Hello Bookworms,
I know I'm a little late on this one, but last
summer I decided to read one of Shakespeare’s plays. Rather than reading some
of the more obvious choices, like Romeo and Juliet or Julius Ceaser, I chose
Titus Andronicus.
Summary:
Shortly
after a war, Tamora, Queen of the Goths is subjected to heartache as her son is
murdered despite her plea for mercy. The heartbroken Tamora is now on a revenge
mission. Titus Andronicus’s daughter, Lavinia, was to be the new queen but
another lover has carried her off leaving the position to Tamora and giving
Tamora the perfect stage to exact her revenge against Titus Andronicus for the
death of her son.
Titus
Andronicus is forced to suffer heartache after heartache as he loses sons, his
son in law is murdered, and his daughter is attacked and mutilated at the hands
of Tamora’s surviving sons.
With
all the bad blood between the members of this play, revenge is being plotted
all around and people will get hurt.
Review:
Okay,
I chose this play for particular personal reasons, but in general, I would not
recommend this play to anyone. The content of the play is so gruesome and
depressing that I don’t think it is a good read for the general public and ESPECIALLY
not for young people. In truth, the play’s namesake, Titus Andronicus, was one
of the most annoying characters in the whole play refusing to be a good role
model for his surviving family members. Instead he chooses to continue to
spiral down deeper into his depression and to attempt to drag anyone he can
down into depression with him. The best character to me was Titus’s brother,
Marcus Andronicus, who seems to be a voice of reason throughout the play, and
the only character who ends the play with a shred of the innocence he had at
the beginning. Frankly, I don’t recommend Titus Andronicus to anyone. If you
just want to be familiar with Shakespeare’s and some of his works, look to his
other plays like Julius Ceaser, the Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, or The
Merchant of Venice (mostly for the Quality of Mercy Speech).
However, I do still plan to read more of Shakespeare's works. There are some I've read in the past that I have enjoyed, so I'm not going to mark this one play against the famous playwright. Rarely does one like every book that a single author publishes. To continue my readings of Shakespeare, I was happy to add this lovely collection of all of Shakespeare's plays. (For those of you trying to save a little money, I managed to score this copy on sale for about $8)
Until Next Time,
Lizzie <3
No comments:
Post a Comment