Shakespeare in the tube: theatricalizing violence in BBC's Titus Andronicus

Abstract

Abstract : The problem addressed in the present study concerns William Shakespeare's plays in performance on television, most specifically the presence of violence in BBC's production of Titus Andronicus, directed by Jane Howell. I have come up with two sets of hypotheses. The first is that the violence identifiable in the playtext seems to have been recreated by Howell through the specificities of the medium, making such violence neither excessively gory nor comic. The second is that Jane Howell's utilization of alienating devices in Shakespeare's first tetralogy, as pointed out by Graham Holderness, can also be verified in Titus Andronicus. Such elements may be related to the aforementioned treatment of violence in the play and may serve as a way of making political or aesthetic commentaries on the play itself. Thus, in order to approach my corpus I relied on television and performance studies and Bertolt Brecht?s and some of his commentators' writings on epic theater. I have also brought to my work the voices of critics about the violence in the play itself, most importantly Francis Barker's notions on the "occlusion of violence" in Titus Andronicus. The present thesis concludes that Brechtian elements are indeed present in Howell's production and that, to a certain extent, they are related to the violence in Titus Andronicus. However, this relationship is complex. At the same time that the extravagant violence is hidden from the spectator and alienation devices every now and then distance the audience from the characters and the action, Young Lucius' reaction to this same, often-unseen violence is highlighted.<br>