Lavinia is a character in Shakespeare's play Titus Andronicus. The daughter of the title character, Titus, she is raped by the two sons of the Empress Tamora, who are seeking revenge against her father for killing their brother. Her husband is murdered, and her tongue is cut out and her hands cut off in order to keep her from revealing who has violated her. She eventually, however, finds a way to write, by holding a pen in her teeth, and helps Titus kill the two men and cook their meet in a pie to be fed to their mother. In the final scene, Titus kills Lavinia, arguing that she is nothing but a shame and a disgrace to him.
Origins
editRole in the play
editAnalysis
editPerformance
editTitus Andronicus is one of Shakespeare's least-performed plays. An American production by Ira Aldridge in 1852 took Lavinia's rape and dimemberment out of the performance entirely due to it's bloody nature. A 1955 production directed by Peter Brook featured Vivien Leigh as Lavinia, with Laurence Olivier as Titus. Erin Martin played the role in Joseph Papp's 1967 version of the play. This version sought to make the sequential deaths of Lavinia, Saturninus, Tamora, and Titus at the end more serious. Earlier performances of the scene had proved too much for the audience to believe and were seen as humorous. To make the scene more solemn, Lavinia and other performers were covered in black sheets and stood motionless like statues as they died, making it less sensational and unbelievable. Janet Suzman played the role in a 1967 version by the Royal Shakespeare Company which located all violent scenes offstage.[1]
References
edit- ^ Metz, G. Harold. "Stage History of Titus Andronicus". Shakespeare Quarterly. 28.2 (Spring 1977) pp. 154-169