I’m not sure, at all, what to make of this play.

The movie has spectacle down pat, in scenes and costuming to match the gory spectacle of its events. There are a few scenes thrown in purely for art value: for example when Titus begs the passing Tribunes to be pitiful to his two sons, there’s a two-minute … thing, with some kind of angel(s) blowing trumpets and a son’s face superimposed on a sheep lying on a stone altar, with flame effects as a backdrop. I really don’t know what it’s supposed to mean. Sacrifice? Vulnerability? And the introduction is very weird. Young Lucius is playing war with toy soldiers in a modern-looking kitchen, spraying ketchup everywhere for blood. Then there’s an explosion outside the kitchen window, a man (perhaps the Clown) picks him up and carries him downstairs, to … Rome. I guess. The Coliseum. And the soldiers walk like robots, and they’re all encrusted with mud. And some of them are riding motorcycles. I don’t know. It’s all very weird.

Though the movie has very little gore on the horror-movie scale, it ranks with modern plots in random violence, so I can only imagine the reception of its performance in Shakespeare’s day — or is it a modern fallacy to think Shakespeare’s audience was less inured to violence than we are? I’ll check and see if I can find some accounts of the reaction. The SparkNotes summary says the killing and maiming is “the essence of the play. Titus Andronicus is a non-stop potboiler catalog of abominations.” So I’m not far off in thinking that plot is not the play’s selling point.

Anthony Hopkins as Titus is disturbing. I was trying to separate this character from Hannibal Lecter and especially in the last act, that’s almost impossible. I can’t decide if it’s good casting or playing to type, but it definitely draws some comparisons to Silence of the Lambs.

The pacing in this production, however, is dragging. I don’t know if any lines were cut, but I doubt it. I kept thinking it was almost over, only to see I was less than an hour in, then when I checked again, only halfway through. I’m staying up late to get this post done because I could no longer stand the guilt of a long-promised undone task (of which I have more than one), so perhaps I’m watching the time a little closely. But really, at 162 minutes it could stand to be sped up. Young Lucius is just walking, memorably, symbolically, endingly, whatever, for a full three minutes after the last line and before the end credits started.

I’m sure it would all have made better sense if I’d read the play first, but like I said, I had had it and I wanted to get this done and posted, so it was movie first. I’ll still read the play (and look ahead to see what Bloom has to say about it), and as always I’m grateful to have a visual sense of the action, but Titus Andronicus is not quite up there with my favorites.

Shakespeare in Love (1998) is old enough that I won’t belabor the plot. I did enjoy it — apart from the suggestion that Marlowe out-and-out told Shakespeare the plot of Romeo and Juliet; I am, for irrational reasons, not a far of Marlowe’s — but I liked the way it folded in Shakespeare’s (mythical) love life in the playing of Romeo & Juliet, the way Marlowe’s death was folded into the events (and Rupert Everett as Marlowe), and that Viola (who inspires Viola in Twelfth Night) as Thomas Kent was cast as Romeo, not predictably as Juliet. I also liked Judi Dench in general and Ben Affleck as an arrogant “superstar” who is content with the “lower” part of Mercutio because the play is just that powerful. All the players and the audience thought the play was powerful. As I’ve said elsewhere, so do I.

And the costumes — oh, the costumes. All beautiful, all accurate to my limited knowledge. (The Oscar people seemed to think so too.) I mentioned the references to unbraced doublets in Julius Caesar, and thanks to this movie, I know what that looks like. A small thing, but valuable.

I did enjoy the movie, overall. I have historical nitpicks but I don’t have the references to back them up, so I suspended my disbelief on those points for the sake of the rest.

In other news, I am thoroughly procrastinating Titus Andronicus. I can’t decide if I want to read the play first, see Titus first, or do something else entirely for the space of those four hours. I have been choosing the third, but it doesn’t get this play read, watched, or both.

Olivier slaughtered the big line and seriously hammed up Henry’s speech in 3.1. Shatner-quality.

“Once MORE! … unto the BREACH — dear FRIENDS!! once MOOORRRREE!!”

Didn’t cut a word of “Then imitate the action of the tiger…”, either. Is it obvious that Olivier starred, directed and produced?

I’m pleased with the scenery, though. The miniatures are cute, rain in the Globe was a nice touch, and there are excellent dissolves from stage to painted backdrop and back again. Walls and fields match up exactly in style and in line. Really it looks like the actors are walking right into the background, even if it’s a bit surreal. The art reminds me of the Old English Tarot.

And the costumes! I don’t know how period they are, but they look fantastic. There’s a bit of overacting, but it goes with the tone of the piece. I’m filing this one under “delightfully cheesy”.

I watched Romeo + Juliet earlier this week, and I still can’t get over how much it hurts when Romeo and Balthazar go ripping off to Verona while the postman stands there helplessly, letter in hand. It feels like a terrible wrongness is happening. Of course, this is one of the reasons the play is such a tragedy.

Until Act V, Romeo and Juliet could have been a comedy. Even with Mercutio’s and Tybalt’s deaths, had the Friar’s plan worked, had Romeo gotten the letter, had he arrived at the Capulet vault a little later, he would have found Juliet in perfect health and all would have ended in joy and a wedding. Feud over, peace restored, if we shadows have offended blah blah applause.

Read Romeo and Juliet alongside the play-within-a-play of Pyramus and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Had it been played straight and standing alone, the “tedious brief scene” would have been the tragedy. In fact — and this is one of my favorite theories — since A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet were written sequentially or even concurrently, Pyramus and Thisbe might have been the “warmup” to Romeo and Juliet. The lovers thwarted and unable to meet except through a wall (played masterfully by Wall), they plan to meet outside the city, only Thisbe is sleeping and Pyramus takes her for dead; he commits suicide, then Thisbe wakes and kills herself out of grief. Naturally, the way the mechanicals play it, the whole thing is hilarious for their flubbed lines and hamming up the scene.

In Romeo and Juliet, until Mercutio dies, we expect a comedy. Yes, feud, but they’ll make it up in the end, right? (This may be the reason Shakespeare himself titles the play The most excellent Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet: Expect it right now, folks, it’s not going to have a happy ending.) Mercutio’s death in Act III is a double shock. Not only is Mercutio the plucky comic relief and one of the most likable characters, his is the first death in the play. After this, it’s difficult to see how a comedic ending could follow. And despite Lady Capulet’s gut-wrenching “Romeo slew Tybalt, Romeo must not live”, might Tybalt’s death end the feud or add fire to it? Might the play end well after all?

It might, until the exquisitely painful undelivered letter in V.2. From there, a happy ending is impossible; we, the audience, can only sit and watch V.3, the last scene. It’s the slim chance that Romeo will see that Juliet is alive (”Death … hath no power yet upon thy beauty. Thou art not conquered; … Why art thou yet so fair?”), but he doesn’t — that Juliet might wake in time, but she doesn’t — that makes the tragedy so perfect, so enduring. It could narrowly have been a comedy, but it isn’t. It’s just … tragic.