Titus Andronicus Resources

Check out PBS's cool online game, where you can channel your inner dramatic artist.

MIT's online edition is great if you need access to the text in a pinch, but be warned: there aren't any helpful footnotes.

Director Julie Taymor's Titus is the most provocative and popular film adaptation of the play. Starring Anthony Hopkins as Titus, this modern adaptation blends the genres of revenge tragedy and fantasy. (It also turned literary critic Marjorie Garber into a vegetarian.)

A press release for Christopher Dunne's 1999 adaptation of Titus Andronicus promises "TORTURE, DISMEMBERMENT, MURDER, ODDBALL HUMOR, CONSPIRACY, DEMENTIA, UNGLAMORIZED VIOLENCE, HIGH CAMP, GENERAL WHACKY BEHAVOIR, CANNIBALISM, INFANTICIDE... and more!"

It may not be flashy or gimmicky, but the BBC's made-for-television production of Titus Andronicus is mostly faithful to the text.

Book 6 of Metamorphoses (a major source for Shakespeare's play), tells the story of Philomel's rape by Tereus and Procne's revenge. FYI, Procne serves Tereus his son as a meal.

Seneca is also a major literary influence on Titus Andronicus. Check out Thyestes, where Atreus serves Thyestes his two sons.

Title page for the 1594 edition of Titus Andronicus.

Check out the Reduced Shakespeare Company's hilarious version of Titus Andronicus, where Titus is the host of a popular cooking show.

In this film clip from Julie Taymor's modern adaptation of Titus, actor Anthony Hopkins (a.k.a. "Hannibal the Cannibal" from Silence of the Lambs) serves up Demetrius and Chiron in a delicious meat pie. Bon Appetit!

In this scene from director Julie Taymor's 1999 film, Titus, Demetrius, and Chiron taunt Lavinia after raping and mutilating her. Notice how Lavinia's dismembered hands are replaced by branches in the film, which literalizes Marcus's remarks that her hands have been "lopp'd and hew'd, and made the body bare / Of her two branches" (2.3.1). Warning: this scene is graphic and may disturb some viewers.

Listen to rock band Titus Andronicus's tune "Fear and Loathing in Mahwah, NJ," which concludes with a dramatic reading of Aaron's speech from Shakespeare's play: "Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves and set them upright at their dear friends' door, even when their sorrows almost was forgot, and on their skins, as on the bark of trees, have with my knife carved in Roman letters, 'Let not your sorrow die though I am dead.'"

DVD cover for the 1999 film Titus.

Thomas Kirk's famous 18th century engraving depicts Act 4, Scene 1.

A shot of Lavinia from Julie Taymor's film Titus (1999).