Transcreating Shakespeare
Titus Andronicus, Act V, Scene III
William Shakespeare
Unnatural and Unkind
I’m caught, he knows, but it was never my fault. I only did what I had to – to protect myself, to protect my sons, to avenge the death of an innocent boy – but more blood spilled; Lavinia’s wide innocent dead accusing eyes open and gazing, head bent broken-necked across the table, blood rivers across the floor and maggots in her mouth. The meat is carrion in my throat, my own tongue dead weight, locked eyes with the only other woman who ever mattered to Titus.
My husband’s voice, protest: “What hast thou done? Unnatural and unkind!” Unnatural, unnatural, no – fathers kill their young in the wild, packs weed out the weakest; Lavinia was never going to survive, it had to be, she had to be, it wasn’t my fault.
“Now it is done!” Titus thunders, madman, shakes the room. I grip the table, fingernails cutting in the wood, and she won’t stop staring, accusing eyes, forgiving eyes, it wasn’t my fault, my sons were protecting me but it wasn’t my fault, it was never my fault!
“What, was she ravish’d? Tell us who did the deed.” His voice so calm, so far-off, detached, he never had to kill a daughter, he never had to watch a sister die, he never heard a guilty whisper in his ear or felt it crush his stomach like a hand choking the breath out of a bird’s neck when the dogs bring it back and it isn’t quite dead. I may have watched, I may have watched what my sons did, but I suffer, I am in pain, and what knows my husband of that?
Titus’s hand wrist-deep in the meat, pulling up handfuls, nails caked with dry blood; he forces it at Saturninus, at me. “Will it please you eat? Will it please your Highness feed?”
Voice broken hissing and depraved, sick like a rabid dog, foam at his mouth, blood at his mouth. Meat in Lavinia’s hair, meat on my dress, meat on my husband’s face, smeared where Titus presses it, eat eat eat Why Titus, why hast thou slain thine only daughter thus?
“Not I!” Squeezing meat through his fingers, mad blind eyes on me now, his eyes, my husband’s eyes, Lavinia’s eyes, oh why didn’t they gouge out her eyes too so she wouldn’t have to look at me like this like this is what I wanted, “not I! T’was Chiron and Demetrius!”
He knows, he knows, it’s all lost, but he’s a madman; who will they believe? This raving blood- stained child-killing lunatic or I, a queen, if I stand shaken and contrite before the judges, if I beg for my son’s life, but I will always be a Goth and he a Roman and there was no chance for justice, never, never if they never touched Lavinia, never if they bowed their heads like slaves, never if we turned our cheeks and mourned my son their brother unrighteously killed but with no hope of revenge, we never would have seen justice, never.
“Go, fetch them hither.” Saturninus would see them killed, he would see them murdered in the street, example to unrepentant foreigners who try to do as the Romans do in Rome.
No, no, my sons, my two remaining sons, let them live, it was never their fault, it was never my fault, but the words are all stuck in my throat, mired in the meat that Titus’s bloody fingers pushes between my lips, “Why–– there they are!”
Tales from Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus
This book is designed to make the stories of Shakespeare’s plays familiar to the young.
Also available in storytime format!
…Titus and Lavinia and Tamora and Saturninus sat all around the dinner table, and as Titus served pork pies to his guests, he asked them, “Tamora, Saturninus, do you think that it’s better to die, or live with terrible pain and shame for the rest of your days?”
“Well,” Saturninus said thoughtfully, “it is certainly much better to die. Continuing to live will only bring more pain to the people around you.”
Titus nodded, for he had had expected that answer, then drew his sword and stabbed it through Lavinia’s heart, and she fell down dead on the table. “There!” he cried, “my daughter was in horrible pain, and I have cried for her until I turned blind, and now she is dead!”
“Titus!” Saturninus cried, “how could you just kill your daughter like that? You must tell us who hurt her so we can bring them to justice!”
“No, no,” Titus said. “You must eat.”
Terrified that Titus would turn his sword on them next, Tamora and Saturninus ate and ate until all the pie was gone. Only after all the pie had been eaten did Tamora finally ask again, fearfully, “Titus, I don’t understand. Why did you kill your daughter?”
“I did not kill her,” Titus insisted. He turned an accusing finger on Tamora. “It was your sons, Chiron and Demetrius, who hurt her, and I only put her out of her misery.”
“Chiron and Demetrius?” Saturninus asked. “Well, then, bring them here, we will deal with them.”
Titus began to smile, because his horrible secret was finally revealed, and he said, “I’ve already dealt with them.” Then he pointed at the pie plates and began to laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh, and then Tamora realized that the pork pie she had eaten had not been pork at all, and she felt so sick that she fell down and died on the spot. Saturninus, horrified, pulled out his own sword and stabbed Titus, and hearing the commotion, Titus’s good son Lucius ran into the room and killed Saturninus.
Then Lucius surveyed the heap of bodies on the floor, and felt very sad, for all of the people dead were murderers themselves, of one kind or another, and all of the horrible things that had happened to Lavinia and Chiron and Demetrius and Titus and Tamora and Saturninus could have been avoided if they had not all been so blinded by vengeance that all they had been able to think about was how to pay back the people who had hurt them.
The moral of the story is: revenge is a dish best served not at all.