I have been musing on Titus Andronicus for a few days now. Every time I read a new play by Shakespeare I am reminded how much I truly enjoy him, but every time I read a tragedy I am reminded why I rarely do so. Titus Andronicus is, I think, one of his best and, therefore, most painful.

I watched the movie Titus starring Anthony Hopkins before reading the play and it was really very good. It also helped me to "see" the play in my head as I read it. But there's no escaping the pain of this story now--the movie pulls no punches, spares no blood or gore, and I was so bereft after finishing it that it has taken me two days to come to a place where I can even begin to talk about it in some sort of public way. Shakespeare seems to have a knack for depicting the "human condition." Somehow, even at his most misogynistic, most cynical, or most whiny, he still has some of the best written lines. And it is more astounding for the time in which it was written.

I almost cried the first time I saw The Merchant of Venice and I was left with heartburn after completing my thesis on Macbeth. Now, having finally read Titus Andronicus I find that the reason I hate Romeo and Juliet so very, very much, is because it seems pointless. Titus doesn't suffer because he couldn't wait five minutes, or killed his king when he knew better (though I argue that about Macbeth) or couldn't make up his mind whether or not to revenge his father's murderer. Titus suffers because he made the wrong choice in emperor. And more than that, everyone around suffers because they are related to him. Lavinia's rape, the death of his sons--all of these things are done with glee by the Goths because it hurts Titus. There is, at least to me, few ways to make a rape scene more horrific then to give it the most realistic, and flimsy, of motives. Tamera's sons "love" Lavinia. And Tamera, a woman, bids them rape and torture her if only because Tamera hates Titus so much. Like the unnaturalness of patricide, Shakespeare's placement of a woman ordering the rape of another woman deepens the monstrous aspect of the scene. He manages to capture how wrong such an act is with less of his usual "this is how a woman ought to be" rhetoric. Instead he just looks at how a woman is, and how that doesn't always matter.

All of this is my way of getting to the point that I don't think people like to consider real life. We gravitate towards the tragedy's that have "obvious" reasons for their tragic actions and scoff at the comedies as less poignant. Scholars focus on the use of the mask, or the role of theatre in Shakespeare and shy away from looking at why he would comment on human behaviors the way he does. What is he trying to say? What do we do to each other that is so wrong? Some people do take this topic on, but mostly it is considered unscholarly. Or the topic is addressed purely from the viewpoint of society--never from the margins.

And this is wrong, I believe, because the more Shakespeare I read the more I see him speaking directly to society about the margins. So many of his characters with eloquent speech and moving stories are marginalized by society; so many situations heroes and heroines find themselves in occur because they are misunderstood or cast off by those in power. So many villains hate because they have been ignored and mistreated. Do we not think about this because we know better now? Do we not discuss this because it isn't academic? What knowledge can be gained by examining Shakespeare's depiction of marginalized society? Have our civil rights battles been won so completely that we no longer need to think about injustice of the past or look to where it still exists?

I feel as if, to some degree, Shakespeare is too good. He makes people feel too much, react to strongly. In a world based on the suppression of emotion that is unacceptable. People can't talk about what they experienced while watching or reading the play because that very discussion will invalidate it and them. And I should say that some scholars, specifically Feminists, Marxists, and others who look at the margins, have been taking some of these issues on. But it isn't nearly as widespread as I would like to see it.

And so we come to my point: there is much great art in our world, but instead of talking about it we observe it. We look at its themes and lines and shading and allegory. We talk about plot and development. But heaven forbid we ever discuss really, what it's saying about society or people. This isn't a "we all need to be better people" diatribe (though, of course, I think we do) but a vocalization of how tired I am with the futility of our news, our reviews, and our media. We have reality shows and political roundtables, both designed to show the worst in human nature. We have movies and books and art that are ignored or undervalued because popular culture isn't worth discussing at any great length. We have scholars, those who seek knowledge, who are so separated from society, so cut off from the populous and its popular culture that their knowledge no longer carries any currency. The message isn't being shared. Nobody cares. And it is this last one that bothers me the most. What good is an education when you attain it to willingly marginalize yourself? Why seek knowledge if you don't want to use it for anything?