“Coal-black is better than another hue,”

August 22, 2015 8:41 AM

Vengeance, Death, Blood, and Revenge by Dan Piepenbring [The Paris Review] Leonard Baskin’s grotesque etchings of William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. Below are some of the highlights to his Andronicus etchings—he made twenty-four in all. You can see more at the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, which has a number of Baskin’s works in their collection.

Titus Andronicus is a hideous play. Harold Bloom called it “a poetic atrocity”; Samuel Johnson refused to believe that Shakespeare was its author, writing that “the barbarity of the spectacles, and the general massacre, which are here exhibited, can scarcely be conceived tolerable to any audience … That Shakespeare wrote any part, though Theobald declares it incontestable, I see no reason for believing.” In its five grisly acts, fourteen people die; at least one is raped; throats are cut; hands, tongues, and heads are cut off; blood spurts “as from a conduit with three issuing spouts”; bodies are thrown to beasts and into pits, dragged into forests, buried alive chest-deep and left to starve; the bones of two men are ground “to powder small” and baked, with heads, into pies, which are then fed to their mother. In other words, it’s one of those tragedies that was just crying out for an illustrated edition.

- Act I, scene i
- Aaron, in Act IV, scene ii
- Act II, scene i
- Act II, scene iii
- Act II, scene iii
- Act III, scene i
- Act IV, scene ii
- Act IV, scene ii
- Act V, scene ii
- Act V, scene iii
- Act V, scene iii
- Caesar, Act I, scene i
- From the colophon
- Lavinia, act II, scene iii
- Roman Caesar, Act IV, scene i
- Titus, act II, scene ii

You can view more of Leonard Baskin's work at the R. Michelson Galleries website here.

posted by Fizz (9 comments total)

Also, from the Paris Review article: “His line mocks and defeats death while outlining its image,” the artist Rico Lebrun wrote in Leonard Baskin, a monograph [Digitized Artbook].
posted by Fizz at 8:46 AM on August 22, 2015

Ha, this is timely—I just got through copyediting a new edition of the play. I laughed out loud when I got to the line "Lend me thy hand, and I will give thee mine." This is probably the first period since Jacobean times when such a gorefest could be appreciated. The hand-wringing of genteel critics through the ages is pure hilarity.
posted by languagehat at 10:09 AM on August 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

Oh, and the illustrations are great, but maybe (and I feel odd saying this) a little too tasteful?
posted by languagehat at 10:11 AM on August 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure if they're tasteful or just less detailed specific - they often suggest rather than show the harshest gruesome details.

might have to make a point to watch Taymor's film version again some time
posted by rmd1023 at 11:40 AM on August 22, 2015

This is all reminding me that I got really bored on a long bus ride one afternoon and decided to itemize all the deaths and other 'orrible deeds in Titus. So, SPOILERS for those of you who haven't read or seen it yet, I guess:


Human sacrifice (Alarbus)
Two filicides (Mutius and Lavinia)
One threatened infanticide (Aaron's son)
Seven murders (Bassianus, nurse, Chiron, Demetrius, Tamora, Titus, Saturninus)
One rape (Lavinia)
Two dismemberments, one offstage, one on (Lavinia and Titus)
Two executions, offstage (Martius and Quintus)--three if you leave in the godforsaken anachronistic Elizabethan horribly misplaced Clown
Cannibalism (Tamora and as many of the rest of the dinner party the director wants)
One insecticide, depending on the version of the text (a fly)
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 12:17 PM on August 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

Fun fact: I went to college with Dan and we were in a student theatre group together called Shakespeare in the Dark (hey - we didn't name it). Dan is one of those rare, genius comic talents you only stumble upon once or twice in your life. I recall him being particularly hilarious in a production of The Complete Works. My senior year, I directed our company's production of - you guessed it - Titus Andronicus.
posted by pecanpies at 3:46 PM on August 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Titus Andronicus is by far my favorite Shakespeare play, in large part because of the gore and the truly magnificent hand puns (and also for Lavinia, and everything that happens to her/she does). Definitely looking forward to reading this properly. The images are lush and grotesque although, yes, a bit more innocent than I expected. Like if Ralph Steadman and Francis Bacon had a child; that kind of disorienting and quietly awful.
posted by kalimac at 4:15 PM on August 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

pecanpies: My senior year, I directed our company's production of - you guessed it - Titus Andronicus.

Were you around for the musical comedy rendition of Titus Andronicus?
posted by schmod at 6:05 PM on August 23, 2015

@Schmod - Sadly, I wasn't, but it sounds delightful!
posted by pecanpies at 8:33 AM on August 25, 2015