Seven Ages

Tragedy · c. 1594

Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus

Shakespeare’s first tragedy and his bloodiest by a distance: a Roman revenge play of atrocity answered with atrocity, escalating to a banquet that has to be seen (or read) to be believed.

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By the Seven Ages editors2 min read

For centuries critics wished it out of the canon; the modern stage has reclaimed it as genuinely disturbing rather than merely lurid.

Read it for Aaron the Moor — a villain of such exuberant nihilism he nearly walks off with the play — and for the early sketch of ideas about violence, grief, and language that Lear and Hamlet later inherit. Not one to start with, but not one to skip forever.

Titus Andronicus on screen

1Titus (1999)

Film · dir. Julie Taymor

Reading Titus Andronicus this year?

Mark it in your record when you finish — one seat, kept for decades.

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