The Purpose of Violence in Titus Andronicus Anonymous College

T.S. Eliot once said that Titus Andronicus "is one of the stupidest and most uninspired plays ever written, a play in which it is incredible that Shakespeare had any hand at all." This was an amusing choice of words on Eliot’s part, as one of the most disturbing scenes in the play is when Lavinia’s hands are cut off, and in fact, it is this very scene that had audience members unable to continue watching the performance when the play ran in 2014 at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London (Clark). After Tamora’s sons, Chiron and Demetrius, finish killing Lavinia’s husband, Bassianus, and raping her in the forest, they cut her tongue out and her hands off, rendering her unable to identify them as her or her husband’s attackers. They leave her helpless and covered in blood. Marcus, her uncle, happens upon her in the forest, and he picks her up and takes her to Titus, who, upon seeing his daughter, is devastated. He says: But that which gives my soul the greatest spurn Is dear Lavinia, dearer than my soul. Had I but seen thy picture in this plight, It would have madded me; what shall I do Now I behold thy lively body so? Thou hast no hands to wipe away thy tears, Nor tongue to tell me who hath martyred thee. (3.1.101-107) Despite the...