593, probably in collaboration with George Peele. It is thought to be Shakespeare's first tragedy and is often seen as his attempt to emulate the violent and bloody revenge plays of his contemporaries, which were extremely popular with audiences throughout the 16th century.

The play is set during the latter days of the Roman Empire and tells the fictional story of Titus, a general in the Roman army, who is engaged in a cycle of revenge with Tamora, Queen of the Goths. It is Shakespeare's bloodiest and most violent work, and traditionally was one of his least respected plays; although it was extremely popular in its day, by the later 17th century it had fallen out of favour. In the Victorian era, it was disapproved of primarily because of what was considered to be a distasteful use of graphic violence, but from around the middle of the 20th century its reputation began to improve.

The play begins shortly after the death of the Roman emperor, with his two sons, Saturninus and Bassianus, squabbling over who will succeed him. Their conflict seems set to boil over into violence until a tribune, Marcus Andronicus, announces that the people's choice for the new emperor is Marcus's brother, Titus, who will shortly return to Rome from a victorious ten-year campaign against the Goths. Titus subsequently arrives to much fanfare, bearing with him as prisoners the Queen of the Goths (Tamora), her three sons (Alarbus, Chiron, and Demetrius), and Aaron the Moor (her secret lover). Despite Tamora's desperate pleas, Titus sacrifices her eldest son, Alarbus, to avenge the deaths of his own sons during the war. Distraught, Tamora and her two surviving sons vow to obtain revenge on Titus and his family.

Meanwhile, Titus refuses the offer of the throne, arguing that he is not fit to rule and instead supporting the claim of Saturninus, who then is duly elected. Saturninus tells Titus that for his first act as emperor, he will marry Titus's daughter Lavinia. Titus agrees, although Lavinia is already betrothed to Saturninus's brother, Bassianus, who refuses to give her up. Titus's sons tell Titus that Bassianus is in the right under Roman law, but Titus refuses to listen, accusing them all of treason. A scuffle breaks out, during which Titus kills his own son, Mutius. Saturninus then denounces the Andronici family for their effrontery and shocks Titus by marrying Tamora. Putting into motion her plan for revenge, Tamora advises Saturninus to pardon Bassianus and the Andronici family, which he reluctantly does.

During a royal hunt the following day, Aaron persuades Demetrius and Chiron to kill Bassianus, so they may rape Lavinia. They do so, throwing Bassianus's body into a pit and dragging Lavinia deep into the forest before violently raping her. To keep her from revealing what has happened, they cut out her tongue and cut off her hands. Meanwhile, Aaron writes a forged letter, which frames Titus's sons Martius and Quintus for the murder of Bassianus. Horrified at the death of his brother, Saturninus arrests Martius and Quintus, and sentences them to death.

Read this complete famous novel for further story....
 
LanguageEnglish
Release dateMay 8, 2019
ISBN9788834107126
The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus
Author

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was born in April 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, on England’s Avon River. When he was eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway. The couple had three children—an older daughter Susanna and twins, Judith and Hamnet. Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, died in childhood. The bulk of Shakespeare’s working life was spent in the theater world of London, where he established himself professionally by the early 1590s. He enjoyed success not only as a playwright and poet, but also as an actor and shareholder in an acting company. Although some think that sometime between 1610 and 1613 Shakespeare retired from the theater and returned home to Stratford, where he died in 1616, others believe that he may have continued to work in London until close to his death.

Read more from William Shakespeare

Related to The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus

Related ebooks

Performing Arts For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings

0 ratings0 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

    Book preview

    The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus - William Shakespeare

    Project Gutenberg Etext of Titus Andronicus by Shakespeare

    PG has multiple editions of William Shakespeare's Complete Works

    Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!!

    Please take a look at the important information in this header. We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this.

    **Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**

    **Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**

    *These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*

    Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and further information is included below. We need your donations.

    The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus

    by William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

    October, 1998 [Etext #1507]

    Project Gutenberg Etext of Titus Andronicus by Shakespeare

    ******This file should be named 1507.txt or 1507.zip******

    This etext was prepared by the PG Shakespeare Team, a team of about twenty Project Gutenberg volunteers.

    Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions, all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a copyright notice is included. Therefore, we usually do NOT! keep these books in compliance with any particular paper edition.

    We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.

    Please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so. To be sure you have an up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes in the first week of the next month. Since our ftp program has a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a new copy has at least one byte more or less.

    Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)

    We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-six text files per month, or 432 more Etexts in 1999 for a total of 2000+ If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the total should reach over 200 billion Etexts given away this year.

    The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext Files by December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion] This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, which is only ~5% of the present number of computer users.

    At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we manage to get some real funding; currently our funding is mostly from Michael Hart's salary at Carnegie-Mellon University, and an assortment of sporadic gifts; this salary is only good for a few more years, so we are looking for something to replace it, as we don't want Project Gutenberg to be so dependent on one person.

    We need your donations more than ever!

    All donations should be made to Project Gutenberg/CMU: and are tax deductible to the extent allowable by law. (CMU = Carnegie- Mellon University).

    For these and other matters, please mail to:

    Project Gutenberg

    P. O. Box 2782

    Champaign, IL 61825

    When all other email fails. . .try our Executive Director: Michael S. Hart [email protected] forwards to [email protected] and archive.org if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . .

    We would prefer to send you this information by email.

    ******

    To access Project Gutenberg etexts, use any Web browser to view http://promo.net/pg. This site lists Etexts by author and by title, and includes information about how to get involved with Project Gutenberg. You could also download our past Newsletters, or subscribe here. This is one of our major sites, please email [email protected], for a more complete list of our various sites.

    To go directly to the etext collections, use FTP or any Web browser to visit a Project Gutenberg mirror (mirror sites are available on 7 continents; mirrors are listed at http://promo.net/pg).

    Mac users, do NOT point and click, typing works better.

    Example FTP session:

    ftp sunsite.unc.edu login: anonymous password: your@login cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg cd etext90 through etext99 dir [to see files] get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files] GET GUTINDEX.?? [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99] GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]

    ***

    **Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor**

    (Three Pages)

    ***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START*** Why is this Small Print! statement here? You know: lawyers. They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our fault. So, among other things, this Small Print! statement disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.

    *BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept this Small Print! statement. If you do not, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.

    ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG- tm etexts, is a public domain work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at Carnegie-Mellon University (the Project). Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext under the Project's PROJECT GUTENBERG trademark.

    To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any medium they may be

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1