Good Lord, my first diary in six months...
Titus Andronicus is not one of Shakespeare's more popular plays, mostly because it's relatively shallow and unashamedly lurid. But I recently watched Julie Taymor's outstanding adaptation, which had me scurrying back to the original text, which had me drawing parallels to the predicament we're in...
Harry Truman used to love saying "The only really new thing in the world is the history you don't know." I'd add literature to that...
Much, much more on the flip.
Titus Andronicus is a Roman general, highly successful, highly esteemed. At the play's opening he returns to Rome triumphant, having recently defeated a tribe of Goths and their queen, Tamora. As a matter of form (Andronicus is in love with form), he sacrifices Tamora's oldest son, and she vows revenge.
The Emperor has died shortly before Andronicus' return; there's a succession struggle between the Emperor's two sons (the older, batshit crazy one and the younger, capable one), and as a smart compromise he's offered the throne himself. Once again, though, in love with form, he turns down the throne in favor of the legal heir - the elder, batshit crazy son.
Andronicus' only daughter, Lavinia, is betrothed to Bassianus, the younger, capable son. However, the new Emperor, Saturninus, decides to claim her as his own. Andronicus, believing that the Emperor has a right to do this, agrees. His sons are horrified, and try to smuggle their sister out of Rome. Titus, in a rage over this disobedience and dishonor before the Emperor, kills one of his own sons. Things go rapidly downhill for Andronicus from there: Bassianus is murdered, Lavinia is raped and mutilated, his eldest son Lucius is banished, Saturninus takes Tamora for his Empress...
Finally, Andronicus' two remaining sons are framed for the murder of Bassianus and taken prisoner. Andronicus is told that they will be set free if he chops off his own hand and sends it as an offering to the Emperor. He does, without hesitation, believing that a bargain is still a bargain. In return, he receives only the severed heads of his two sons.
Now, finally, Andronicus gets it. He understands that there is no bargaining, no reasoning with these people. All they want is to destroy him, and nothing else will satisfy them. He realizes that, in order to prevail in a struggle against crazy people, the only thing to do is out-crazy them.
He does a good job of it, to put it mildly. I'll spare you the details, but let's just say Julie Taymor made a deliberate and quite appropriate choice when she picked Anthony Hopkins to play Andronicus.
The tragedy of Andronicus, his fatal flaw, is that he believes in a code of behavior long after the actions of his "superiors" have made that code obsolete. He still believes in honor and form and propriety after they've been thrown out the window. He still believes that those in power see the world the way he does...
Are the parallels clear yet?
Rereading this play made me think of a couple of current dynamics, and lead me to ask a couple of rhetorical questions:
Has the recent, unprecedented "Rebellion of the Retired Generals" been precipitated by the fact that they realize their "superiors" have a vastly different worldview, don't subscribe to the same code of conduct, and are essentially batshit insane? Has having the heads of over 2400 of their sons and daughters delivered to them led them to the conclusion that all bets are off?
Do Democrats as a whole realize that for decades now Republicans have had as their primary goal the marginalization and/or destruction of the Democratic Party and they really, really mean it? And are we really prepared to fully counter that?
For my own part, I used to be a big fan of "bipartisanship". I used to think it was how things got done. And it did, indeed, used to be how things got done. But lately, whenever I hear that word, all I can think of is Titus Andronicus chopping off his own hand, and being mocked for the effort...
I want to be bipartisan again. I want to be a moderate again. I really do. But I can't, so long as we're dealing with people who so clearly have no respect for the governmental codes we've followed for centuries, and so long as we're dealing with people whose stated goal is the silencing of our voices.