Victoria Bladen - Shakespeare on Screen - Titus

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The lopped Lavinia-Tree: intersections of fallen

terrain betweenWilliam Shakespeare’s Titus

Andronicus () and Julie Taymor’s Titus ()

Victoria BLADEN

Plate 1 – Lavinia in Julie Taymor’s Titus.

In Julie Taymor’s Titus (), the violence of William Shakespeare’s

early tragedy Titus Andronicus () becomes a vehicle for exploring

mankind’s “inhumanity” and how this is constructed and consumed in

contemporary culture1. In Shakespeare’s play, Romans and Goths are

equally barbarous and the playwright explores responses to violence and

what constitutes civilization, justice and the proper exercise of power. In

the playtext, the triumphal position of Titus after defeating the Goths is

swiftly reduced to one of powerlessness at themargins of Rome’s political

centre. The �awed judgment of Titus is apparent in his various initial

mistakes: the appointment of Saturninus, the sacri�ce of Alarbus and

the slaying of his own son Mutius, decisions made in a spirit of blind

adherence to law, tradition and ideals of patriarchal authority.

1. Taymor says that “the �lm represents the last years of man’s inhumanity to

man” (DVD disc , Director’s Commentary).

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66 Victoria BLADEN

Such �awed decisions have tragic consequences, one of which is the

horri�c rape andmutilation of Lavinia in the second act. Attacked in the

forest outside Rome by the two surviving sons of Tamora, Chiron and

Demetrius, Lavinia has her hands cut o�, as well as her tongue. In the

playtext Shakespeare uses a highly signi�cant metaphor. Titus’ brother

Marcus, on �nding Lavinia, describes her as a lopped tree:

Speak, gentle niece, what stern ungentle handsHath lopped and hewed and made thy body bareOf her two branches, those sweet ornamentsWhose circling shadows kings have sought to sleep in (..-)2.

The lines, retained in Taymor’s �lm, create an image of a tree with

“branches” for arms, the language of forestry (“lopped” and “hewed”)

for the cutting of the body, and the idea of “circling shadows”, imagining

Lavinia as a tree which created shade sought by kings to sleep in and

suggesting Lavinia’s formermarital potential as a branch of a royal family

tree3.

Taymor was inspired by Shakespeare’s language to literalize the met-

aphor4. She presents Lavinia (Laura Fraser) as a hybrid woman-tree

standing on a tree stump with sprays of dry sticks protruding from her

cut wrists (e�ectedwith digital technology), while around her is a swamp

landscape of charred trees (see Plate ), and the Goth brothers Chiron

(Johnathan Rhys Meyers) and Demetrius (Matthew Rhys) below. As

Taymor comments, Lavinia

stands deserted, on a charred tree stump, surrounded by muddy waters thatgurgle with sulfur springs. Where once were hands are now gnarly twigs.The result is surreal and poetic, thus keeping with my vision of the work andnot falling into the trap of utter realism. There is a danger in a literal and

2. In the playtext, Marcus continues this imagery with “O, had the monster seen those

lily hands/ Tremble like aspen leaves upon a lute” (..-), although these lines

are cut in the �lm.

3. Jane Kingsley-Smith observes thatMarcus’ lines suggest Lavinia’s beauty would have

promised an advantageous political marriage and her loss is interpreted in terms of

its assault against the family more than a personal loss: Jane Kingsley-Smith, “Titus

Andronicus: A Violent Change of Fortunes”, Literature Compass, ., , p. .

4. In an interview, Taymor states that “every image, every idea comes from the text.

The twigs, the tigers, everything. Shakespeare is so visual . . . you don’t need scenery;

the language can do it all”: Miranda Johnson-Haddad, “A Time for Titus: An Inter-

view with Julie Taymor”, Shakespeare Bulletin, ., Fall , p. . Also see Samuel

Crowl, Shakespeare at the Cineplex: The Kenneth Branagh Era, Athens, OhioUniver-

sity Press, , p. .

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The lopped Lavinia-Tree 67

graphic portrayal of an image such as Lavinia’s dismemberment. It is easilytoo grotesquely horri�c and can upstage the larger picture of the event5 .

In Taymor’s vision the surrounding landscape of tree stumps echoes

Lavinia as a cut tree6. The metaphoric impact of the mise-en-scène has

been recognised by a range of critics. Sarah Hatchuel observes that the

swamp and burnt trees “stand as a metaphor for the brutalizing of the

ravaged Lavinia” while Lucian Ghita describes the scene as creating “a

world of metaphor”7. Elsie Walker observes that “the de�led landscape

is both naturally plausible and symbolic, surreal”.8 Taymor enhances

the idea of Lavinia as spectacle by placing her on a tree stump pedestal,

raising her on a visual equation of her metaphor9. The dry branches for

hands create a powerful and disturbing image whereby Lavinia’s phys-

ical injuries are, we imagine, exacerbated by actual wood, the stu� of

her metaphor. Lavinia’s hybrid appearance suggests a tragic puppet, the

aesthetic of which is indebted to Taymor’s earlier work onThe Lion King

and a long interest in puppetry10.

5. Julie Taymor, Titus: the Illustrated Screenplay, New York, Newmarket Press, ,

p. ; .

6. In the BBC production, Jane Howell’s interpretation of the scene also drew on

the resonance of the forest and the arboreal metaphor in a less direct way. A large dry

elder tree, veiled in mist, �lls the background shots of the forest scene like a haunt-

ing presence, although when Marcus actually speaks the lines, Lavinia is not framed

against this prop but stands in front of a netted embankment.

7. Sarah Hatchuel, Shakespeare, from Stage to Screen, Cambridge, Cambridge Univer-

sity Press, , p. . Lucian Ghita, “Reality and Metaphor in Jane Howell’s and

Julie Taymor’s Productions of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus”, Comparative Liter-

ature and Culture, ., , p. .

8. Elsie Walker, “‘Now is a time to storm’: Julie Taymor’s Titus ()”, Literature/Film

Quarterly, , , p. . Onno vanWilgenberg notes that Taymor creates a parallel

between the barren scenery and Lavinia’s mutilated body, also commenting on the

juxtaposition of the violence in the forest and the violence on the steps of the Palazzo.

In the forest theremay be unlawful actions anddisorder whereas theCapitol is a place

where atrocities are perceived as justi�ed. See Onno van Wilgenberg, “No Chance

for Shakespeare? The Holocaust in Postwar Shakespeare Productions”, Shakespeare-

Genootschap van Nederland en Vlaanderen, ., , p. -.

9. Kim Solga, “Rape’s Metatheatrical Return Rehearsing Sexual Violence among the

Early Moderns”, Theatre Journal, ., , p. . Thomas Cartelli and Kather-

ine Rowe describe the stump as “a visual pun for the laurel and for dismemberment”

in their volume New Wave Shakespeare on Screen, Cambridge, Polity Press, ,

p. . They also observe that her straggles of hair echo the “pleading shapes of dead

branches around her” (p. ). Crowl notes that the pedestal “reminds us that her

body is an object made (or at least refashioned) by the culture of violence that de-

�nes Titus’ world” (p. ).

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68 Victoria BLADEN

The trees protruding from the desolate landscape mirror the sticks

from Lavinia’s body thus setting up a visual equation between Lavinia

and the land11. The landscape echoes Lavinia and she becomes an an-

thropomorphic feature of the wasted wilderness. Taymor’s vision is a

sensitive and poetic interpretation of Shakespeare’s language. As Russell

Jackson has observed, anxiety about the visualized image usurping the

spoken word’s legitimate function has often dominated commentary on

�lmed Shakespeare12. At the same time, as Thomas Cartelli and Kather-

ine Rowe observe, many contemporary adaptations “point us back to the

text in compelling and fruitful ways”13. This is certainly true of Taymor

and her vision of Lavinia. The scene constitutes an example of “visual

metaphor”, Hatchuel’s term to describe one of the strategies used by �lm

directors to associate the visual with the verbal in a Shakespearean adap-

tation14. The literalism of the metaphor precedesMarcus’ (Colm Feore)

description of Lavinia in the sequence of the �lm15.

Given that critics and viewers of Taymor’s �lm have sensed the

metaphoricweight to this scene, howmight Shakespeare’s audience have

10. Cartelli and Rowe, p. . Peter S. Donaldson, “Game Space/Tragic Space: Julie Tay-

mor’s Titus” in A Companion to Shakespeare and Performance, ed. Barbara Hodg-

don and W. B. Worthen, Oxford, Blackwell, , p. . Courtney Lehmann,

Bryan Reynolds and Lisa Starks also refer to Taymor’s use of puppetry and observe

that the use of puppets plays on concepts of identity, blurring borders between the

nonhuman and human, inanimate and living, an example of “transversal space”:

“‘For Such a Sight Will Blind a Father’s Eye’: The Spectacle of Su�ering in Tay-

mor’s Titus” in Performing Transversally: Reimagining Shakespeare and the Critical

Future, ed. Bryan Reynolds, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, , p. .

11. As David McCandless notes, the landscape displaces Lavinia herself as an image

of devastation; “visual metaphor supplants traumatic display”: “A Tale of Two Ti-

tuses: Julie Taymor’s Vision on Stage and Screen”, Shakespeare Quarterly, .,

, p. . Taymor describes the swamp landscape as “the essence of the raped

and ravaged woman” (DVD , Director’s Commentary).

12. See Russell Jackson, The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film, nd ed.,

Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, , p. .

13. Cartelli and Rowe, p. .

14. Hatchuel, p. -. The term is also used by Maryanne Horowitz to describe the

literalism of arboreal metaphors surrounding ideas of virtue and knowledge in the

early modern period: Seeds of Virtue and Knowledge, Princeton, Princeton Univer-

sity Press, , p. .

15. As Hatchuel notes, in Shakespeare �lms the “visual metaphors do not occur at the

same time as the words which have inspired their creation. The connections have

to be established by the spectators themselves. The audience can see an image and

remember the dialogues towhich it is linked, or see an image andwait for the spoken

words that will come and justify its appearance” (p. ).

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responded to the idea of a woman-tree? Taymor’s visual metaphors tap

into the poetic possibilities of Shakespeare’s language of trees, inviting

consideration of the historical contexts that produced it and the mean-

ings that it potentially held for his audience. This arboreal language res-

onates with issues raised by the play, and intersections with Taymor’s

�lmic interpretation enhance our readings of both play and �lm.

Literary critics of Titus Andronicus have recognized the signi�cance

of Lavinia yet, as Alan Hughes observed, for most critics Shakespeare’s

synthesis of poetic language with horri�c visual imagery creates di�-

culty and is “one of the chief stumbling-blocks to the appreciation of

the play”16. The negative response to this scene generally arises from

the long speech by Marcus in the face of Lavinia’s su�ering17. Taymor

overcomes this di�culty by reducing the length of the speech and hav-

ing Marcus see Lavinia from a distance, so his speech takes place while

he approaches her, rather than delaying assistance.

While the reference to Ovid’s tale of Philomel is usually referred to,

what is generally absent from critical accounts of Lavinia in this scene is

a focus on Shakespeare’s arboreal metaphor18. In �lm criticism, as a re-

sult of Taymor’s foregrounding and literalism of the arboreal metaphor,

renewed focus on the scene has led to useful insights, notably by Cartelli

16. Hughes, p. . Eugene Waith observes that the rape and mutilation of Lavinia con-

stitutes a central symbol of disorder, moral and political, in the play: “The Meta-

morphosis of Violence in Titus Andronicus”, Shakespeare Survey, , , p. .

Philip Kolin notes: “understanding Lavinia is a key to understanding Titus Andron-

icus . . . To come to termswith Lavinia’s plight entails coming to termswith the heart

of violence in Titus”: “Titus Andronicus and the Critical Legacy” in Titus Androni-

cus: Critical Essays, ed. Philip C. Kolin, NewYork and London, Garland Publishing,

, p. .

17. See Crowl, p. .

18. An exception is Albert Tricomi who aptly describes Lavinia as a “mutilated gar-

den”, recognizing the importance of the imagery, although without placing this in

a wider context: “The Mutilated Garden in Titus Andronicus”, Shakespeare Studies,

., , p. -, -. While Tricomi does not consider the tree of virtue

speci�cally, he calls the body politic “that tree of civilized life” (p. ). Also see

my earlier article “The Tree of Life Motif as Renaissance Cultural Rhizome: an in-

terdisciplinary mapping of arboreal imagery in biblical text, early European visual

culture and dramatic text (Shakespeare’sTitus Andronicus )” in Rhizomes: Connect-

ing Languages, Cultures and Literatures, ed. Nathalie Ramière andRachel Varshney,

Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Press, , p. -.

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70 Victoria BLADEN

and Rowe who have linked Taymor’s Lavinia to the �gure of Daphne19.

However, a fuller understanding of the potential nuances of the imagery

can be gained from an exploration of the Renaissance language of trees

arising from both classical and religious discourses. I will outline some

of these traditions and then return to a consideration of Taymor’s vision

of the scene and critical responses to it.

Arboreal hybridity in the Renaissance language of trees

In visualising Shakespeare’s language, Taymor presents an image of

Lavinia as a hybrid woman-tree �gure. This idea parallels various as-

pects of arboreal imagery and iconography in Renaissance culture, par-

ticularly the concepts of the tree of virtue, the tree of life, the idea of virtue

and vice expressed as an arboreal language and the motif of pruning as

retribution and reform. This language of trees was expressed in literary,

visual and dramatic forms andwas used to articulate a range of religious,

political, moral and social meanings. Such ideas developed from a series

of botanical and horticultural metaphors throughout the Bible, as well

as classical discourses and myth. These fused with social ritual, folklore,

and the cult of the cross.

There were various versions of the idea of the woman-tree hybrid.

Classical precedents for the motif included the caryatids (women with

the bodies of trees), dryads (tree nymphs), andhamadryads (tree-nymphs

whose life depended on that of their tree)20. However more signi�cantly

for Shakespeare’s metaphor was the idea of the female tree of virtue. In

Titus Andronicus, virtue is a recurring concept and many critics read

Lavinia as representing virtue21. The idea of the tree of virtue was com-

19. Cartelli and Rowe, p. -; -. Lisa Starks noted that in Taymor’s addition of

the twigs, she referred to Ovid’s Metamorphoses: Lisa Starks, “Cinema of Cruelty:

Powers of Horror in Julie Taymor’s Titus” in The Reel Shakespeare: Alternative Cin-

ema and Theory, ed. Lisa Starks and Courtney Lehmann, Madison/London, Fair-

leigh Dickinson University Press, , p. .

20. A visual example is theCamera delle Cariatide byDosso and Battista Dossi (c. )

where womenwith the bodies of trees support a leafy canopy. Regarding dryads, see

M. C. Howatson, The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, nd ed., Oxford,

Oxford University Press, , p. ; .

21. See Ann Haaker, “Non sine causa: The Use of Emblematic Method in the Thematic

Structure of Titus Andronicus”, Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama, -

, -, p. . Alan Sommers reads Lavinia as a type of virtue in contrast

with Tamora as a �gure of vice. He sees Lavinia as representing chastity, an authen-

tic Roman value, and the couple of Lavinia and Bassianus as a union of public and

private virtues, essential to the Roman ideal. In the forest, justice is slain and chastity

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monly gendered as female. In Andrea Mantegna’s Pallas expelling the

vices from the garden of virtue (-), the tree of virtue is a hy-

brid woman-tree at the left whose garden has been besieged by vice22.

Through an aperture in the leafy arcades can be seen various vices that

have �ed the garden into a �eld that depicts a number of tree stumps

with emerging shoots. These express both the sterility of vice and the

optimism of reform. The anthropomorphic tree of virtue in Mantegna’s

work is the presiding spirit of the enclosed garden space, which func-

tions as a metaphor for the human soul, threatened by sexuality and the

vices and protected by wisdom and chastity.

A similar tree of virtue �gure appears in Pietro di Cristoforo Van-

nucci’s (Perugino’s) The Battle of Chastity and Love () where the

landscape represents the human soul over which the warring factions

of love and chastity battle23. The image of Lavinia as a woman-tree hy-

brid resonates with a tradition that articulated an opposition between

virtue and vice centred on the female body. The anthropomorphic tree

was a barometer of moral and spiritual health; and the centre of the psy-

chomachia, a war in the landscape of the mind24. In the background of

Perugino’s work can be seen the tree of virtue that is also clearlyDaphne,

with a kneeling Apollo beside her.

In Ovid’s Metamorphoses (c. - CE), Daphne is transformed into a

laurel tree by her father the river god Peneus to escape the advances of

Apollo, the god of art and letters. The story became popular in Renais-

sance art, and the idea of a hybrid woman-tree merged with the idea of

mutilated. See Alan Sommers, “‘Wilderness of Tigers’: Structure and Symbolism in

Titus Andronicus” in Kolin (Critical Essays), p. .

22. In the painting, Pallas, the goddess of wisdom, Diana and a third goddess, repre-

senting chastity, chase Venus and various �gures of vice from a garden. The work

is located at the Louvre, Paris. See Even Yael, “Daphne (without Apollo) reconsid-

ered: some disregarded images of sexual pursuit in Italian Renaissance and baroque

art”, Studies in Iconography, , , p. ; Egon Verheyen, The Paintings in the

Studiolo of Isabella d’Este at Mantua, New York, New York University Press, ,

p. -; Jane Martineau, ed. Andrea Mantegna, London, Royal Academy of Arts,

, p. -.

23. The work is located at the Louvre, Paris.

24. The idea of the Psychomachia, an allegory originated with Aurelius Prudentius

Clemens (-after ), a Christian Latin poet and author of the Psychomachia

as allegory of the spiritual battle in the soul in which the vices and virtues are per-

soni�ed (see Howatson, p. ).

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72 Victoria BLADEN

the tree of virtue25. When Titus �rst enters Rome in the playtext, he is

“bound with laurel boughs” (..)26. Ironically the reference antici-

pates the fate of Lavinia whose metaphorical transformation recalls the

myth of Daphne becoming the laurel tree. In Ovid’s account, Daphne’s

transformed body of laurel is directly linked with Roman triumph and

immortality, and is associated with evergreen foliage. The thwarted god

proclaims:

You will accompany the generals of Rome, when the Capitol beholds theirlong triumphal processions, when joyful voices raise the song of victory.You will stand by Augustus’ gateposts too, faithfully guarding his doors, andkeeping watch from either side over the wreath of oak leaves that will hangthere. Further, as my head is ever young, my tresses never shorn, so do youalso, at all times, wear the crowning glory of never-fading foliage27.

ThuswhenTitus enters Rome, crownedwith laurel, he bears the traces

of the transformed woman-tree who is also the symbolic protector of

the city. Lavinia, through Marcus’ speech, becomes associated with that

symbolic woman-tree, now lacerated as a sign of the fallen, penetrated

city.

Cartelli and Rowe see Taymor’s depiction of Lavinia as explicitly re-

ferring to the Daphne myth, although without noting the debt of Tay-

mor’s tableau to Shakespeare’s language28. The Daphne myth is a sig-

ni�cant allusion for Shakespeare and Taymor; however it is important

25. Examples of depictions of the myth include Antonio del Pollaiuolo’s Daphne and

Apollo (before ) andDomenichino and assistants,Apollo andDaphne (-),

a fresco originally in the Hall of Apollo, Villa Aldobrandini, Frascati.

26. By comparison, in Titus, he enters with helmet and covered in blue-coloured mud,

foreshadowing themud of the swampwhere Lavinia is attacked. Thus Taymor links

the mud of the battle�eld, the site of the original violence between Romans and

Goths, with the mud of the swamp, site of the subsequent sexual violence. Taymor

may have been inspired by similar linking iconography in DeborahWarner’s stage

production of for the RSC where Lavinia’s face, stumps and dress were spat-

tered with the same grey clay that had appeared on the clothing and bodies of Titus

and hismen in the opening scene, thus connecting the violence done to Lavinia with

the initial state violence (see Kingsley-Smith, p. ).

27. Ovid,Metamorphoses, trans. Mary M. Innes, London, Penguin, , :-.

28. They observe that Ovid’s Metamorphoses is an intertext that has exerted signi�-

cant in�uence on Taymor’s work generally and that the ambivalent, uncomfortably

erotic and resistant aspects of the myth become an occasion for subversive accounts

of the silencing of creative voice, particularly female voice (Cartelli and Rowe, p. ;

). They also note that Daphne’s physical distress, even at the moment of transfor-

mation, serves as a reminder of the objectifying violence of art as it makes persons

into symbols, whether in the service of pleasure or political power, and that, for a

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to acknowledge signi�cant di�erences in the narratives29. Shakespeare’s

Lavinia, unlike Daphne, has failed to escape rape, yet has been trans-

formed,metaphorically, into a tree in any event.Metamorphosis is no es-

cape but rather a framing device for the spectacle by the uncomprehend-

ing Marcus. In literalizing Shakespeare’s metaphor, Taymor provides

an analogous frame, aligning the viewers with Marcus and seeing her

metaphorically through his eyes. TheDaphnemyth transforms awoman

into a verdant laurel tree, signifying evergreen victory (for others, if not

for Daphne) whereas Lavinia is a lopped stricken tree embodying steril-

ity. Taymor’s Lavinia is Daphne’s abject shadow, an embodiment not of

Rome’s triumph but subjugation by barbarism from outside and within.

While there are signi�cant Ovidian parallels, any direct equation of

Taymor’s Lavinia with Daphne arguably oversimpli�es what is a com-

plex historical context for the imagery. The tree of virtue idea derived

fromChristian depictions of virtue and vice as arboreal. The association

of the tree of virtue with Daphne represented an intersection of Chris-

tian and classical discourses. The Christian dimension is apparent in the

link between narratives of the tree of virtue and human salvation30.

Virtue and vice were often articulated in arboreal form31. In Lorenzo

Lotto’sAllegory of Virtue andVice (), the division between the land-

scapes of virtue and vice is marked by a tree severed on the vice side, and

highly stylized artist of symbols such as Taymor, Daphne’s story encodes the dan-

gers of complicity with this objecti�cation (p. ).

29. It is interesting to note that the �rst European opera, staged in Florence in , the

same year Shakespeare wrote Titus Andronicus, was Dafne (see Innes’s translation

of Ovid’sMetamorphoses, p. ).

30. For example inMantegna’sAllegory of the Fall of IgnorantHumanity: VirtusDeserta

(c. -), the helpless tree of virtue stands amongst the rubble of civilization.

The tree articulates the abandonment of virtue by humanity which is then cast into

the pit, withMercury, representing knowledge and ascent, their only hope. In Man-

tegna’sAllegory of the Fall of Ignorant Humanity: Virtus Combustus (c. -),

the tree of virtue at the right is consumed in �re while the vices reign. In these en-

gravings, the attack on and destruction of the tree of virtue embodies humanity’s

moral decline and the degradation of civilization. Both works are located at the

ClevelandMuseum of Art, Cleveland.

31. The depiction of the seven vices, otherwise known as the Seven Deadly Sins, in

the form of a tree diagram became current in the medieval period and appeared

in English wall paintings from the late fourteenth century: see Tessa Watt, Cheap

Print and Popular Piety, -, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ,

p. , and A. Caiger-Smith, English Medieval Mural Paintings, Oxford, Clarendon

Press, , p. . Pride was commonly at the head of the tree and three branches

would issue from each side, making up the seven sins. In some works, the tree was

a human �gure (see Caiger-Smith, p. ).

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74 Victoria BLADEN

rejuvenating on the virtuous side32. In the Kalender of shepardes (;

), an English prose text, there is an extensive series of pages on the

vices as branches of a tree, with accompanying illustrations of cut sec-

tions of trunk with lopped branches33. Elizabeth I translated a passage

in which she likens the feeling of sin to having a tree of vice growing

inside her34. Furthermore in an emblem of uninjured virtue, roughly

contemporaneous with Shakespeare’s play, a laurel tree stands immune

to lightening35. To the left is an image of a severed trunk which has not

been so fortunate. Such contemporary images illuminate Shakespeare’s

metaphor of Lavinia as stricken tree as one resonant with the idea of

damaged virtue in a fallen terrain of vice.

Shakespeare’s metaphor was also indebted to the rich history of arbo-

real language in religious discourse. While the motif of a woman-tree

was indebted to classical myth, the articulation of virtue as arboreal ul-

timately derived from biblical passages and metaphors. In the Psalms,

the virtuous are likened to evergreen trees (.). Throughout the bibli-

cal texts, the human condition and spiritual state is often expressed in

botanical terms. A primary conceptual dichotomy was established in

Genesis between the two trees in the Garden of Eden: the tree of knowl-

edge of good and evil—the tree associated with the Fall and death—and

the tree of life, which represented immortality (Genesis .-).

32. The contrasting terrains behind each side of the tree also correspond to the division.

The virtuous side is a hard, ascending landscape while the vice side is terrain more

easily traversed. The work is located at the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

33. Each branch of the “tree of vyces” is broken down into smaller branches represent-

ing related evils (see Watt, p. ). The idea of the vices in arboreal form was also

drawn on for political and satirical imagery. Examples of broadsheets survive in

which arboreal imagery is used by Protestants and Catholics to present the other as

the tree of vice (see Watt, p. -).

34. The passage was by Marguerite de Navarre from her Le Miroir de l’âme pécheresse

(): “I fele well that the roote of it is in me and outwardly i se no othere e�ecte

but all is eyther braunche lea�e or els frutte that she bringeth furth all aboute me. If

i thinke to loke for better, a braunche cometh and doth close myne eyes, and in my

mouth doth fall when i wolde speake the frutte wich is so bytter to sualowe down.

If my spirite be styrred for to kraken [harken]: that a great multitude of lea�es doth

entre in myne eares and my nose is all stoped wityh �owers”: Horowitz, p. -

citing from Elizabeth I, The Mirror of the Sinful Soul, ed. Percy Ames (facs ;

reprint, London, Asher, ).

35. Emblem of Virtue as laurel tree unharmed by lightening (Nuremberg, ) repro-

duced inHorowitz, �g. .. The laurel, an evergreen tree that growsmore vigorously

when pruned, was believed to be immune to lightening (Horowitz, p. ).

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In the New Testament the tree of life was reframed as a type of Christ,

who was proclaimed as “the true vine” (John )36. The tree was imag-

ined as the font of immortal life in the future heavenly Jerusalem (Revela-

tions .). A related concept was the tree of Jesse, Christ’s genealogical

tree, expressed as a verdant tree sprouting from the body of Jesse and

culminating in the fruit of Christ, as the tree of life himself (see Plate ).

In Romans, Christ’s followers are “grafted with” Christ in imitation of

his cruci�xion in order to reproduce his resurrection (.-)37. In Luke,

Christ is likened to green wood: Christ (on the way to the cruci�xion)

addresses weeping bystanders saying not to weep for him but for them-

selves since “For if they do these things to a grene tre, what shalbe done

to the drye?” (Luke .). If green wood (Christ) is burnt that is not

meant for burning, there is no hope for the dry wood, (the sinful) that

should be burnt.

The division between virtue and vice as two halves of a tree aligned

with the expression of the Fall and redemption in arboreal terms and the

paradoxical amalgamation of the tree of life and the tree of knowledge.

The tree could also articulate the division between the books of the Old

andNewTestaments and between Judaism andChristianity, the newde-

monizing the old in order to construct its own identity38. In a En-

glish bible cover, the composite dry-and-verdant tree articulates the Fall

and the Old Testament on one side, where the tree has no leaves, while

on the �ourishing side the cruci�xion and resurrection are associated

36. Examples of depictions of Christ as or on the tree of life include Pacino da

Bonaguido’s (fourteenth century) and FrancisQuarles’s in his Emblemes (). All

biblical quotes are taken from the Geneva Bible (): facsimile ed., intro. Lloyd

E. Berry, Madison, Milwaukee and London, University of Wisconsin Press, .

37. Other biblical passages with arborealmetaphors include: Job .- (where the life

of man is compared unfavourably with a tree which when cut will regenerate); The

Song of Songs . (where the �gure of the Bridegroom is likened to a tree under

whose shade the Bride sits) and Mark .- (where the kingdom of heaven is

likened to a tree).

38. An example is in a �fteenth-century Swiss manuscript Tree of Knowledge: Church

and Synagoguewhere Eve, Jewish �gures and the fruit of death on one side are con-

trasted with the personi�cation of the Church and Eucharist wafers, the fruit of life

on the other. Reproduced in Erich Neumann, The Great Mother: An Analysis of

the Archetype, trans. Ralph Manheim Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University

Press , �g. .

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Plate 2 – Pierre des Aubeaux, Tree of Jesse, tympanum, west front Rouen

cathedral (-) 39.

with the fecundity of the New Testament40. Similarly in Lucas Cranach

the Elder’s The Law and the Gospel (), the sterility of the left side

of the tree aligns with the harsh consequences of the Fall under the Old

Law (the Old Testament), while the �owering right side expresses the

new hope for man with the mercy of Christ under the new law of the

Gospel41. Hans Holbein the Elder also uses the idea in hisAllegory of the

Old Testament and the New Testament (c. )42.

In the context of such iconography, verdant mercy contrasted with

sterile justice43. When Titus seeks fruitlessly for Justice (.), Shake-

39. Personal collection.

40. See The Byble, translated by Thomas Matthew, London & Antwerp, Whitchurch &

Grafton, , reproduced in R. B. McKerrow and F. S. Ferguson, Title-page Bor-

ders used in England& Scotland -, London, Oxford University Press, ,

�g. .

41. The work is reproduced in Horowitz (�g. .).

42. The work is located at the National Gallery of Scotland.

43. Of further relevance in this regard is the traditional opposition between the four

heavenly virtues: Justice and Truth on one side versus Mercy and Peace on the

other. The debate in heaven on the state of man is only resolved when Christ volun-

teers to be the sacri�ce, whereupon the Virtues are reconciled. See generally Samuel

C. Chew, The Virtues Reconciled: An Iconographic Study, Toronto, University of

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speare’s audience would have potentially recognised this search as mis-

guided and barren44. Crowl notes that Taymor’s �lm underlines just

how blind Titus’ devotion to his notion of Rome and the patriarchy is45.

As Taymor observes of Titus, “You have a character like Titus, and for

the �rst twenty minutes, half an hour, you don’t even like the guy, be-

cause he’s just doing things by the rules. He’s intelligent, but he’s judg-

ing things according to historical tradition; he’s full of that. And you see

Tamora begging so intelligently for mercy and for the life of her child,

and you root for her”46. In the �lm, Taymor comments ironically on

the exercise of justice in the world of Titus Andronicus, in the macabre

scene where the Clown purports to set up a puppet show and instead

produces the severed heads of Titus’ sons, Martius andQuintus, in spec-

imen jars. Taymor adds lines in Latin: “Scopus legis est, aut eum quem

punit emendet, aut poena cius ceterusmeliores reddet, aut sublatis malis

ceteri securiores vivant” which translate as “The aim of the law is to cor-

rect those it punishes, or make others better through the example of the

sentence it in�icts, or else to remove evil so that the others can live more

peacefully”47. The phrase, referring to the purported justice of the sum-

mary and capital punishment exercised against the two sons, is mean-

ingless to the Andronici and to us the viewers, suggesting the absence

and incomprehensibility of any Roman justice.

The lack of mercy experienced by Titus echoes his own earlier failure

to exercise mercy in dealing with Tamora’s son Alarbus or his own son

Mutius, leading to two unnecessary deaths. When, in the opening scene,

Lucius calls for a sacri�ce from the Goths, Shakespeare’s language, re-

tained in Taymor’s �lm, is that of forestry48. Alarbus is to be hewn and

Toronto Press, . Chew reproduces an image from a twelfth century bible in

which Justice embraces Peace at the middle right andMercy and Truth reconcile at

the left (Chew, �g. ).

44. In Ovid’sMetamorphoses, it is during the �nal age, the Iron age, with the arrival of

crime and warfare using metals that the “last of the immortals, the maiden Justice

left the blood-soaked earth” (Innes, p. ).

45. Crowl, p. .

46. Johnson-Haddad, p. .

47. See Taymor, p. , and also Cartelli and Rowe, p. .

48. Lucius calls for the sacri�ce of Alarbus “That wemay hewhis limbs and on a pile/Ad

manes fratrum sacri�ce his �esh” (..-) OK. After Tamora is unsuccessful in

pleading for her son’s life, Lucius cries: “Away with him, and make a �re straight,/

And with our swords upon a pile of wood/ Let’s hew his limbs till they be clean

consumed” (..-) OK. After the deed, Lucius reports: “See, lord and father,

howwe have performed/ Our Roman rites: Alarbus’ limbs are lopped,/ And entrails

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burnt like the pile of wood. This lopped human-tree foreshadows the

later imagery of Lavinia as a cut tree49. The parallels in language empha-

size the symmetry of violence by Romans and Goths, making porous the

boundary between what is civilized or barbarous50. In Taymor’s tableau

of Lavinia, the fact that the trees in the landscape are charred resonates

with imagery surrounding the death of Alarbus. Taymor’s iconogra-

phy thus recalls the original state violence that precipitated the cycle of

revenge and links it with the attack on Lavinia, the devastating conse-

quences of that initial violence. As Tamora was shown no mercy by Ti-

tus, she in turn shows no mercy to the pleading Lavinia. Hatchuel has

traced the ways in which Elliot Goldenthal’s musical score for Titus re-

�ects recurrent themes that link various episodes. She identi�es three

major themes associated with situations: vengeance, seeking pity and

mercy. The theme of asking for pity appears when Tamora begs Titus

to spare Alarbus and when Lavinia begs Tamora to save her from Chi-

ron and Demetrius, thus linking the episodes through music as well as

language and iconography51.

The absence of mercy, associated with the fallen side of the tree,

was articulated in the Renaissance language of trees through withering,

echoed in Titus in the dry sticks from Lavinia’s hands. That Alarbus and

Lavinia are lopped like wood also resonates with the Renaissance iconog-

raphy in which the concept of pruning or lopping signi�ed a range of

meanings, religious and political. In the Bible, lopping was penitential

and articulated retribution: John the Baptist warns “Bring forthe there-

fore frutes worthie amendement of life . . . also is the axe put to the roote

feed the sacri�cing �re” (..-). All of these lines are retained in the �lm.

Arboreal imagery is also subliminally present in “ad manes fratrum”, glossed as “to

our brother’s shades”, the idea of shade suggestive of the dead as trees, as well as

spirits. The idea of shade parallels Marcus’ image of shade from Lavinia as a tree.

49. The parallel language is noted by Richard Burt: “Shakespeare and the Holocaust:

Julie Taymor’s Titus is Beautiful, or Shakesploi Meets (the) Camp”, Shakespeare

after Mass Media, ed. Richard Burt, New York, Palgrave, , p. .

50. As Jonathan Bate notes, the demand of Lucius for a human, rather than an animal,

sacri�ce marks the entry of barbarism into the city: Titus Andronicus, ed. Jonathan

Bate, London, Arden Shakespeare, , p. . By contrast, the supposedly barbaric

Tamora speaks a “Roman language of valour, patriotism, piety, mercy and nobility”

(Bate, p. ). Similarly, Robert Miola notes that the opening scene questions Ro-

man values and that it is Roman honour, in subordinating private feeling to public

responsibility, which transforms the city into barbaric chaos: see Robert S. Miola,

“Titus Andronicus: Rome and the Family” in Kolin (Critical Essays), p. ; .

51. See Hatchuel, p. .

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of the trees: therefore euerie tre which bringeth not forthe good fruit,

is hewen downe, and cast into the fyre” (Matthew ., ). In the book

of Daniel, the king of Babylon Nebuchadnezzar has a dream of a tree

reaching the sky, its branches housing birds and providing shade for the

wild animals. It is lopped and its human heart exchanged for the heart

of a beast, leaving only a stump (Daniel .-). Daniel interprets the

king’s dream, telling him that the tree is the king himself and that he will

be reduced to a beast until he acknowledges his subservience to Heaven.

The remaining stump, Daniel interprets as his kingdom which is kept

for him until his reformation (Daniel .-)52.

In John , Christ claims “Euerie branche that beareth not frute in

me, he taketh away: & euerie one that beareth frute, he purgeth it,

that it may bring forthe more frute” (John .). In religious iconogra-

phy, the tree stump, common from the mid-�fteenth century, was both

the axed tree of death and the tree of life which would re-sprout anew

through Christ53. Pruning was paradoxically both violent and bene�-

cial54. In the Renaissance, the iconography of pruning and regeneration

moved beyond the con�nes of religious art and became popular from

the sixteenth century in secular emblems, impressa, heraldry and polit-

ical pageantry55. One of the tableaux in London for Elizabeth I’s �rst

procession comprised two hills; one with a withered tree representing a

52. The passage is illustrated in an image from the bible of Rodan in Paris (Bibliothèque

Nationale, Paris, MS. lat. .), reproduced in Roger Cook, The Tree of Life: Image

for the Cosmos, New York and London, Thames and Hudson, , p. , �g. .

53. In Antonella da Messina’s Sibiu Cruci�xion (-, Muzeul de Art, Bucharest)

in the foreground at the base of the cross is a clear image of the severed trunk with

a new branch emerging. The visual imagery equates the cruci�ed Christ with the

composite image of the severed but regenerating tree, encompassing death and res-

urrection. Similarly at the base ofMichelangelo’s Pieta (, Vatican, Rome) is the

cut tree, evoking both the cutting of the tree of sin and the death of Christ as the tree

of life, while also embodying the optimism of the imminent resurrection.

54. A sketch from one of Leonardo’s notebooks is accompanied by a note “the cut tree

that reshoots—there’s still hope” (reproduced inGerhard Ladner, “Vegetation Sym-

bolism and the Concept of Renaissance” inDe Artibus Opuscula (Essays in Honor of

Erwin Panofsky), ed. Millard Meiss, New York, New York University Press, ,

vol. , p. - (illustrations in vol. ). This conveys the paradoxical optimism of

the severed tree.

55. In Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia (, Padua) the �gure of Riforma embodies the no-

tion of bene�cial pruning. Behind her are dry and verdant trees, expressing the

�ourishing to result from the pruning. The image is reproduced in Ladner (�g. ).

Peggy Simonds in her iconographical study of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline reproduces

a di�erent version from the earlier edition in which the trees don’t appear:

see Peggy Muñoz Simmonds, Myth, Emblem, and Music in Shakespeare’s Cymbe-

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“decayed” commonwealth; the other verdant, representing a “�ourish-

ing” commonwealth56. The biblical metaphor of bene�cial wounding

also migrated into popular aphorism. MaryQueen of Scots, while a pris-

oner, embroidered an emblem () depicting the hand of God with a

pruning knife cutting away unfruitful branches from a vine, the motto

reading “Virescit vulnere virtus” (“Virtue thrives by a wound”)57.

The iconography of lopping is highly relevant to Titus Andronicus, a

play which involves an inordinate amount of dismemberment. The god

Saturn with his iconic scythe was associated with agriculture, castration

(since he cut the testicles of Uranus, resulting in the birth of Venus) and

devouring time, just as he devoured his children58. Under Saturninus

and the in�uence of Saturn, Rome becomes a city that devours its chil-

dren in di�erent ways59. Thus it risks sterility and its own future. The

image of the lopped, sterile Lavinia tree thus potentially expressesmean-

ings beyond what she su�ers as an individual. It articulates Rome as

fallen political and moral terrain, lopped in retribution for misrule and

sterile in its absence of mercy. In re�ecting on what Rome has become,

it shadows the ideal that was Rome.

Shakespeare’smetaphor resonates with the imagery of Roman found-

ing mythology which abounds with both misogynist violence and arbo-

real imagery. Lavinia’s violation recalls the numerous rapes that form

part of Roman mythic history60. Her name also links her with an ear-

lier Lavinia who was fought over. Lopping wood and clearing forest was

line: An Iconographic Reconstruction, Newark, University of Delaware Press; Lon-

don and Toronto: Associated University Presses, ), p. .

56. Rosemary Freeman, English Emblem Books, London, Chatto and Windus, ,

p. .

57. The sentiment was directed at Elizabeth although, in the end, it was Mary who

was lopped from the family tree. The image is reproduced in Margaret Swain, The

Needlework ofMaryQueen of Scots, NewYork, VanNostrandReinhold, , p. -

; -.

58. On the iconography of Saturn, see Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic

Themes in the Art of the Renaissance, NewYork, Harper&Row, , p. onwards

and �g. .

59. Miola, p.

60. These include that of the vestal virgin Rhea Silvia, the daughter of Numitor, king of

Alba Longa, by Mars the god of war. This rape results in the birth of Romulus and

Remus. Subsequently Romulus orchestrates the rape of the neighbouring Sabines to

secure wives for the new city. Later in Rome’s history, the rape of Lucrece marked

the expulsion of the tyrannical Tarquins and the foundation of the republic: see

Robert Pogue Harrison, Forests: the Shadow of Civilisation, Chicago and London,

University of Chicago Press, , p. -.

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bound up with ideas of claiming civilization against savagery and de�n-

ing human identity as separate from nature61. In Virgil’s Aeneid, the

original inhabitants of Rome are described as deriving from oak trees62.

Lavinia is the wife of Aeneus by whom she bears a son Silvius, whose

name means “of the forest”, who is reared in the woods and founds the

dynasty of Alba Longa, the kingdom that precedes Rome63. The Roman

historian Livy (BCE-CE)notes that all the subsequent kings ofAlba

Longa kept the last name Silvius64.

With Lavinia, Shakespeare chose the name of a woman whose fertility

produced a son and founded an empire, undermining that idea with the

image of a lopped tree, re�ecting the decline of Rome. InTitus, Lavinia is

also linked with fallen Rome in the “Penny Arcade Nightmare” (P.A.N.)

sequence which represents Lavinia’s recall of the attack65. Taymor liter-

61. Harrison describes how the initial clearing of forest to create Rome created a sym-

bolic opposition of civilization and forest (p. ).

62. Aeneas travels up the Tiber to a forest, the site of the future Rome, where his host

Evander explains: “These woodland places/ Once were homes of local fauns and

nymphs/ Together with a race of men that came/ From tree trunks, from hard oak”:

Virgil, Aeneid, ed. and trans. Robert Fitzgerald, New York, Vintage Books, ,

.-.

63. See Fitzgerald’s translation of Virgil’sAeneid, p. . Lavinia is the daughter of Lat-

inus, king of Latium (the region where the Trojans land) who was betrothed to Tur-

nus, but then given by her father in marriage to Aeneus, who kills Turnus (see Bate,

p. ). The connection has been noted by various other critics (Miola, p. ; Mar-

ionWynne-Davies, “‘The SwallowingWomb’: Consumed and ConsumingWomen

in Titus Andronicus” in The Matter of Di�erence: Materialist Feminist Criticism of

Shakespeare, ed. Valerie Wayne, Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, ,

p. . As Bate notes, Lavinia, the mother of early Rome, becomes the mutilated

daughter of late Rome (p. ).

64. Harrison, p. . Also signi�cant is Ovid’s account in Fasti where Rome’s found-

ing involves the protection of two trees by a woodpecker and a wolf from Amulius

wielding an axe. The woodpecker then brings food to Romulus and Remus and the

wolf suckles them: see Ovid’s Fasti: Roman Holidays, ed. and trans. Betty Rose

Nagle, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, , .-; .

65. There has been much critical commentary on the function of these sequences. Tay-

mor characterizes the P.A.N.s as “abstract or symbolic representations of an event

or psychic state” (Taymor, p. ). Mary Lindroth notes that the P.A.N. “literalizes

Shakespeare’s language and imagery”: “‘Some Device of FurtherMisery’: Taymor’s

Titus Brings Shakespeare to Film Audiences with a Twist”, Literature/Film Quar-

terly, ., -, p. . Hatchuel describes the P.A.N.s as sequences that “delve

into the landscapes of the characters’ minds” (p. ). Donaldson describes them

as “dreamlike sequences that Taymor uses to connect the secret or unconscious

thoughts of her characters to broader patterns of symbol they share with others”

(p. ).

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Plate 3 – Lavinia on broken Roman column in P.A.N. sequence.

alizes the idea of Rome as a wilderness of tigers and places Lavinia on a

ruined Roman column which echoes the earlier tree stump (see Plate ).

The broken column parallels various pieces of broken statuary in earlier

scenes of the �lm which signal dismemberment66. Architectural frag-

ments and body parts connect ruined Rome with dismembered phys-

ical bodies and the disabled political body of Rome. In this way Tay-

mor’s iconography parallels Shakespeare’s linking of bodies with cities,

of physical integrity with moral and political integrity, of microcosmic

with macrocosmic elements. The cut tree nuances Rome’s founding,

the creation of civilization against wilderness and culture against na-

ture, while the broken column represents the subsequent ruin of that

culture, reclaimed by the savagery of the forest. The �gure of Lavinia

exposes the illusion that civilization, the clearing of the forest, separates

humanity from that forest. Both Shakespeare and Taymor show the bor-

der between virtue and vice and between civilization and barbarism as

inherently porous and paradoxical.

The lopping of the Lavinia-tree takes place in a forest that becomes

a terrain of vice. Albert Tricomi argues that Lavinia and the forest are

closely identi�ed67. The link he discerns is analogous to the relation-

ship between the tree of virtue and the moral terrain under attack in the

paintings by Mantegna and Perugino. Critics generally have recognized

66. See Hatchuel, p. .

67. See Tricomi, p. ; .

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the forest as moral and political terrain, and have claimed that it mea-

sures Rome’s descent68. The forest is an ambiguous site. It is initially

described in attractive terms, but with sinister notes that presage the im-

minent events. Aaron describes the forest walks as “wide and spacious,/

And many unfrequented plots there are,/ Fitted by kind for rape and

villainy” (..-)69. The “wide and spacious” walks would have

alerted Shakespeare’s audience that the terrain is potentially one of vice

and entrapment. The terrain of virtue was narrow and arduous by com-

parison70. “Plots” puns on terrain and mental schemes71. The forest is

also described in images of sterility, Tamora calling the forest “barren”

(..), presaging the imminent image of Lavinia as lopped tree72. In

Titus, the potential menace of the forest is suggested by the brief shots

of a tiger and a doe through the trees, the director again using visual

metaphors inspired by Shakespeare’s language.

The forest is a site of chaos and confusion as well as potential bar-

barism and animal drives. The Andronici enter the forest to hunt and

instead are hunted. Peter Donaldson observes that the way the post-rape

scene is �lmed contributes to this vision of the forest outside Rome:

Through point-of-view shots of con�ict, uneasy hand-held partial pansaround the periphery of the clearings and the marsh, Taymor emphasizesthe centrality of the main characters on such “stages” [the stump/pedestal]as well as the potential of such settings to bewilder, confuse and threaten rolereversals of victim and victor. In this way the forest itself becomes an arena,a “theatre of cruelty”73.

Similar �lming e�ects are achieved earlierwhenLavinia andBassianus

are encircled and threatened by Tamora and her sons. That Shake-

speare’s metaphor of the severed tree is embodied in a woman attacked

68. Sommers sees the forest as a Dionysiac site of barbarism, threatening the idea of

civilization as embodied in Rome (p. -). Bate notes the parallel between the

forest and an emblem from Henry Peacham’s Minerva Britanna () of a dark

wood as signifying chaos and night (p. ).

69. These lines are retained in the �lm.

70. The idea is present in the iconography of Lorenzo Lotto’s Allegory of Virtue and

Vice ().

71. See Miola, p. .

72. In the playtext, Tamora also describes lea�ess trees and the forest as a place where

“nothing breeds” (..-). Tamora accuses Lavinia and Bassianus of threaten-

ing to bind her to “the body of a dismal yew” (..), which also anticipates the

arboreal tableaux of Lavinia. These lines are cut in the �lm.

73. Donaldson, p. .

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in the forest outside Rome, the site of Rome’s mythic founding, is a ve-

hicle for re�ection on what Rome has become in Titus Andronicus. It is

adherence to strict Roman law without compromise or mercy that re-

sults in tragic consequences74. Rome is aligned with the world of the

Old Testament, of penitential law. Shakespeare questions the e�cacy of

revenge and exposes its sterility, articulated in the image of the lopped

Lavinia-tree. As Philip Collington has argued in relation to Cymbeline,

the treatment of prisoners was emerging in the early modern period as a

barometer of civilization or barbarism75. Thus Titus’ treatment of Alar-

bus marks him as barbaric, creating a juxtaposition of pagan Rome with

the supposedly merciful Christian empire to follow.

Taymor’s vision of Lavinia as raised on a wooden stump also suggests

associations with a cruci�ed Christ, su�ering above the Goth brothers,

or Renaissance depictions of other Christian martyrs such as St. Sebas-

tian, penetrated with arrows. Given the extensive associations of Christ

as a tree of life and as a tree cut down and regenerating, the arboreal

metaphor of Christ haunts that of Lavinia, even if it probably falls short

of actually rendering Lavinia a Christ �gure. Taymor has referred to the

Christianity in Titus Andronicus and evokes Christian imagery in vari-

ous ways76. It is interesting to note in this regard the Christian allusions

of the �nal scene: the sun/Son-rise, water and the promise of a child,

as the pagan Roman empire is about to convert and the state ritual of

sacri�ce will be replaced by belief in a man-god sacri�ce77.

Analysis of the historical contexts for Shakespeare’s imagery alongside

Taymor’s iconography enables us to consider ways in which artists and

audiences framed perceptions of the human condition and its failings

in the Renaissance and in the present. As can be seen, these are wide-

ranging, �uid and sometimes paradoxical. Cartelli and Rowe re�ect on

the nature of allusion:

74. As Cli�ord Chalmers Hu�man notes, Christian justice encompasses mercy: “Titus

Andronicus: Metamorphosis and Renewal”, Modern Language Review, ., ,

p. .

75. Philip D. Collington, “‘Graze, as You Find Pasture’: Nebuchadnezzar and the Fate

of Cymbeline’s Prisoners”, Shakespeare Quarterly, ., Autumn , p. -.

76. “You’ve also got the Christianity in Titus; even if it’s anachronistic, it’s part of Eliz-

abethan time” (Johnson-Haddad, p. ).

77. Taymor uses the word “redemption” in describing the �nal scene of the �lm (Tay-

mor, p. ).

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Allusion is of its very nature an artistic transaction controlled as much byaudience as by artist. It is a highly unstable device precisely because it in-vites readers, viewers, or listeners to draw on “external” associations thatmay range from the widely shared to the highly idiosyncratic. It is likely,therefore, to produce varied, even contradictory responses78 .

This is true of both Shakespearean and contemporary audiences. Con-

tinued exploration of Shakespeare’s rich imagery will continue to en-

hance readings of the play and �lmic adaptations. Having considered

the historic implications of Shakespeare’s imagery and how it intersects

with Taymor’s iconography, I will now consider critical responses to

Taymor’s interpretation.

Lavinia as symbol and the ethics of violence

Critical commentary on Taymor’s interpretation of Lavinia generally

forms part of the debate on violence and the extent to which it is de-

constructed in the �lm. Most critics acknowledge the fact that depicting

violence on screen with the intention of deconstructing and questioning

it poses di�culties. David McCandless notes that Taymor’s �lm “uses

violence as much as it interrogates it”79. Peter Donaldson sees as miss-

ing in the �lm “a quality of outrage” and Lehmann, Reynolds and Starks

see it as coming “dangerously close to aestheticizing violence”80. Kim

Fedderson and J. M. Richardson argue that the �lm “asks us to believe

78. Cartelli and Rowe, p. . They suggest that Taymor’s “free-�oating allusiveness”

invites readings that are both “Shakespeare-centric, concerned with what gets done

to the play and ‘Shakespeare-eccentric’, concerned with what gets accomplished by

means of the play” (p. , citing Burt). They note that the Daphne motif in Titus

becomes “shockingly explicit” when the viewer sees Lavinia after the attack (p. ).

However the Ovid reference would only be available to a viewer with some knowl-

edge of Renaissance or classical culture.

79. McCandless, p. . He notes that Taymor attempted to give her treatment of the

play “the shock of the real”, aiming to “reawaken spectators to the visceral horror of

violence, to rescue them from a benumbed dissociation from violence symptomatic

of post-traumatic stress” (p. ). Similarly, Cartelli and Rowe note that Titusmor-

alizes against violent and predatory behaviour that it more often seems to revel in

than revile (p. ). They ask “what happens when the �lm’s allusive structures and

the narrative in which they are embedded fail to signify clearly the choices or in-

terventions this ‘ethical spectator’ should make?” (p. ). Burt challenges whether

Titus can be completely distinguished from the trashier �lm versions of the play and

from slasher �lms (p. ).

80. Donaldson, p. ; Lehmann, Reynolds and Starks, p. .

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86 Victoria BLADEN

that the real experience of violence can have the same e�ects as the rep-

resentation of violence, and that these e�ects will be positive, moving us

away from violence”81. Jane Kingsley-Smith observes that Taymor’s �lm

attempts to exploit the contemporary appetite for violence while also in-

tending to expose violence82.

Clara Escoda Agusti �nds that Titus o�ers a “successful deconstruc-

tion of the violence” in the play, although observing that showing vio-

lence on screen is “an ambivalent act, since violencemust �rst be framed,

and thus, partly legitimized, in order to be subsequently questioned and

deconstructed”83. She cites Stephen Prince’s suggestion that only by de-

picting the absence of violence can it not be legitimized84. Lehmann,

Reynolds and Starks see Taymor’s engagement with violence as seeking

to inspire empathy as a means of greater audience involvement85. As

Samuel Crowl accurately observes, the scene involving Lavinia is one of

the most di�cult to stage. While her injuries can be stylized, the de-

piction of some degree of violence is unavoidable86. Taymor’s version

emphasizes Lavinia’s su�ering and points to the metaphoric and sym-

bolic dimensions of her injuries in the larger scheme of Shakespeare’s

narrative87.

Some critics �nd that Lavinia’s hybridity, �rstly as half tree, then as

half doe (see Plate ), potentially suggests regeneration and a transcen-

dence of victimization88. This is based on the suggestion that Lavinia

“opposes the rest of the characters’ need for a stable unitary subjectivity,

81. Kim Fedderson and J. M. Richardson, “Shakespeare in Pieces”, SRASP (West Vir-

ginia Shakespeare and Renaissance Association Selected Papers), , , p. .

82. She notes the way in which the appetite of Chiron and Demetrius for violent video

games is linked to their appetite to rape and mutilate Lavinia (p. ).

83. Clara Escoda Agusti, “Julie Taymor’s Titus (): Framing Violence and Activat-

ing Responsibility”, Atlantis, ., , p. ; .

84. See Stephen Prince, Screening Violence, London, Athlone, , p. ; Escoda

Agusti, p. . Kingsley-Smith asks how, if it is to be represented at all, the play’s

violence should be shown (p. ).

85. Lehmann, Reynolds and Starks, p. .

86. See Crowl, p. . Lavinia’s dismemberment in Peter Brook’s stage production

at Stratfordwas highly stylizedwith the blood represented by long ribbons. See Burt,

p. - and Kingsley-Smith, p. .

87. Burt �nds Taymor’s �lm less graphic in its depiction of the play’s violence, as com-

pared with Lorn Richey’s Titus Andronicus ().

88. See Escoda Agusti, p. . Lehman, Reynolds and Starks see Taymor’s employment

of abjection as used paradoxically as a means of going through and beyond victim-

ization (p. -).

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as she blends and hybridizes continually with di�erence”89. However it

is questionable whether any of the characters could be seen as displaying

stable, unitary subjectivities90. Shakespeare continually questions sta-

ble categories throughout the play. While Titus kills his own son and

daughter, Aaron, supposedly the �gure of vice, is a�ectionate and pro-

tective towards his91. Tamora is the only character who observes that

mercy is the sign of true nobility, an insight made in the opening scene

and then continually ignored by all the characters throughout the play.

Lavinia’s hybridity does not oppose the other characters in this regard,

but rather re�ects them.

Plate 4 – Lavinia as doe in P.A.N. sequence 92.

89. Escoda Agusti, p. .

90. As Virginia Mason Vaughan observes, from any subject position in the play there

are a bevy of “others”, outsiders from one’s own group who become objects of de-

rision, hatred, violence and intrigue: Virginia Mason Vaughan, “Looking at the

‘Other’ in Julie Taymor’s Titus”, Shakespeare Bulletin, ., , p. . In Tay-

mor’s �lm, identi�cations are slippery, making boundaries permeable.

91. As Crowl observes, Aaron is unwilling to sacri�ce his son for his own ambition

or even to maintain his own position of power as Tamora’s lover, while Titus, at

the play’s beginning, was honoured to see his sons destroyed in the name of Rome

(p. ; ).

92. The hybrid woman-doe concept is indebted to Shakespeare’s earlier metaphor of

Chiron and Demetrius that they will pluck “a dainty doe” (.. ). While the rest

of the Roman elite are engaged in the hunt in the forest the Goth brothers are on

their own hunt. As Starks notes, the pose in the P.A.N. comments on representa-

tions of the female form in iconic images in �lm, pop culture and the media (Starks,

p. ).

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88 Victoria BLADEN

Lisa Starks has observed that Taymor’s art explores the integral qual-

ities of the beautiful and the grotesque in an investigation of abjec-

tion93. Similarly, Vaughan frames the Lavinia-tree as epitomizing the

grotesque94. Virginia Vaughan quotes Bakhtin on the grotesque: “The

un�nished and open body (dying, bringing forth and being born) is not

separated from the world by clearly de�ned boundaries; it is blended

with the world, with animals, with objects”95. This observation is partic-

ularly apt, given that the primarymotifs of Renaissance arboreal iconog-

raphy commonly involve elements of the grotesque and hybridity. The

tree of Jesse motif which articulates the generation of Christ, making lit-

eral the idea of the family tree, also suggests the decomposition of the

body and the life that this supports. Similarly, the idea of Christ as the

tree of life, a verdant hybrid of god/man and vegetation was haunted by

the Green Man, a similar hybrid with an ambiguous range of meanings.

Taymor’s vision of Lavinia potentially evokes these earlier hybrid arbo-

real forms to which Shakespeare’s language is indebted.

Escoda Agusti argues that Lavinia refuses to become a symbol of lack

or dispossession through mutilation and rape by blending into some-

thing else and that Taymor uses blending to suggest empowerment96.

However viewing this hybridization as empowerment or as an opposi-

tion to violence through the embracing of di�erence is problematic. The

metaphors of tree and doe are imposed on Lavinia by Marcus, the Goth

brothers and Titus97. The Lavinia P.A.N., supposedly her recollection of

the event, is edited like a music video and is meant to recall the video-

arcade games played by Demetrius98. Thus her recollection is trapped

93. Starks, p. ; .

94. Vaughan, p. .

95. Ibid.; Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky, Bloom-

ington, Indiana University Press, , p. -. Escoda Agusti adds to this:

“The disciplinary apparatuses which operate on women’s bodies, and which thrive

on establishing boundaries such as animate/inanimate, life/death, animal/human,

beauty/abjectness are suddenly made to dissolve, threatening to erase the conven-

tionalmeanings bywhichwe read theworld and bywhichwe build notions of purity

and impurity, normalcy and abnormality, exclusion and privilege, etc” (p. ).

96. Escoda Agusti, p. and , referring to Vaughan, p. . Also see Lehmann,

Reynolds and Starks, p. -.

97. As McCandless asks, seeing the episode as an authorial gesture, “why should

Lavinia, remembering her rape, imagine herself as a pedestal-bound doe-girl beset

by rapacious tiger-boys?” (p. ).

98. See Burt, p. , referring to the DVD commentary in the Penny ArcadeNightmares

chapter, disc .

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within the vision of herself by others99. If she sees her attackers as tigers,

they see her as doe, prey for the hunt within the aesthetic of a music

video. Her entrapment is also emphasized with the allusion to Marilyn

Monroe, Taymor drawing parallels with contemporary tendencies to ob-

jectify and elevate/degrade women in popular culture100.

Lavinia is e�ectively silenced even before her tongue is cut out since

she is enmeshed in patriarchal viewpoints that construct her as a pos-

session to be �rstly held up as an icon of virtue, then fought over, like

Rome, by Bassianus and Saturninus, and then as prey by Chiron and

Demetrius. Finally she is killed by her father because as maimed and

penetrated she is deemed to have no intrinsic worth other than her, now

defunct, symbol of virtue101. In the early modern period, rape was prin-

cipally viewed as a property crime committed against a woman’s male

relations and standing as an emblematic threat to men’s control over

women’s unruly bodies102. As Kim Solga notes, a woman’s chastity was

“her family’s asset”103. The mutilated Lavinia becomes damaged goods

and reminds her father, the military hero, of his failure to protect the

99. In Titus, there is an, albeit limited, degree of agency in Lavinia’s rejection of the

phallic wooden sta� for writing and in the aggression of the silent scream directed

at Marcus/the viewer. A radical interpretation of Lavinia might arguably be ef-

fected in a depiction of her as an unwilling victim of her father’s murder of her,

rather than accepting, Lucrece-like, her sentence.

100. In The Seven Year Itch (dir. Billy Wilder, ) Marilyn Monroe stands over a

grating where the air from the subway blows up her dress. Burt criticizes Tay-

mor’s reference to the Monroe scene as “rape”, and disagrees with the simplistic

juxtaposition of Lavinia’s moral purity with Tamora’s sexuality because it renders

sexuality equivalent to the violence of rape and “something that happens to (good)

women rather than something that is a part of them” (p. )

101. As McCandless observes, “Lavinia’s pedestal represents the material predicate of

that objectifying, shaming gaze to which Marcus’ long-winded speech holds her

captive” (p. ). He sees this speech as Petrarchan anatomizing, extending the

process of objecti�cation and a “rhetorical dismemberment” (p. ).

102. Solga, p. . As Solga traces, from rape was enshrined as a property crime.

Legislative changes in and added the requirement of the absence of a

woman’s consent, however the old emphasis on property remained. To this was

added anxiety over whether a woman had in fact consented, given women’s “un-

ruly sexual appetites” (Solga, p. ). Rape had to be proved by evidence of female

sexual innocence, placing the burden on the victim to prove her non-consent to

a public sceptical of women’s sexual motives. This was made more di�cult since

for women to speak of sexual matters could be construed as a lack of innocence.

Lavinia, unable to usewords or hands is “unable to enact themetatheatrical return”

of the rape (p. -).

103. Ibid., p. .

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90 Victoria BLADEN

city, his daughter and himself from the penetration of civilization by bar-

barism104. Lavinia also becomes, in Taymor’s �lm and in Shakespeare’s

metaphoric language, a sterile version of the family tree. She is fertility

thwarted, lopped andwithered, bringingwith it a loss of political potency

that her marriage might have brought.

Lavinia su�ers as a victim at the border between warring tribes. As

Lehmann, Reynolds and Starks accurately observe, “Lavinia’s body be-

comes a borderland in its own right”105. This resonates with the tree

motifs that her metaphor recalls, which manifested dual identities. The

trees dividing virtue and vice, or life and death, were commonly seen

as the same tree with two sides. The porous boundary that Shakespeare

suggests exists between self and Other, and between civilization and the

“wilderness of tigers” within, has the potential to lead to insights by the

viewer that revenge is ultimately violence against the self.

Some critics object to what they perceive as the reduction of Lavinia

to symbol106. While this is understandable, in my view the symbolic di-

mensions to her character’s function need to be taken into account. As

Crowl observes, “Taymor senses that Titus’ violence leaps beyond real-

ism into the symbolic and the surreal”107. Her identity is tied through

language to the idea of Rome, which is also constructed as a female body,

104. This penetration of vice is suggested in a further echo of the stricken Lavinia-tree

in the tableau of Revenge, Rape and Murder in the �nal P.A.N. sequence, where

the phallic branch between the legs of Chiron creates an image of the Goth as a

hybrid arboreal �gure.

105. Lehman, Reynolds and Starks, p. . They observe that Taymor’s �lm gives both

“the pleasure, and the horror, of boundary subversion to the spectator. Dispers-

ing the cultural grid of gender and identity across tantalizing collisions of human,

animal and machine” (p. ). Similarly, Starks observes that Taymor’s Titus os-

cillates “between the dualities of the real/surreal, inside/outside, human/animal’

and ‘plays on the boundary in between, focusing on the borderline of that which

is and is not” (p. ).

106. Pascale Aebischer objects to the privileging of the allegorical at the expense of the

literalwhich turnsphysical presence into a pure conceptualization: “‘Yet I’ll Speak’:

silencing the female voice in Titus Andronicus and Othello” in Shakespeare et la

voix, ed. Patricia Dorval, Paris, Société Française Shakespeare, , p. . Cartelli

and Rowe also note that Taymor’s design is particularly interested in symbolism

and that such approaches risk reducing the �lm to an array of too prominent signs

and markers (p. ).

107. Crowl, p. .

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threatened with rape, penetrated by barbarism and dismembered108. In

Act , Marcus asks Titus to “help to set a head on headless Rome’ and

Titus replies ‘A better head her glorious body �ts/ Than his that shakes

for age and feebleness” (..-), lines retained in the �lm. Rome is

imaged as headless and female, requiring a masculine head109.

At the same time, the emblematic role Lavinia performs can arguably

be seen as further violence. In Titus, Lavinia bears the savage phys-

ical brunt of the literalization of arboreal metaphor. Taymor’s image

presents us with a Lavinia whose hands are not only lopped but whose

raw stumps are penetrated with sprays of sticks. This further literal-

ization of metaphor, we presume, causes additional su�ering. Cartelli

and Rowe observe that the P.A.N.s resemble Renaissance emblems in

their multimedia format and their meta-critical approach on how the

content should be approached. They see the PANs as meta-critical “in

their emphasis on the damagewrought by the conversion of persons into

things—dead bodies, symbols, objects for the use of others”110. There is

paradox in the fact that Taymor critiques the use of people as symbols,

while also using symbolism extensively in her �lmic iconography.

Healing Hands

Most critics of Titus recognize the healing function of Young Lucius

(Osheen Jones) and his development from a �gure enacting violence

against his toys in the opening scene to one in the closing scene rescuing

the baby (Bah Soulemayne) and leaving the theatre of violence111. The

association of Young Lucius with healing is emphasized in Taymor’s ad-

dition of a scene in a woodcarver’s workshop �lled with doll parts and

statues where he buys a set of wooden hands for his maimed aunt (see

Plate ). The workshop is an ambiguous space. Are the parts for dolls,

108. Bassianus urges his followers to: “Keep then this passage to the Capitol,/ And suf-

fer not dishonour to approach/ The imperial seat, to virtue consecrate, /To jus-

tice, continence and nobility” (..-). The Saturninus faction represents rape:

“Open the gates and letme in” (..). Saturninus is directly compared toTarquin

at ..-.

109. Hu�man describes the mutilated Lavinia as “an emblem of Rome without justice”

(p. ). Similarly, Tricomi argues that the mutilation of the Andronici is bound

up with the mutilation of Rome and civilization (p. ).

110. Cartelli and Rowe, p. .

111. As Burt notes, Young Lucius becomes less violent as the �lm proceeds (p. ).

Lehmann, Reynolds and Starks observe that he becomes the “feminine” healer to-

wards Lavinia and nurturing mother to the child (p. ).

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92 Victoria BLADEN

Plate 5 – Young Lucius in the workshop with wooden doll parts 112.

religious statues or humans? Is the small hand Young Lucius picks up

for a doll or a mutilated child? Cartelli and Rowe read the workshop as

one specializing in prosthetics for humans rather than parts for statues

and observe that it is unsettling that a prosthetics workshop is a thriving

enterprise, re�ecting a world of arbitrary terror and mutilation113.

The wooden hands recall the earlier dry sticks, and continue the idea

of Lavinia as a woman-tree, gesturing towards restitution, while empha-

sizing the idea of hybridity114. As Lisa Starks observes, in this scene

the grotesque images of dismembered bodies, recurrent in the �lm, are

transformed into things of beauty115. The religious statues cast the

empathy of Young Lucius with his aunt in Christian terms. While the

112. In the Illustrated Screenplay, the scene is described as a woodcarver’s shop where a

woodcarver sands the chipped paint from twowooden hands and is surrounded by

saints and various sizes of classic, religious and mythic icons including a handless

Madonna. Young Lucius picks up a pair of tiny wooden hands from a worktable

of wooden body parts of broken dolls and icons (p. ). Donaldson notes that the

scene was �lmed in an actual workshop at Rome’s Cinecittà where wooden props

are handcrafted (p. ). Lucius picks up the wooden hands in a “rhyming shot” to

the earlier shot when he picks up his action �gure from the �oor of the coliseum.

The sequence “[transforms] mindless violence to reparation” (Donaldson, p. ).

113. Cartelli and Rowe, p. . They see the wooden hands as ambivalent. Possibly

carved as the hands of saints, they are part compensatory tools, part reminder of

Lavinia’s conversion into a symbol of martyred innocence and part sign of the

moral authority of the Andronici, which itself is problematic (p. ).

114. Cartelli and Rowe note that although the wooden hands do nothing practical, they

signal empowerment (p. ). They also note the link between the wooden hands

and the earlier sticks and remark that the wooden hands are called “Prosthetic

Branches” in the DVD title (p. ). Solga observes that the wooden hands give

Lavinia the “quality of a living puppet” (p. ).

115. Starks, p. .

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�gure of Christ, as a cruci�ed man on a tree and the tree of life, haunts

the earlier image of Lavinia as woman-tree, with the wooden hands of a

religious statue, Lavinia becomes akin to a Madonna or martyred saint.

As McCandless notes, the episode enhances Lavinia’s iconicity, giv-

ing her a constructed quality as though she were part statue116. This re-

calls the earlier images of Lavinia mounted on top of the tree stump and

pedestal, idealized, elevated and objecti�ed as a spectacle of beauty and

abjection, desire and repulsion, to be revered and derided. McCandless

also observes the religious connotations of the imagery: “The association

of the hands with Madonnas and saints lends an air of sanctity rather

than freakishness to her transformation, extending her status as mysti-

�ed other, a monument of patience smiling at grief. The hands not only

compensate for loss but assist in re-dressing it as martyrdom”117. Since

Young Lucius is theoretically heir to the Roman leadership, the motif of

himwanting to heal themaimed body of his aunt suggests the possibility

of him also healing the maimed body of Rome. Yet this is undermined

in the �lm since Young Lucius leaves the amphitheatre, making any re-

lationship with Rome in the future an ambivalent one: is he rejecting

Rome’s violence or rejecting the idea of Rome in its entirety? Most crit-

ics note the role of Young Lucius as intermediary between the world of

Titus and the contemporary world, and between the characters and the

viewers. As Crowl notes, “Lucius is the key device through which Tay-

mor dramatizes her desire to see Titus speaking to us about the violence

in our own world as well as that of ancient Rome”118.

In the playtext, viewing Young Lucius as a �gure who will stop the

cycle of violence is also problematic. When Lavinia reveals her attack-

ers, Young Lucius claims that if he were a man he would rape Tamora

in revenge, to which sentiment Marcus expresses approval119. This sug-

gests that the cycle of violence would continue with the next generation.

116. See McCandless, p. .

117. Ibid.

118. Crowl, p. . Escoda Agusti sees the �gure of the witness as representing values

of caring, attention to vulnerability and identi�cation with the other, a �gure of

empathy throughout the �lm (p. ). However this role is only at the end. He

begins as a �gure of violence andmanifests racism in his comment on the blackness

of the �y killed.

119. “[I]f I were a man/ Their mother’s bedchamber should not be safe” (..-).

To this Marcus replies “Ay, that’s my boy!” (..). Coppélia Kahn also drew

attention to Young Lucius’ revenge sentiment in Roman Shakespeare, London and

NewYork, Routledge, , p. . Similarly Hamilton saw no consolation or opti-

mismat the endof the play since Lucius initiated the cycle of revenge bydemanding

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94 Victoria BLADEN

However these lines are cut in the �lm, leaving Young Lucius as a �gure

that learns mercy and ultimately rejects violence. Some critics view the

episode with the wooden hands as moving too far from Shakespeare’s

text. As Crowl comments: “Taymor cannot resist wanting to help even

when Shakespeare’s text is moving beyond such humane concerns. Tay-

mor sees that if those stumps can be represented by bent twigs, so, too,

can they be refashioned by another kind of woodworking”120.

Similar reservations are commonly expressed in the positive, if unre-

solved, ending with Young Lucius’ rescue of the child. In the playtext,

there is no express direction as to the fate of Aaron andTamara’s child. If

it is accepted that Lucius was a person to keep his word then it may be as-

sumed that the child lives, which in a play awash with blood is highly sig-

ni�cant. Lucius bears the name of the �rst Christian king of England121.

Shakespeare’s choice of name thus creates a symbolic link between the

eclipse of Rome and the foundation of Britain122. In Jane Howell’s

BBC television production andTaymor’s stage production, the child was

killed. In Taymor’s �lm version, then, the acts of mercy by Lucius and

Young Lucius mark a signi�cant shift from the cycle of revenge123.

Shakespeare’s metaphor emerged from a culture saturated with sym-

bolic tree imagery creating a range of meanings potentially recognisable

to his audience. Taymor’s visual metaphors highlight and play out, in a

language of trees, Shakespeare’s arboreal metaphor, giving it a new cine-

matic life. Her interpretation of perhaps the most di�cult scene in Titus

the sacri�ce of Tamora’s son, and at the end plans further revenge on her (p. ;

).

120. Crowl, p. .

121. In John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (), a book that was popularly known as

“Foxe’s Book of Martyrs” and that was placed in most parish churches in England,

the account begins with Lucius, the �rst Christian king, and ends with Elizabeth:

see Francis A. Yates, “Queen Elizabeth as Astraea”, Journal of the Warburg and

Courtauld Institutes, , , p. ; . Vaughan notes that, in the �lm, Lucius’

responsibility for the sacri�ce ofAlarbus is amelioratedby the presence of the priest

(p. -).

122. He also bears a sylvan trace to his name. The word lucus could refer to a grove and

a burnt out clearing; an eye in the sense of an opening of the forest (see Harrison,

p. -).

123. As Miola notes, in Titus, Saturninus/Saturn rules over a city that devours its own

children until Lucius stops the hideous cycle by refraining from killing another’s

child (p. ). Hu�man perceives Christian nuances to the play in that it allows

for recognition by the audience of a higher code than the strict justice of impe-

rial Rome (p. ). Lucius represents renewal in the return of Astraea and justice

(Hu�man, p. ; ).

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Andronicus is enriched when read in light of the historical contexts that

open up for us the wider signi�cance of the symbolic burden that Lavinia

bears.

The tableau of Lavinia can be read in a range of interlinked ways: as a

dramatic interpretation of the idea of the stricken tree of virtue, around

whom rage virtue and vice, as an alternative version of Daphne, the an-

tithesis of evergreen Roman triumphalism, and as the literalization of

the metaphor of lopping as retribution and reform, re�ecting the fallen

state of Rome. In Renaissance ideology, man’s isolation from God re-

�ected his degraded state and his expulsion from the fertility of Eden

to the barren wilderness beyond the garden wall. Withering was the re-

ligious iconography of the Fall and Lavinia as an arboreal icon can be

read as potentially embodying not just the immediate violence butman’s

fallen nature. This idea aligns with Taymor’s vision in Titus that ampli-

�es the violence beyond the context of Rome to all of human history,

including the Roman/Balkan coliseum, fascism, misogynist violence of

video games, the objecti�cation of women in popular culture and child’s

play. Humanity’s violence represents the failure of civilization to contain

barbarism.

In the contemporary world, the themes of Shakespeare and Taymor,

such as the sterility of revenge and the regenerative possibilities ofmercy,

remain highly relevant. In a �lm that engages with violence in order to

deconstruct it, the shift in Young Lucius from a boy enacting violence

against his toys, to one searching for wooden hands to heal his maimed

aunt, is ultimately positive. The wooden hands echo the earlier arboreal

metaphor, transforming the horror of the dry sticks into a sign of healing

and restitution.

Several scholars have been critical of the closing scene for its optimism

and sentimentalism124. This generally arises from the view that there is

no evidence of hope in the play itself. Fedderson andRichardson point to

124. McCandless sees the ending as a “wish-ful�llment fantasy . . . uncomfortably com-

parable to a Hollywood Happy Ending” and that what the boy heads towards is

an illusion (p. ). Burt criticizes the “fascist romanticization of the child in a

closing shot straight out of Stephen Spielberg’s E.T. ()” and Taymor’s “sanc-

ti�cation of the paci�c child” as a critique of media violence (p. ; ). Cartelli

and Rowe note the “hostile reaction” to Taymor’s “tampering with the ending of

Shakespeare’s play” (p. ). They view Taymor’s ending as a strained but neces-

sary solution (p. ). Crowl describes the ending as “optimistic and controversial”

(p. ).

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96 Victoria BLADEN

the rejection of pity for Aaron and Tamora125. Yet there is optimism in

Shakespeare’s play which Taymor’s interpretation aligns with126. Young

Lucius represents potential regeneration: he is described by Titus as a

“tender sapling” (..), a signi�cant metaphor of verdant generation

in a play of severed and burnt branches. Lucius, the new leader of Rome

expresses hope: “May I govern so/ To heal Rome’s harms and wipe away

her woe” (..-), which again �gures Rome as a woman to be

healed and comforted. The language ofMarcus’ ending speech is of repa-

ration to the body of Rome, to “knit again/ This scattered corn into one

mutual sheaf,/ These broken limbs again into one body” (..-)127.

The agricultural nuances together with the image of restitution after dis-

memberment suggest the end of a Saturnine reign and the optimismafter

lopping. Such hints at optimismand reparation are picked up byTaymor

in the iconography of Young Lucius giving wooden hands to Lavinia and

rescuing the child.

Donaldson sees the �lm ending as only suggesting the slenderest of

hopes since the direction in which Lucius walks in the closing scene, out-

side the gates of Rome, is the wilderness where Tamora is to be thrown to

be devoured by wild animals128. However, what both play and �lm have

shown is that savagery is not “outside the gates” but inescapably within.

The beasts are not con�ned to the forests outside Rome, so walking out-

side the gates does not constitute some increased risk. Young Lucius

is a beast himself that has exhibited violence; yet, as Crowl suggests, he

might be viewed as a “good wolf”, aligned with the nurturing wolf that

suckled Romulus and Remus, which suggests a “potentially nourishing

Rome”129. As a protector of the child, the wolf invokes the mythic story

125. Fedderson and Richardson, p. . They argue that the audience is expected to

reject the kind of piety depicted within the play as irreligious, learning the lesson

the participants within the play do not (p. ).

126. In a play saturatedwith lopping, it is relevant to note the optimism that was part of

the iconography of lopping in Renaissance culture. Titus Andronicus aligns with

the barren side of a symbolic tree that was ultimately optimistic, if paradoxical.

Escoda Agusti observes of the witness/Young Lucius that “because the witness is

not compelled to participate in the violence, he does engage in the restoring and

inclusive process of blending with the other, with the abject, instead of excluding

it” (p. ).

127. Marcus’ lines are retained in the �lm while Lucius’ lines are cut.

128. See Donaldson, p. .

129. Crowl, p. . McCandless compares the stage version and�lmproduction, noting

that in the �lm Young Lucius breaks the cycle of violence that the stage production

portrayed as unbreakable (p. ).

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of Rome’s founding, suggesting that the end of Titus is also a new begin-

ning and perhaps a new Rome.

Fedderson and Richardson interpret the ending as pessimistic, sug-

gesting that the boy and the audience are unable to escape the �lmic

space130. Similarly, Burt criticizes the suggestion that there is literally

a way out of the play as naïve131. However the space into which Young

Lucius heads is at least an escape from the claustrophobic nightmare of

the Titus world, and parallels the movement from child’s play to Shake-

speare’s play at the beginning of the �lm. The ending is not merely an

exit from Rome, but from the dream world into which his violent play

threw him. With his new impulses of empathy and mercy for toys and

children, he has escaped certain strictures of violence at some level132.

Given Taymor’s juxtaposition of naturalism and symbolism throughout

the �lm, most viewers would interpret the ending as pointing beyond

the literal. Vaughan notes that Young Lucius walks into a space where

“there is no ‘othering’, only blending”133.

Ultimately, Taymor’s �lm suggests that the future of Rome lies not

with a father who would destroy a maimed hybrid body, but with a

boy who sought to heal it. The opening and closing scenes of the �lm

place Young Lucius as the �gure who may ultimately be in control of

toys/soldiers, children/the future and puppets/Lavinia134. In light of the

transhistorical references to human violence in the �lm, the suggestion

of the ending is that hope for humanity lies in a rejection of the theatre

of cruelty, where violence is consumed along with progeny. The �lmed

witnesses to the �nal scene are Bosnians135. Tragically and ironically a

few months after �lming �nished in the coliseum (at Pula, Croatia), the

civil war broke out. In an interview shortly after September th, Tay-

mor commented on the power of art tomake connections between tribes

of people and between families, stressing the importance of constantly

130. See Fedderson and Richardson, p. .

131. See Burt, p. .

132. Ghita suggests that the whole may be read as the boy’s dream or fantasy, projecting

the entire narrative frame at the level of the individual unconscious (p. ). Ghita

describes the “bleak bluish landscape” as suggesting “the idea of cleansing and for-

giveness, of a solar voyage, which is nonetheless a frozen sunrise, signalling possi-

bility and hope but not solution” (p. ).

133. Vaughan, p. .

134. Ghita describes the boy as a “quasi master of puppets” (p. ). This is a role echoed

in obtaining the wooden hands for Lavinia and releasing the baby from the cage.

135. See Donaldson, p. .

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98 Victoria BLADEN

looking at the other, suggesting as Vaughan notes, art’s ability to move

spectators outside of themselves and to consider the other in a violent

world136. The hybrid Lavinia-tree was indebted to various conceptions

of a dual-sided tree that with its juxtaposed sides of virtue and vice, of

sterility and fecundity, of savagery and healing, re�ected the human con-

dition. Shakespeare and Taymor suggest that hope for humanity lies in

recognizing the other in the self, and perceiving integrity in hybridity.

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Victoria Bladen - Shakespeare on Screen - Titus

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