Category: Speaking

How have extremes of emotion expressed in Titus Andronicus and selected WWI poetry been effectively created by the writers’ craft and performance of the drama text on stage, on screen and in the classroom?
Poems and Shakespeare are two sides of the same coin; both crafted to be performed vocally producing high amounts of emotion and conflict, in a multitude of ways. However the main aspect of both texts is that they can be interpreted differently due to that of the language used, as even with a definite ending the morals are relatively elusive. This factor impacts the audience in the way of giving a variety of emotion as every word line and syllable is interpreted differently by each person. This difference of emotional impact may be due to preferred style of thinking and knowledge of the language it is performed in however even to someone who cannot understand the language Shakespeare expresses emotion in the acting; this ultimately is the main difference between Shakespeare and poetry. There is no acting in poetry.
Shakespeare is most well-known for his plays. The supposed literature genius wrote 37 plays; in this essay I am going to talk about his first. In Titus Andronicus the main theme is revenge. Revenge is an act not an emotion however emotions are portrayed inside it such as hate, sadness, grief, sorrow etc. Characters in Titus Andronicus are the embodiment of emotion as various emotions are assigned to each character. However these emotions change due to the occurrence of conflict that resides in the play a great example of this would be the character that experiences the most extreme emotional distress, this would be Titus himself.
Having returned from the war with the Goths and the loss of his 21 sons, Titus returns from the war expressing, grief, sorrow and anger.

– “These are their brethren, whom you Goths beheld
Alive and dead, and for their brethren slain
Religiously they ask a sacrifice:
To this your son is mark’d, and die he must,” – Titus Andronicus Act 1, Scene 1

He expresses these emotions in the act of revenge; killing the eldest prince of the Goths, but announces it in front the population of Rome, more importantly he announces it in the face of the prince’s pleading mother, Queen Tamora. Titus is angry that his sons have been killed so he announces in front of Rome showing he contains a passionate but is sad as the line “Alive and dead, and for their brethren slain” is a depressing line that holds the word brethren which was repeated from the first line signifying that it is the subject of the matter. This repetition builds tension to the climax where Titus announces that the prince is to be killed. “Religiously they ask a sacrifice” is the most interesting metaphor of the verse as it describes family honour to be a religion, meaning that vengeance of death is supposedly justified by the cult of brethren, a brother for a brother. Hence the word sacrifice is used as people who are condemned to die for a religion are called sacrifices. Religion is an excuse for revenge.
Schadenfreude is the most apparent emotion at this instance in the play in the case of the audience. Shakespeare has written this scene to draw the audience’s interest into the world of the play through the death of Tamoras son Alarbus. Furthermore, Shakespeare causes this Schadenfreude to give the audience satisfaction as it is very arguable that everyone likes to take pleasure in others misfortune and if this gives the audience a positive emotion (enjoyment) Shakespeare produces a success in his works as plays were made to be enjoyed by others. Not to mention that whenever death is the subject of Schadenfreude the feeling is amplified as death is possibly one of the most extreme cases possible in life and for changes characters and sometimes the very nature of people.

In the poem “Dulce et decorum est” by Wilfred Owen similar styles of writing to that of Shakespeare are apparent, such as the syllable scheme which is in the form of a sonnet, ten syllables per line. This differs from Shakespeare’s Iambic pentameter in the way that the iambic pentameter has 5 stressed beats which is a stressed beat followed by an unstressed beat. The reason for this scheme of wording is due to the vocal performance of both pieces; helpful to those who perform them as the scheme causes clarity of voice and a quite predictable way of speaking as the wording comes in a predictable pattern.

– “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through
sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.”
– “Dulce Decorum est”- By Wilfred Owen

This sonnet is of “Dulce Decorum est”, which means Sweet is the graceful however the last line elaborates more clearly that the title is only the hindered by an old lie “Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.” which when translated poses It is sweet and glorious to die for the fatherland. The sonnet follows a 10 syllable line scheme in exception of the lines 4, 9, 11 and 14 which all have 11 syllables and more importantly line 5 has 9 syllables. This irregular syllable count evidently flaws the sonnet’s 10 syllable policy but is used to emphasise the occurring events that reside within the poem. An example of this emphasis would line 5 which could be considered as the greater anomaly. This line has 1 less syllable than that of the sonnets requirements, this is due to the emphasis of the line, “Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots”. The lost syllable is referring to the lost boot and possibly the forgetfulness or lack of attention of the sleeping soldier. This poses a somewhat drowsy emotion from the text and when vocally performed a break in the voice almost as if the next line might hold some larger importance to the poem.

The extra syllable occurrence on lines signifies terror especially in the second paragraph where all lines that describe the impact of gas on either himself or the man have an extra syllable; this when performed will stress these lines dramatizing the line. On the other hand in line 4 “And towards our distant rest began to trudge” is emphasising the longevity of their journey this extra syllable is due to this cause.
In the case of Shakespeare, the iambic pentameter is used by important characters, especially those who are of aristocracy at critical points in the play. Similarly to the emphasis of points syllable anomalies from Wilfred Owen’s sonnet, Shakespeare shows the change of character with the degradation of the meter.

If there were reason for these miseries,
Then into limits could I bind my woes:
When heaven doth weep, doth not the earth o’erflow?
If the winds rage, doth not the sea wax mad,
Threatening the welkin with his big-swoln face?
And wilt thou have a reason for this coil?
I am the sea; hark, how her sighs do blow!
She is the weeping welkin, I the earth:
Then must my sea be moved with her sighs;
Then must my earth with her continual tears
Become a deluge, overflow’d and drown’d;
For why my bowels cannot hide her woes,
But like a drunkard must I vomit them.
Then give me leave, for losers will have leave
To ease their stomachs with their bitter tongues.
– Act 3 scene 1 Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare

The first two lines start off following the iambic pentameter however the third does not. At this moment in time Titus has lost everything, his sons have been killed, his daughter, raped and mutilated, everything he fought for in the war brought no significance to his wellbeing; fighting for an empire that doesn’t care about him or his kin. Overwhelmed by grief and anger he speaks his soliloquy and as the words are spoken, the iambic pentameter starts to degrade, representing Titus’ fall in sanity and nobility. For example “Then must my sea be moved with her sighs;” this line has 9 syllables therefore breaking the meter and becoming notable to the audience as a pause. The pause is generated through the actor ending the line with a stressed beat, causing a slight pause due to the actor keeping the rhythm of the performance by substituting the pause into the place of the 10th syllable. Shakespeare has designed this specifically to produce this effect of degradation, a process that grief causes and resides in. This emotion because apparent to the audience particularly this vocal scheme as well as the acting.

tbh
– Caesure
– history

– An Anthem for Doomed Youth
Wilfred Owen

If there were reason for these miseries,
Then into limits could I bind my woes:
When heaven doth weep, doth not the earth o’erflow?
If the winds rage, doth not the sea wax mad,
Threat’ning the welkin with his big-swoll’n face?
And wilt thou have a reason for this coil?
I am the sea; hark how her sighs doth blow!
She is the weeping welkin, I the earth:
Then must my sea be moved with her sighs;
Then must my earth with her continual tears
Become a deluge, overflow’d and drown’d:
For why my bowels cannot hide her woes,
But like a drunkard must I vomit them.
Then give me leave, for losers will have leave
To ease their stomachs with their bitter tongues.

– Act 3 scene 1 Titus Andronicus
Shakespeare

Emotion – Devastation

Assonance, Monosyllabic lines, degradation in word beat/ pattern, elaborate punctuation, Repetition, Seasura, Antithesis and personification.

Monosyllabic line: If the winds rage, doth not the sea wax mad,

This quote is a monosyllabic line that contains 11 syllables which shows that Titus Andronicus is devastated as when spoken the line is a very powerful and angry line. However the root of Titus’s anger is devastation, Shakespeare uses the monosyllabic line to give the actors a clue as to what Titus is feeling.

“Hi my name is Soren
and I am here today to talk to you about reality.
But before I get on to that I’m going to state my goal in this presentation.
My goal is to even at the slightest get you to doubt something, that you knew once to be true.
Your goal in this presentation is to counter my goal, to think of every possible flaw in my theories and not to become lost in thought in the process.
Alright so look at this penny (hold penny)
What would you expect to happen if I let go of it, right this moment? It would fall right???
Your prediction of the fall of the penny is based on experience as every time you throw a ball you expect it to fall. So what if I said that the penny would fall upwards? What if every time you threw a ball, it just kept moving upwards, based on the experience, you would predict that the ball would always move upwards. So when you see the penny drop, it is only in the absence of not seeing the penny drop that you make your assumption.
(Meaning you’ve never seen a penny fly away when you let go of it so therefore it is only pure probability)

Therefore you could say that experience is the key to conciousness thought.
Okay so we are getting somewhere, experience is related to time and time is related to everything else as everything is in constant motion. This concept is from the book Sophie’s world which talks about a range of philosophers teachings such as Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and Socrateeeeessss. <— Pronunciation

This is all relative to my theme study as how do you define reality?
A common way to define reality is to think about what you can see, touch, smell or hear. Your senses are the only things that allow you to perceive your environment. What if they all disappeared?
Would you be able to tell the time? and therefore gain experience. There is nothing to gain experience from. So how do you still define reality.

What if I trapped you in a world exactly like this one without you knowing, how would know that you were ever gone?

Young Lucius flees from his aunt Lavinia, fearing that she is crazed. In fact, she merely wants to get to the book he is carrying, Ovid’s Metamorphoses. She turns through its pages until she reaches the story of Philomela and Tereus (Tereus rapes his sister-in-law Philomela and then cuts off her tongue so that she cannot reveal the crime), which she shows to her father and uncle to indicate what has been done to her. Marcus urges her to carve the name of the culprits in the sand. Holding the staff with her mouth and guiding it with her stumps, she writes, “Stuprum[Latin for rape] — Chiron — Demetrius.” They all kneel and take a vow to not rest until the treacherous Goths have been made to pay with their blood.

On Titus’s orders, Young Lucius delivers weapons from his armory to Chiron and Demetrius, along with a scroll bearing a quotation of Horace, stating, “The man of upright life, and free from crime, has no need of the Moore’s javelins or arrows.” The insult is lost on the young Goths, but Aaron notes it. Then a nurse enters with a blackamoor child, the bastard son of Tamora and Aaron, and asks that Aaron kill it before it brings shame to the empress. Aaron roars to the defense of his son, and claims that black is the best color because it does not deign to take on any other colors. He kills the nurse to keep the secret of the child safe, then decides to return to the Goths so that he may protect his son. – http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/titus/section5.rhtml

Key Quotations

Act 3,Scene 2 – Titus in his house

With folded arms. This poor right hand of mine
Is left to tyrannize upon my breast,
Who, when my heart, all mad with misery,
Beats in this hollow prison of my flesh,
Then thus I thump it down.
To Lavinia.
Thou map of woe, that thus dost talk in signs!
When thy poor heart beats with outrageous beating,
Thou canst not strike it thus to make it still.
Wound it with sighing, girl, kill it with groans;
Or get some little knife between thy teeth,
And just against thy heart make thou a hole,
That all the tears that thy poor eyes let fall
May run into that sink, and soaking in,
Drown the lamenting fool in sea-salt tears.

Language use

Shakespeare use A form of personification in titus’s speech about his heart. The meaning of this is that Titus feels as if his heart is trapped inside his body further meaning that he wishes for his heart to stop and him to die as it would be much better than to die than to live in a hollow life.

Act 3,Scene 2

Marc
Pardon me, sir, it was a black ill-favor’d fly,
Like to the Empress’ Moor, therefore I kill’d him.

TIT.
O, O, O,
Then pardon me for reprehending thee,
For thou hast done a charitable deed.
Give me thy knife, I will insult on him,
Flattering myself as if it were the Moor
Come hither purposely to poison me.—
There’s for thyself, and that’s for Tamora.
Ah, sirrah!
Yet I think we are not brought so low,
But that between us we can kill a fly
That comes in likeness of a coal-black Moor.

Language use

This shows Titus and Marcus’s realisation that Aaron is the cause for all their sorrow, also showing their hatred for him and all his affiliations. Similes are used to describe Aaron and his love Tamora, he is described as ill favoured flies.

Away from the hunting party, Aaron buries a bag of gold under a tree. Tamora finds him and urges him to make love to her. However, Aaron is ruled by vengeance and asks her to deliver a letter to Saturninus. The couple is spotted in their physical intimacy by Bassianus and Lavinia, who proceed to roundly insult Tamora, with Lavinia being surprisingly coarse. Chiron and Demetrius enter and stab Bassianus to death in defense of their mother’s honor. When Tamora wants to stab Lavinia too, her sons stop her, wishing to keep her alive until they have satisfied their lust on her. Tamora assents, ignoring Lavinia’s request that Tamora kill her immediately instead.

Aaron leads Titus’s sons Quintus and Martius to where he claims a panther is asleep. They both fall into the pit where Chiron and Demetrius left Bassianus’s body. Aaron then leads Saturninus to the pit, where Tamora hands him the letter Aaron had previously written, and which incriminates Quintus and Martius as Bassianus’s murderers. The bag of gold that Aaron buried is conveniently uncovered and taken as proof that Titus’s sons were going to pay a huntsman to do the deed. Titus tries to free his sons to no avail; they are taken away by Saturninus to await execution.

http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/titus/section2.rhtml

Aaron speaks his thoughts to the audience in the form of a soliloquy. The soliloquy is about the fact of Tamoras rise to power in Rome. Aaron tells of his secret love relationship with Tamora and how her position in the Roman hierarchy is his rise to power however he also speaks of Tamora as his prisoner of love and how he will use her to gain power to destroy Rome. “Hast prisoner held, fett’red in amorous chains,”.

Aaron stumbles upon Demetrius and Chiron who are having a brawl about the apparent ownership of Lavinia who is with Bassianus. Demetrius argues that he is older and due to this his brother has no chance while Chiron argues that age is not necessary. Aaron Breaks up the fight and calls them both crazy if they are going to fight Lavinia in public as she is bet roved to Bassianus and is not so loose to cheat on him. He furthermore persuades them through that point to share lavinaia and take her into the forest where no one is watching. This therefore is the cause of the rape and mutilation of Lavinia.
Note that Aaron has not explained the motive for his ideal of the destruction of Rome.

What does the figurative language that Aaron uses in his soliloquy at the beginnings of Act 2, Scene 1 suggest to us about his underlying motives in the play?

In order to obtain and hold power, a man must love it.

– LEO TOLSTOY, The Kingdom of God Is Within You

In Act 2, Scene 1 of Titus Andronicus, Aaron is speaking his thoughts about Tamora, the new empress of Rome, who is his apparent lover. Aaron is overall a mysterious character as he has no background information besides his skin colour which means he is shun on by most of Roman society. This makes Aaron become a suspect for spite as he may very well hate society. In his soliloquy he speaks of Tamora, who he holds “fettered in amorous chains.” This furthermore means Tamora is bound to him by chains of love however the fact that he uses the word chains implies that he is holding Tamora prisoner and this further suggests that he is manipulating her through her love hence the word amorous.