title: Titus Andronicus

text: One of the most basic such motifs is repetition. Several words and topics occur time and again, serving to connect and contrast characters and scenes, and to foreground certain themes. Perhaps the most obvious recurring motifs are those of honour, virtue and nobility, all of which are mentioned multiple times throughout the play, especially during the first act; the play's opening line is Saturninus' address to "Noble patricians, patrons of my right" (l.1). In the second speech of the play, Bassianus states "And suffer not dishonour to approach/The imperial seat, to virtue consecrate,/To justice, continence and nobility;/But let desert in pure election shine" (ll.13–16). From this point onwards, the concept of nobility is at the heart of everything that happens. H.B. Charlton argues of this opening Act that "the standard of moral currency most in use is honour."


title: Titus Andronicus

text: When Marcus announces Titus' imminent arrival, he emphasises Titus' renowned honour and integrity; "And now at last, laden with honour's spoils,/Returns the good Andronicus to Rome,/Renowned Titus, flourishing in arms./Let us entreat by honour of his name/Whom worthily you would have now succeed" (ll.36–40). Marcus' reference to Titus' name is even itself an allusion to his nobility insofar as Titus' full title (Titus Pius) is an honorary epitaph which "refers to his devotion to patriotic duty."


title: Titus Andronicus

text: Bassianus then cites his own admiration for all of the Andronici; "Marcus Andronicus, so I do affy/In thy uprightness and integrity,/And so I love and honour thee and thine,/Thy noble brother Titus, and his sons" (ll.47–50). Upon Titus' arrival, an announcement is made; "Patron of virtue, Rome's best champion,/Successful in the battles that he fights,/With honour and with fortune is returned" (ll.65–68). Once Titus has arrived on-stage, it is not long before he too is speaking of honour, virtue and integrity, referring to the family tomb as a "sweet cell of virtue and nobility" (l.93). After Titus chooses Saturninus as Emperor, they praise one another's honour, with Saturninus referring to Titus' "honourable family" (ll.239) and Titus claiming "I hold me highly honoured of your grace" (ll.245). Titus then says to Tamora, "Now, madam, are you prisoner to an Emperor –/To him that for your honour and your state/Will use you nobly and your followers" (ll.258–260).


title: Titus Andronicus

text: Even when things begin to go awry for the Andronici, each one maintains a firm grasp of his own interpretation of honour. The death of Mutius comes about because Titus and his sons have different concepts of honour; Titus feels the Emperor's desires should have precedence, his sons that Roman law should govern all, including the Emperor. As such, when Lucius reprimands Titus for slaying one of his own sons, Titus responds "Nor thou, nor he, are any sons of mine;/My sons would never so dishonour me" (l.296). Moments later, Saturninus declares to Titus "I'll trust by leisure him that mocks me once,/Thee never, nor thy traitorous haughty sons,/Confederates all to dishonour me" (ll.301–303). Subsequently, Titus cannot quite believe that Saturninus has chosen Tamora as his empress and again sees himself dishonoured; "Titus, when wert thou wont to walk alone,/Dishonoured thus and challeng'd of wrongs" (ll.340–341). When Marcus is pleading with Titus that Mutius should be allowed to be buried in the family tomb, he implores, "Suffer thy brother Marcus to inter/His noble nephew here in virtue's nest,/That died in honour and Lavinia's cause." (ll.375–377). Having reluctantly agreed to allow Mutius a royal burial, Titus then returns to the issue of how he feels his sons have turned on him and dishonoured him; "The dismall'st day is this that e'er I saw,/To be dishonoured by my sons in Rome" (ll.384–385). At this point, Marcus, Martius, Quintus and Lucius declare of the slain Mutius, "He lives in fame, that died in virtue's cause" (ll.390).


title: Titus Andronicus

text: Other characters also become involved in the affray resulting from the disagreement among the Andronici, and they too are equally concerned with honour. After Saturninus has condemned Titus, Bassianus appeals to him, "This noble gentleman, Lord Titus here,/Is in opinion and in honour wronged" (ll.415–416). Then, in a surprising move, Tamora suggests to Saturninus that he should forgive Titus and his family. Saturninus is at first aghast, believing that Tamora is now dishonouring him as well; "What madam, be dishonoured openly,/And basely put it up without revenge?" (ll.442–443), to which Tamora replies,


title: Titus Andronicus

text: The irony here, of course, is that her false appeal to honour is what begins the bloody cycle of revenge which dominates the rest of the play.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: Although not all subsequent scenes are as heavily saturated with references to honour, nobility and virtue as is the opening, they are continually alluded to throughout the play. Other notable examples include Aaron's description of Tamora; "Upon her wit doth earthly honour wait,/And virtue stoops and trembles at her frown" (2.1.10–11). An ironic and sarcastic reference to honour occurs when Bassianus and Lavinia encounter Aaron and Tamora in the forest and Bassianus tells Tamora "your swarthy Cimmerian/Doth make your honour of his body's hue,/Spotted, detested, and abominable" (2.3.72–74). Later, after the Clown has delivered Titus' letter to Saturninus, Saturninus declares "Go, drag the villain hither by the hair./Nor age nor honour shall shape privilege" (4.4.55–56). Another example is seen outside Rome, when a Goth refers to Lucius "Whose high exploits and honourable deeds/Ingrateful Rome requites with foul contempt" (5.1.11–12).


title: Titus Andronicus

text: A further significant motif is metaphor related to violence; "the world of "Titus" is not simply one of meaningless acts of random violence but rather one in which language engenders violence and violence is done to language through the distance between word and thing, between metaphor and what it represents." For example, in 3.1 when Titus asks Aaron to cut off his hand because he believes it will save his sons' lives he says, "Lend me thy hand, and I will give thee mine." Therefore, in the language of "Titus", "to lend one's hand is to risk dismemberment."


title: Titus Andronicus

text: No discussion of the language of "Titus" is complete without reference to Marcus's speech upon finding Lavinia after her rape:


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In this much discussed speech, the discrepancy between the beautiful imagery and the horrific sight before us has been noted by many critics as jarring, and the speech is often severely edited or completely removed for performance; in the 1955 RSC production, for example, director Peter Brook cut the speech entirely. There is also a great deal of disagreement amongst critics as to the essential meaning of the speech. John Dover Wilson, for example, sees it as nothing more than a parody, Shakespeare mocking the work of his contemporaries by writing something so bad. He finds no other tonally analogous speech in all of Shakespeare, concluding it is "a bundle of ill-matched conceits held together by sticky sentimentalism." Similarly, Eugene M. Waith determines that the speech is an aesthetic failure that may have looked good on the page but which is incongruous in performance.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: However, defenders of the play have posited several theories which seek to illustrate the thematic relevance of the speech. For example, Nicholas Brooke argues that it "stands in the place of a choric commentary on the crime, establishing its significance to the play by making an emblem of the mutilated woman." Actress Eve Myles, who played Lavinia in the 2003 RSC production, suggests that Marcus "tries to bandage her wounds with language," thus the speech has a calming effect and is Marcus's attempt to soothe Lavinia.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: Another theory is suggested by Anthony Brian Taylor, who argues simply that Marcus is babbling; "beginning with references to "dream" and "slumber" and ending with one to sleep, the speech is an old man's reverie; shaken by the horrible and totally unexpected spectacle before him, he has succumbed to the senile tendency to drift away and become absorbed in his own thoughts rather than confront the harshness of reality." Jonathan Bate however, sees the speech as more complex, arguing that it attempts to give voice to the indescribable. Bate thus sees it as an illustration of language's ability to "bring back that which has been lost," i.e. Lavinia's beauty and innocence is figuratively returned in the beauty of the language. Similarly, for Brian Vickers, "these sensual pictorial images are appropriate to Lavinia's beauty now forever destroyed. That is, they serve one of the constant functions of tragedy, to document the "metabolé", that tragic contrast between what people once were and what they have become." Jacques Berthoud provides another theory, arguing that the speech "exhibits two qualities seldom found together: an unevasive emotional recognition of the horrors of her injuries, and the knowledge that, despite her transformation into a living grave of herself, she remains the person he knows and loves." Thus, the speech evokes Marcus's "protective identification" with her. D.J. Palmer feels that the speech is an attempt to rationalise in Marcus's own mind the sheer horror of what he is seeing;


title: Titus Andronicus

text: Marcus' lament is an effort to realise a sight that taxes to the utmost the powers of understanding and utterance. The vivid conceits in which he pictures his hapless niece do not transform or depersonalise her: she is already transformed and depersonalised ... Far from being a retreat from the awful reality into some aesthetic distance, then, Marcus' conceits dwell upon this figure that is to him both familiar and strange, fair and hideous, living body and object: this is, and is not, Lavinia. Lavinia's plight is literally unutterable ... Marcus' formal lament articulates unspeakable woes. Here and throughout the play the response to the intolerable is ritualised, in language and action, because ritual is the ultimate means by which man seeks to order and control his precarious and unstable world.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In contradistinction to Dover Wilson and Waith, several scholars have argued that while the speech may not work on the page, it can work in performance. Discussing the Deborah Warner RSC production at The Swan in 1987, which used an unedited text, Stanley Wells argues that Donald Sumpter's delivery of the speech "became a deeply moving attempt to master the facts and thus to overcome the emotional shock of a previously unimagined horror. We had the sense of a suspension of time, as if the speech represented an articulation, necessarily extended in expression, of a sequence of thoughts and emotions, that might have taken no more than a second or two to flash through the character's mind, like a bad dream." Also speaking of the Warner production and Sumpter's performance, Alan C. Dessen writes "we observe Marcus, step-by-step, use his logic and Lavinia's reactions to work out what has happened, so that the spectators both see Lavinia directly "and" see through his eyes and images. In the process the horror of the situation is filtered through a human consciousness in a way difficult to describe but powerful to experience."


title: Titus Andronicus

text: Looking at the language of the play in a more general sense has also produced a range of critical theories. For example, Jacques Berthoud argues that the rhetoric of the play is explicitly bound up with its theme; "the entire dramatic script, soliloquies included, functions as a network of responses and reactions. [The language's] primary and consistent function is interlocutory." An entirely different interpretation is that of Jack Reese, who argues that Shakespeare's use of language functions to remove the audience from the effects and implications of violence; it has an almost Brechtian "verfremdungseffekt". Using the example of Marcus' speech, Reese argues that the audience is disconnected from the violence through the seemingly incongruent descriptions of that violence. Such language serves to "further emphasise the artificiality of the play; in a sense, they suggest to the audience that it is hearing a poem read rather than seeing the events of that poem put into dramatic form." Gillian Kendall, however, reaches the opposite conclusion, arguing that rhetorical devices such as metaphor augment the violent imagery, not diminish it, because the figurative use of certain words complements their literal counterparts. This, however, "disrupts the way the audience perceives imagery." An example of this is seen in the body politic/dead body imagery early in the play, as the two images soon become interchangeable. Another theory is provided by Peter M. Sacks, who argues that the language of the play is marked by "an artificial and heavily emblematic style, and above all a revoltingly grotesque series of horrors which seem to have little function but to ironise man's inadequate expressions of pain and loss".


title: Titus Andronicus

text: The earliest definite recorded performance of "Titus" was on 24 January 1594, when Philip Henslowe noted a performance by Sussex's Men of "Titus & ondronicus". Although Henslowe does not specify a theatre, it was most likely The Rose. Repeated performances were staged on 28 January and 6 February. On 5 and 12 June, Henslowe recorded two further performances of the play, at the Newington Butts Theatre by the combined Admiral's Men and Lord Chamberlain's Men. The 24 January show earned three pounds eight shillings, and the performances on 29 January and 6 February earned two pounds each, making it the most profitable play of the season. The next recorded performance was on 1 January 1596, when a troupe of London actors, possibly Chamberlain's Men, performed the play during the Christmas festivities at Burley-on-the-Hill in the manor of Sir John Harington, Baron of Exton.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: Some scholars, however, have suggested that the January 1594 performance may not be the first recorded performance of the play. On 11 April 1592, Henslowe recorded ten performances by Derby's Men of a play called "Titus and Vespasian", which some, such as E.K. Chambers, have identified with Shakespeare's play. Most scholars, however, believe that "Titus and Vespasian" is more likely a different play about the two real life Roman Emperors, Vespasian, who ruled from 69 to 79, and his son Titus, who ruled from 79 to 81. The two were subjects of many narratives at the time, and a play about them would not have been unusual. Dover Wilson further argues that the theory that "Titus and Vespasian" is "Titus Andronicus" probably originated in an 1865 English translation of a 1620 German translation of "Titus", in which Lucius had been renamed Vespasian.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: Although it is known that the play was definitely popular in its day, there is no other recorded performance for many years. In January 1668, it was listed by the Lord Chamberlain as one of twenty-one plays owned by the King's Company which had, at some stage previously, been acted at Blackfriars Theatre; "A Catalogue of part of his Ma Servants Playes as they were formally acted at the Blackfryers & now allowed of to his Ma Servants at y New Theatre." However, no other information is provided. During the late seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, adaptations of the play came to dominate the stage, and after the Burley performance in 1596 and the possible Blackfriars performance some time prior to 1667, there is no definite recorded performance of the Shakespearean text in England until the early twentieth century.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: After over 300 years absent from the English stage, the play returned on 8 October 1923, in a production directed by Robert Atkins at The Old Vic, as part of the Vic's presentation of the complete dramatic works over a seven-year period. The production featured Wilfred Walter as Titus, Florence Saunders as Tamora, George Hayes as Aaron and Jane Bacon as Lavinia. Reviews at the time praised Hayes' performance but criticised Walter's as monotonous. Atkins staged the play with a strong sense of Elizabethan theatrical authenticity, with a plain black backdrop, and a minimum of props. Critically, the production met with mixed reviews, some welcoming the return of the original play to the stage, some questioning why Atkins had bothered when various adaptations were much better and still extant. Nevertheless, the play was a huge box office success, one of the most successful in the Complete Works presentation.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: The earliest known performance of the Shakespearean text in the United States was in April 1924 when the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity of Yale University staged the play under the direction of John M. Berdan and E.M. Woolley as part of a double bill with Robert Greene's "Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay". While some material was removed from 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4, the rest of the play was left intact, with much attention devoted to the violence and gore. The cast list for this production has been lost.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: The best known and most successful production of the play in England was directed by Peter Brook for the RSC at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in 1955, starring Laurence Olivier as Titus, Maxine Audley as Tamora, Anthony Quayle as Aaron and Vivien Leigh as Lavinia. Brook had been offered the chance to direct "Macbeth" but had controversially turned it down, and instead decided to stage "Titus". The media predicted that the production would be a massive failure, and possibly spell the end of Brook's career, but on the contrary, it was a huge commercial and critical success, with many of the reviews arguing that Brook's alterations improved Shakespeare's script (Marcus' lengthy speech upon discovering Lavinia was removed and some of the scenes in Act 4 were reorganised). Olivier in particular was singled out for his performance and for making Titus a truly sympathetic character. J.C. Trewin for example, wrote "the actor had thought himself into the hell of Titus; we forgot the inadequacy of the words in the spell of the projection." The production is also noted for muting the violence; Chiron and Demetrius were killed off stage; the heads of Quintus and Martius were never seen; the nurse is strangled, not stabbed; Titus' hand was never seen; blood and wounds were symbolised by red ribbons. Edward Trostle Jones summed up the style of the production as employing "stylised distancing effects." The scene where Lavinia first appears after the rape was singled out by critics as being especially horrific, with her wounds portrayed by red streamers hanging from her wrists and mouth. Some reviewers however, found the production too beautified, making it unrealistic, with several commenting on the cleanness of Lavinia's face after her tongue has supposedly been cut out. After its hugely successful Royal Shakespeare Theatre run, the play went on tour around Europe in 1957. No video recordings of the production are known, although there are many photographs available.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: The success of the Brook production seems to have provided an impetus for directors to tackle the play, and ever since 1955, there has been a steady stream of performances on the English and American stages. After Brook, the next major production came in 1967, when Douglas Seale directed an extremely graphic and realistic presentation at the Centre Stage in Baltimore with costumes that recalled the various combatants in World War II. Seale's production employed a strong sense of theatrical realism to make parallels between the contemporary period and that of "Titus", and thus comment on the universality of violence and revenge. Seale set the play in the 1940s and made pointed parallels with concentration camps, the massacre at Katyn, the Nuremberg Rallies and the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Saturninus was based on Benito Mussolini and all his followers dressed entirely in black; Titus was modelled after a Prussian Army officer; the Andronici wore Nazi insignia and the Goths at the end of the play were dressed in Allied Forces uniforms; the murders in the last scene are all carried out by gunfire, and at the end of the play swastikas rained down onto the stage. The play received mixed reviews with many critics wondering why Seale had chosen to associate the Andronici with Nazism, arguing that it created a mixed metaphor.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: Later in 1967, as a direct reaction to Seale's realistic production, Gerald Freedman directed a performance for Joseph Papp's Shakespeare Festival at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, Manhattan, starring Jack Hollander as Titus, Olympia Dukakis as Tamora, Moses Gunn as Aaron and Erin Martin as Lavinia. Freedman had seen Seale's production and felt it failed because it worked by "bringing into play our sense of reality in terms of detail and literal time structure." He argued that when presented realistically, the play simply doesn't work, as it raises too many practical question, such as why does Lavinia not bleed to death, why does Marcus not take her to the hospital immediately, why does Tamora not notice that the pie tastes unusual, exactly how do both Martius and Quintus manage to fall into a hole? Freedman argued that "if one wants to create a fresh emotional response to the violence, blood and multiple mutilations of "Titus Andronicus", one must shock the imagination and subconscious with visual images that recall the richness and depth of primitive rituals." As such, the costumes were purposely designed to represent no particular time or place but were instead based on those of the Byzantine Empire and Feudal Japan. Additionally, the violence was stylised; instead of swords and daggers, wands were used and no contact was ever made. The colour scheme was hallucinatory, changing mid-scene. Characters wore classic masks of comedy and tragedy. The slaughter in the final scene was accomplished symbolically by having each character wrapped in a red robe as they died. A narrator was also used (played by Charles Dance), who, prior to each act, would announce what was going to happen in the upcoming act, thus undercutting any sense of realism. The production received generally positive reviews, with Mildred Kuner arguing "Symbolism rather than gory realism was what made this production so stunning."


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In 1972, Trevor Nunn directed an RSC production at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, as part of a presentation of the four Roman plays, starring Colin Blakely as Titus, Margaret Tyzack as Tamora, Calvin Lockhart as Aaron and Janet Suzman as Lavinia. Colin Blakely and John Wood as a vicious and maniacal Saturninus received particularly positive reviews. This production took the realistic approach and did not shirk from the more specific aspects of the violence; for example, Lavinia has trouble walking after the rape, which, it is implied, was anal rape. Nunn believed the play asked profound questions about the sustainability of Elizabethan society, and as such, he linked the play to the contemporary period to ask the same questions of late twentieth-century England; he was "less concerned with the condition of ancient Rome than with the morality of contemporary life." In his program notes, Nunn wrote "Shakespeare's Elizabethan nightmare has become ours." He was especially interested in the theory that decadence had led to the collapse of Rome. At the end of 4.2, for example, there was an on-stage orgy, and throughout the play, supporting actors appeared in the backgrounds dancing, eating, drinking and behaving outrageously. Also in this vein, the play opened with a group of people paying homage to a waxwork of an obese emperor reclining on a couch and clutching a bunch of grapes.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: The play was performed for the first time at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario, Canada in 1978, when it was directed by Brian Bedford, starring William Hutt as Titus, Jennifer Phipps as Tamora, Alan Scarfe as Aaron and Domini Blithe as Lavinia. Bedford went with neither stylisation nor realism; instead the violence simply tended to happen off-stage, but everything else was realistically presented. The play received mixed reviews with some praising its restraint and others arguing that the suppression of the violence went too far. Many cited the final scene, where despite three onstage stabbings, not one drop of blood was visible, and the reveal of Lavinia, where she was totally bloodless despite her mutilation. This production cut Lucius' final speech and instead ended with Aaron alone on the stage as Sibyl predicts the fall of Rome in lines written by Bedford himself. As such, "for affirmation and healing under Lucius the production substituted a sceptical modern theme of evil triumphant and Rome's decadence."


title: Titus Andronicus

text: A celebrated, and unedited production, (according to Jonathan Bate, not a single line from Q1 was cut) was directed by Deborah Warner in 1987 at The Swan and remounted at Barbican's Pit in 1988 for the RSC, starring Brian Cox as Titus, Estelle Kohler as Tamora, Peter Polycarpou as Aaron and Sonia Ritter as Lavinia. Met with almost universally positive reviews, Jonathan Bate regards it as the finest production of any Shakespearean play of the entire 1980s. Using a small cast, Warner had her actors address the audience from time to time throughout the play and often had actors leave the stage and wander out into the auditorium. Opting for a realist presentation, the play had a warning posted in the pit "This play contains scenes which some people may find disturbing," and numerous critics noted how, after the interval at many shows, empty seats had appeared in the audience. Warner's production was considered so successful, both critically and commercially, that the RSC did not stage the play again until 2003.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In 1988, Mark Rucker directed a realistic production at Shakespeare Santa Cruz, starring J. Kenneth Campbell as Titus, Molly Maycock as Tamora, Elizabeth Atkeson as Lavinia, and an especially well-received performance by Bruce A. Young as Aaron. Campbell presented Titus in a much more sympathetic light than usual; for example, he kills Mutius by accident, pushing him so that he falls against a tree, and his refusal to allow Mutius to be buried was performed as if in a dream state. Prior to the production, Rucker had Young work out and get in shape so that by the time of the performance, he weighed 240 lbs. Standing at six-foot four, his Aaron was purposely designed to be the most physically imposing character on the stage. Additionally, he was often positioned as standing on hills and tables, with the rest of the cast below him. When he appears with the Goths, he is not their prisoner, but willingly enters their camp in pursuit of his baby, the implication being that without this one weakness, he would have been invincible.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In 1994, Julie Taymor directed the play at the Theater for the New City. The production featured a prologue and epilogue set in the modern era, foregrounded the character of Young Lucius, who acts as a kind of choric observer of events, and starred Robert Stattel as Titus, Melinda Mullins as Tamora, Harry Lennix as Aaron and Miriam Healy-Louie as Lavinia. Heavily inspired in her design by Joel-Peter Witkin, Taymor used stone columns to represent the people of Rome, who she saw as silent and incapable of expressing any individuality or subjectivity. Controversially, the play ended with the implication that Lucius had killed Aaron's baby, despite his vow not to.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In 1995, Gregory Doran directed a production at the Royal National Theatre, which also played at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, South Africa, starring Antony Sher as Titus, Dorothy Ann Gould as Tamora, Sello Maake as Aaron and Jennifer Woodbine as Lavinia. Although Doran explicitly denied any political overtones, the play was set in a modern African context and made explicit parallels to South African politics. In his production notes, which Doran co-wrote with Sher, he stated, "Surely, to be relevant, theatre must have an umbilical connection to the lives of the people watching it." One particularly controversial decision was to have the play spoken in indigenous accents rather than Received Pronunciation, which allegedly resulted in many white South Africans refusing to see the play. Writing in "Plays International" in August 1995, Robert Lloyd Parry argued "the questions raised by "Titus" went far beyond the play itself [to] many of the tensions that exist in the new South Africa; the gulf of mistrust that still exists between blacks and whites ... "Titus Andronicus" has proved itself to be political theatre in the truest sense."


title: Titus Andronicus

text: For the first time since 1987, the RSC staged the play in 2003, under the direction of Bill Alexander and starring David Bradley as Titus, Maureen Beattie as Tamora, Joe Dixon as Aron and Eve Myles as Lavinia. Convinced that Act 1 was by George Peele, Alexander felt he was not undermining the integrity of Shakespeare by drastically altering it; for example, Saturninus and Tamora are present throughout, they never leave the stage; there is no division between the upper and lower levels; all mention of Mutius is absent; and over 100 lines were removed.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In 2006, two major productions were staged within a few weeks of one another. The first opened on 29 May at Shakespeare's Globe, directed by Lucy Bailey and starring Douglas Hodge as Titus, Geraldine Alexander as Tamora, Shaun Parkes as Aaron and Laura Rees as Lavinia. Bailey focused on a realistic presentation throughout the production; for example, after her mutilation, Lavinia is covered from head to toe in blood, with her stumps crudely bandaged, and raw flesh visible beneath. So graphic was Bailey's use of realism that at several productions, audience members fainted upon Lavinia's appearance. The production was also controversial insofar as the Globe had a roof installed for the first time in its history. The decision was taken by designer William Dudley, who took as his inspiration a feature of the Colosseum known as a velarium – a cooling system which consisted of a canvas-covered, net-like structure made of ropes, with a hole in the centre. Dudley made it as a PVC awning which was intended to darken the auditorium.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: Several reviews of the time made much of the manner in which each production approached the appearance of Lavinia after the rape; "At Shakespeare's Globe, the groundlings are fainting at the mutilations in Lucy Bailey's coarse but convincing production. To Stratford-upon-Avon, Yukio Ninagawa brings a Japanese staging so stylised that it keeps turning the horror into visual poetry." Speaking of Bailey's production, Eleanor Collins of "Cahiers Élisabéthains", said of the scene, "audience members turned their heads away in real distress." Charles Spencer of "The Daily Telegraph" called Lavinia "almost too ghastly to behold." Michael Billington of "The Guardian" said her slow shuffle onto the stage "chills the blood." Sam Marlowe of "The Times" saw Bailey's use of realism as extremely important for the moral of the production as a whole; "violated, her hands and her tongue cruelly cut away, she stumbles into view drenched in blood, flesh dangling from her hacked wrists, moaning and keening, almost animalistic. It's the production's most powerful symbolic image, redolent of the dehumanising effects of war." Of Ninagawa's production, some critics felt the use of stylisation damaged the impact of the scene. Benedict Nightingale of "The Times", for example, asked "is it enough to suggest bloodletting by having red ribbons flow from wrists and throats?" Similarly, "The Guardian"s Michael Billington, who had praised Bailey's use of realistic effects, wrote "At times I felt that Ninagawa, through stylised images and Handelian music, unduly aestheticised violence." Some critics, however, felt the stylisation was more powerful than Bailey's realism; Neil Allan and Scott Revers of "Cahiers Élisabéthains", for example, wrote "Blood itself was denoted by spools of red thread spilling from garments, limbs and Lavinia's mouth. Cruelty was stylised; the visceral became the aesthetic." Similarly, Paul Taylor, writing for "The Independent", wrote "Gore is represented by swatches of red cords that tumble and trail from wounded wrists and mouths. You might think that this method had a cushioning effect. In fact it concentrates and heightens the horror." Ninagawa himself said ""The violence is all there. I am just trying to express these things in a different way from any previous production." In her 2013 essay, "Mythological Reconfigurations on the Contemporary Stage: Giving a New Voice to Philomela in "Titus Andronicus"", which directly compares the depictions of the two Lavinias, Agnès Lafont writes of Ninagawa's production that Lavinia's appearance functions as a "visual emblem"; "Bloodshed and beauty create a stark dissonance ... Distancing itself from the violence it stages thanks to "dissonance," the production presents Lavinia onstage as if she were a painting ... Ninagawa's work distances itself from cruelty, as the spectacle of suffering is stylised. Ribbons that represent blood ... are symbolic means of filtering the aching spectacle of an abused daughter, and yet the spectacle retains its shocking potential and its power of empathy all the while intellectualizing it."


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In 2007, Gale Edwards directed a production for the Shakespeare Theatre Company at the Harman Center for the Arts, starring Sam Tsoutsouvas as Titus, Valerie Leonard as Tamora, Colleen Delany as Lavinia and Peter Macon as Aaron. Set in an unspecific modern "milieu", props were kept to a minimum, with lighting and general staging kept simple, as Edwards wanted the audience to concentrate on the story, not the staging. The production received generally very favourable reviews.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In 2011, Michael Sexton directed a modern military dress production at The Public Theater on a minimalistic set made of plywood boards. The production had a low budget and much of it was spent on huge volumes of blood that literally drenched the actors in the final scene, as Sexton said he was determined to outdo his contemporaries in terms of the amount of on-stage blood in the play. The production starred Jay O. Sanders (who was nominated for a Lucille Lortel) as Titus, Stephanie Roth Haberle as Tamora, Ron Cephas Jones as Aaron and Jennifer Ikeda as Lavinia.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In 2013, Michael Fentiman directed the play for the Royal Shakespeare Company, with Stephen Boxer as Titus, Katy Stephens as Tamora, Kevin Harvey as Aaron and Rose Reynolds as Lavinia. Emphasising the gore and violence, the production carried a trailer with warnings of "graphic imagery and scenes of butchery." It played at The Swan until October 2013. Also in 2013, the Hudson Shakespeare Company staged a production directed by Jon Ciccarelli as part of a special Halloween festival for the Historic Jersey City and Harsimus Cemetery. The production contrasted a military and modern Goth culture, but quickly disintegrated into an anarchic state, stressing the black comedy of the play.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: Outside Britain and the United States, other significant productions include Qiping Xu's 1986 production in China, which drew political parallels to Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution and the Red Guards; Peter Stein's 1989 production in Italy which evoked images of twentieth century Fascism; Daniel Mesguich's 1989 production in Paris, which set the entire play in a crumbling library, acting as a symbol for Roman civilisation; Nenni Delmestre's 1992 production in Zagreb which acted as a metaphor for the struggles of the Croatian people; and Silviu Purcărete's 1992 Romanian production, which explicitly avoided using the play as a metaphor for the fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu (this production is one of the most successful plays ever staged in Romania, and it was revived every year up to 1997).


title: Titus Andronicus

text: The first known adaptation of the play originated in the later years of the sixteenth century. In 1620, a German publication entitled "Englische Comedien und Tragedien" contained a play called "Eine sehr klägliche Tragaedia von Tito Andronico und der hoffertigen Käyserin darinnen denckwürdige actiones zubefinden" ("A most lamentable tragedy of Titus Andronicus and the haughty empress, wherein are found memorable events"). Transcribed by Frederick Menius, the play was a version of "Titus" performed by Robert Browne and John Greene's group of travelling players. The overriding plot of "Tito Andronico" is identical to "Titus", but all the character names are different, with the exception of Titus himself. Written in prose, the play does not feature the fly killing scene (3.2), Bassianus does not oppose Saturninus for the throne, Alarbus is absent, Quintus and Mutius are only seen after their death, many of the classical and mythological allusions have been removed; stage directions are much more elaborate, for example, in the banquet scene, Titus is described as wearing blood soaked rags and carrying a butcher knife dripping with blood.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: Another European adaptation came in 1637, when Dutch dramatist Jan Vos wrote a version of the play entitled "Aran en Titus", which was published in 1641, and republished in 1642, 1644, 1648 and 1649, illustrating its popularity. The play may have been based on a 1621 work, now lost, by Adriaen Van den Bergh, which may itself have been a composite of the English "Titus" and the German "Tito Andronico". Vos' play focuses on Aaron, who, in the final scene, is burned alive on stage, beginning a tradition amongst adaptations of foregrounding the Moor and ending the play with his death.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: The earliest English language adaptation was in 1678 at Drury Lane, by Edward Ravenscroft; "Titus Andronicus, or the Rape of Lavinia. A Tragedy, Alter'd from Mr. Shakespeares Works", probably with Thomas Betterton as Titus and Samuel Sandford as Aaron. In his preface, Ravenscroft wrote "Compare the Old Play with this you'l finde that none in all that Authors Works ever receiv'd greater Alterations or Additions, the language not only Refin'd, but many Scenes entirely New: Besides most of the principal Characters heighten'd and the Plot much incresas'd." The play was a huge success and was revived in 1686, and published the following year. It was revived again in 1704 and 1717. The 1717 revival was especially successful, starring John Mills as Titus, Mrs. Giffard as Tamora, James Quin as Aaron and John Thurmond as Saturninus. The play was revived again in 1718 and 1719 (with John Bickerstaff as Aaron) and 1721 (with Thomas Walker in the role). Quin had left Drury Lane in 1718 and gone to Lincoln's Inn Fields, which was owned by John Rich. Rich's actors had little Shakespearean experience, and Quin was soon advertised as the main attraction. In 1718, the adaptation was presented twice at Lincoln, both times with Quin as Aaron. In the 1720–1721 season, the play earned £81 with three performances. Quin became synonymous with the role of Aaron, and in 1724 he chose the adaptation as the play to be performed at his benefit.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: Ravenscroft made drastic alterations to the play. He removed all of 2.2 (preparing for the hunt), 3.2 (the fly killing scene), 4.3 (firing the arrows and sending the clown to Saturninus) and 4.4 (the execution of the clown). Much of the violence was toned down; for example both the murder of Chiron and Demetrius and Titus' amputation take place off stage. A significant change in the first scene, and one with major implications for the rest of the play, is that prior to the sacrifice of Alarbus, it is revealed that several years previously, Tamora had one of Titus' sons in captivity and refused to show him clemency despite Titus' pleas. Aaron has a much larger role in Ravenscroft than in Shakespeare, especially in Act 1, where lines originally assigned to Demetrius and Tamora are given to him. Tamora doesn't give birth during the action, but earlier, with the baby secretly kept by a nurse. To maintain the secret, Aaron kills the nurse, and it is the nurse's husband, not Lucius, who captures Aaron as he leaves Rome with the child. Additionally, Lucius' army is not composed of Goths, but of Roman centurions loyal to the Andronici. The last act is also considerably longer; Tamora and Saturninus both have lengthy speeches after their fatal stabbings. Tamora asks for her child to be brought to her, but she stabs it immediately upon receiving it. Aaron laments that Tamora has now outdone him in evil; "She has out-done me in my own Art –/Out-done me in Murder – Kille'd her own Child./Give it me – I’le eat it." He is burned alive as the climax of the play.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In January and February 1839 an adaptation written and directed by and also starring Nathaniel Bannister was performed for four nights at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia. The playbill had a note reading "The manager, in announcing this play, adapted by N.H. Bannister from the language of Shakespeare alone, assures the public that every expression calculated to offend the ear, has been studiously avoided, and the play is presented for their decision with full confidence that it will merit approbation." In his "History of the Philadelphia Stage", Volume IV (1878), Charles Durang wrote, "Bannister ably preserved the beauties of its poetry, the intensity of its incidents, and excluded the horrors with infinite skill, yet preserved all the interest of the drama." Nothing else is known about this production.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: The most successful adaptation of the play in Britain premiered in 1850, written by Ira Aldridge and C.A. Somerset. Aaron was rewritten to make him the hero of the piece (played by Aldridge), the rape and mutilation of Lavinia were removed, Tamora (Queen of Scythia) became chaste and honourable, with Aaron as her friend only, and Chiron and Demetrius act only out of love for their mother. Only Saturninus is a truly evil character. Towards the end of the play, Saturninus has Aaron chained to a tree, and his baby flung into the Tiber. Aaron frees himself however and leaps into the river after the child. At the end, Saturninus poisons Aaron, but as Aaron dies, Lavinia promises to look after his child for him, due to his saving her from rape earlier in the piece. An entire scene from "Zaraffa, the Slave King", a play written specifically for Aldridge in Dublin in 1847 was included in this adaptation. After the initial performances, Aldridge kept the play in the repertoire, and it was extremely successful at the box office and continued to be staged in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales until at least 1857, when it received a glowing review from "The Sunday Times" on 26 April. It was generally agreed amongst reviewers of the period that the Aldridge/Somerset rewrite was considerably superior to Shakespeare's original. For example, "The Era" reviewer wrote,


title: Titus Andronicus

text: The deflowerment of Lavinia, cutting out her tongue, chopping off her hands, and the numerous decapitations which occur in the original, are wholly omitted, and a play not only presentable but actually attractive is the result. Aaron is elevated into a noble and lofty character; Tamora, the queen of Scythia, is a chaste though decidedly strong-minded female, and her connection with the Moor appears to be of legitimate description; her sons Chiron and Demetrius are dutiful children, obeying the behests of their mother. Thus altered, Mr. Aldridge's conception of the part of Aaron is excellent – gentle and impassioned by turns; now burning with jealousy as he doubts the honour of the Queen; anon, fierce with rage, as he reflects upon the wrongs which have been done him – the murder of Alarbus and the abduction of his son; and then all tenderness and emotion in the gentler passages with his infant.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: The next adaptation was in 1951, when Kenneth Tynan and Peter Myers staged a thirty-five-minute version entitled "Andronicus" as part of a Grand Guignol presentation at the Irving Theatre. Produced in the tradition of Theatre of Cruelty, the production edited together all of the violent scenes, emphasised the gore, and removed Aaron entirely. In a review in the "Sunday Times" on 11 November, Harold Hobson wrote the stage was full of "practically the whole company waving gory stumps and eating cannibal pies."


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In 1957 the Old Vic staged a heavily edited ninety-minute performance as part of a double bill with an edited version of "The Comedy of Errors". Directed by Walter Hudd, both plays were performed by the same company of actors, with Derek Godfrey as Titus, Barbara Jefford as Tamora, Margaret Whiting as Lavinia and Robert Helpmann as Saturninus. Performed in the manner of a traditional Elizabethan production, the play received mixed reviews. "The Times", for example, felt that the juxtaposition of the blood tragedy and the frothy comedy was "ill-conceived".


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In 1970, Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt adapted the play into a German language comedy entitled "Titus Andronicus: Komödie nach Shakespeare" ("Titus Andronicus: A Comedy After Shakespeare"). Of the adaptation he wrote "it represents an attempt to render Shakespeare's early chaotic work fit for the German stage without having the Shakespearean atrocities and grotesqueries passed over in silence." Working from a translation of the "First Folio" text by Wolf Graf von Baudissin, Dürrenmatt altered much of the dialogue and changed elements of the plot; the fly killing scene (3.2) and the interrogation of Aaron (5.1) were removed; Titus has Aaron cut off his hand, and after he realises he has been tricked, Marcus brings Lavinia to him rather than the other way around as in the original play. Another major change is that after Aaron is presented with his love child, he flees Rome immediately, and successfully, and is never heard from again. Dürrenmatt also added a new scene, where Lucius arrives at the Goth camp and persuades their leader, Alarich, to help him. At the end of the play, after Lucius has stabbed Saturninus, but before he has given his final speech, Alarich betrays him, kills him, and orders his army to destroy Rome and kill everyone in it.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In 1981, John Barton followed the 1957 Old Vic model and directed a heavily edited version of the play as a double bill with "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" for the RSC, starring Patrick Stewart as Titus, Sheila Hancock as Tamora, Hugh Quarshie as Aaron and Leonie Mellinger as Lavinia. Theatricality and falseness were emphasised, and when actors were off stage, they could be seen at the sides of the stage watching the performance. The production received lukewarm reviews, and had an average box office.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In 1984, German playwright Heiner Müller adapted the play into "Anatomie Titus: Fall of Rome. Ein Shakespearekommentar" ("Anatomy Titus: Fall of Rome. A Shakespearean Commentary"). Interspersing the dialogue with a chorus like commentary, the adaptation was heavily political and made reference to numerous twentieth century events, such as the rise of the Third Reich, Stalinism, the erection of the Berlin Wall and the attendant emigration and defection issues, and the 1973 Chilean coup d'état. Müller removed the entire first act, replacing it was a narrated introduction, and completely rewrote the final act. He described the work as "terrorist in nature", and foregrounded the violence; for example Lavinia is brutally raped on stage and Aaron takes several hacks at Titus' hand before amputating it. First performed at the Schauspielhaus Bochum, it was directed by Manfred Karge and Matthias Langhoff, and is still regularly revived in Germany.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In 1989, Jeanette Lambermont directed a heavily edited kabuki version of the play at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, in a double bill with "The Comedy of Errors", starring Nicholas Pennell as Titus, Goldie Semple as Tamora, Hubert Baron Kelly as Aaron and Lucy Peacock as Lavinia.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In 2005, German playwright Botho Strauß adapted the play into "Schändung: nach dem Titus Andronicus von Shakespeare" ("Rape: After Titus Andronicus by Shakespeare"), also commonly known by its French name, "Viol, d'après Titus Andronicus de William Shakespeare". Set in both a contemporary and an ancient world predating the Roman Empire, the adaptation begins with a group of salesmen trying to sell real estate; gated communities which they proclaim as "Terra Secura", where women and children are secure from "theft, rape and kidnapping." Mythology is important in the adaptation; Venus is represented as governing nature, but is losing her power to the melancholic and uninterested Saturn, leading to a society rampant with "Bedeutungslosigkeit" (loss of meaning, insignificance). Written in prose rather than blank verse, changes to the text include the rape of Lavinia being Tamora's idea instead of Aaron's; the removal of Marcus; Titus does not kill his son; he does not have his hand amputated; Chiron is much more subservient to Demetrius; Aaron is more philosophical, trying to find meaning in his acts of evil rather than simply revelling in them; Titus does not die at the end, nor does Tamora, although the play ends with Titus ordering the deaths of Tamora and Aaron.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In 2008, Müller's "Anatomie Titus" was translated into English by Julian Hammond and performed at the Cremorne Theatre in Brisbane, the Canberra Theatre, the Playhouse in the Sydney Opera House and the Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne by the Bell Shakespeare Company and the Queensland Theatre Company. Directed by Michael Gow and with an all-male cast, it starred John Bell as Titus, Peter Cook as Tamora, Timothy Walter as Aaron and Thomas Campbell as Lavinia. Racism was a major theme in this production, with Aaron initially wearing a gorilla mask, and then poorly applied blackface, and his baby 'played' by a golliwogg.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In 2012, as part of the Globe to Globe Festival at Shakespeare's Globe, the play was performed under the title "Titus 2.0". Directed by Tang Shu-wing, it starred Andy Ng Wai-shek as Titus, Ivy Pang Ngan-ling as Tamora, Chu Pak-hong as Aaron and Lai Yuk-ching as Lavinia. Performed entirely in Cantonese, from an original script by Cancer Chong, the play had originally been staged in Hong Kong in 2009. The production took a minimalist approach and featured very little blood (after Lavinia has her hands cut off, for example, she simply wears red gloves for the rest of the play). The production features a narrator throughout, who speaks both in first person and third person, sometimes directly to the audience, sometimes to other characters on the stage. The role of the narrator alternates throughout the play, but is always performed by a member of the main cast. The production received excellent reviews, both in its original Hong Kong incarnation, and when restaged at the Globe.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In 2014, Noelle Fair and Lisa LaGrande adapted the play into "Interpreting her Martyr'd Signs", the title of which is taken from Titus' claim to be able to understand the mute Lavinia. Focusing on the backstories of Tamora and Lavinia, the play is set in Purgatory shortly after their deaths, where they find themselves in a waiting area with Aaron as their salvation or damnation is decided upon. As they try to come to terms with their unresolved conflict, Aaron serves as a master of ceremonies, initiating a dialogue between them, leading to a series of flashbacks to their lives prior to the beginning of the play.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: "Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus", an absurdist comic play by Taylor Mac and directed by George C. Wolfe, began previews at the Booth Theatre on Broadway on 11 March 2019 with an opening of 21 April 2019. The cast included Nathan Lane, Kristine Nielsen, and Julie White and involved servants tasked with cleaning up the carnage from the original play.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: "Titus Andronicus: The Musical!", written by Brian Colonna, Erik Edborg, Hannah Duggan, Erin Rollman, Evan Weissman, Matt Petraglia, and Samantha Schmitz, was staged by the Buntport Theater Company in Denver, Colorado four times between 2002 and 2007. Staged as a band of travelling thespian players who are attempting to put on a serious production of "Titus", and starring Brian Colonna as Titus, Erin Rollman as Tamora (and Marcus), Hannah Duggan as both Aaron and Lavinia (when playing Aaron she wore a fake moustache), Erik Edborg as Lucius and Saturninus, and Evan Weissman as Someone Who Will Probably Die (he is killed over thirty times during the play). The piece was very much a farce, and included such moments as Lavinia singing an aria to the tune of "Oops!...I Did It Again" by Britney Spears, after her tongue has been cut out; Saturninus and Lucius engaged in a sword fight, but both being played by the same actor; Chiron and Demetrius 'played' by a gas can and a car radio respectively; the love child being born with a black moustache. A number of critics felt that the play improved on Shakespeare's original, and several wondered what Harold Bloom would have made of it.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: "Tragedy! A Musical Comedy", written by Michael Johnson and Mary Davenport was performed at the 2007 New York International Fringe Festival in the Lucille Lortel Theatre. Directed by Johnson, the piece starred Francis Van Wetering as Titus, Alexandra Cirves as Tamora, Roger Casey as Aaron (aka The Evil Black Guy) and Lauren Huyett as Lavinia. Staged as a farce, the production included moments such as Lavinia singing a song entitled "At least I can still sing" after having her hands cut off, but as she reaches the finale, Chiron and Demetrius return and cut out her tongue; Lucius is portrayed as a homosexual in love with Saturninus, and everyone knows except Titus; Titus kills Mutius not because he defies him, but because he discovers that Mutius wants to be a tap dancer instead of a soldier; Bassianus is a transvestite; Saturninus is addicted to prescription medication; and Tamora is a nymphomaniac.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In 1969, Robert Hartford-Davis planned to make a feature film starring Christopher Lee as Titus and Lesley-Anne Down as Lavinia, but the project never materialised.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: The 1973 horror comedy film "Theatre of Blood", directed by Douglas Hickox featured a very loose adaptation of the play. Vincent Price stars in the film as Edward Lionheart, who regards himself as the finest Shakespearean actor of all time. When he fails to be awarded the prestigious Critic's Circle Award for Best Actor, he sets about exacting bloody revenge on the critics who gave him poor reviews, with each act inspired by a death in a Shakespeare play. One such act of revenge involves the critic Meredith Merridew (played by Robert Morley). Lionheart abducts Merridew's prized poodles, and bakes them in a pie, which he then feeds to Merridew, before revealing all and force-feeding the critic until he chokes to death.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: A 1997 straight-to-video adaptation, which cuts back on the violence, titled "Titus Andronicus: The Movie", was directed by Lorn Richey and starred Ross Dippel as Titus, Aldrich Allen as Aaron, and Maureen Moran as Lavinia. Another straight-to-video- adaptation was made in 1998, directed by Christopher Dunne, and starring Robert Reese as Titus, Candy K. Sweet as Tamora, Lexton Raleigh as Aaron, Tom Dennis as Demitrius, with Levi David Tinker as Chiron and Amanda Gezik as Lavinia. This version enhanced the violence and increased the gore. For example, in the opening scene, Alarbus has his face skinned alive, and is then disembowelled and set on fire.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In 1999, Julie Taymor directed an adaptation entitled "Titus", starring Anthony Hopkins as Titus, Jessica Lange as Tamora, Harry Lennix as Aaron (reprising his role from Taymor's 1994 theatrical production) and Laura Fraser as Lavinia. As with Taymor's stage production, the film begins with a young boy playing with toy soldiers and being whisked away to Ancient Rome, where he assumes the character of young Lucius. A major component of the film is the mixing of the old and modern; Chiron and Demetrius dress like modern rock stars, but the Andronici dress like Roman soldiers; some characters use chariots, some use cars and motorcycles; crossbows and swords are used alongside rifles and pistols; tanks are seen driven by soldiers in ancient Roman garb; bottled beer is seen alongside ancient amphorae of wine; microphones are used to address characters in ancient clothing. According to Taymor, this anachronistic structure was created to emphasise the timelessness of the violence in the film, to suggest that violence is universal to all humanity, at all times: "Costume, paraphernalia, horses or chariots or cars; these represent the essence of a character, as opposed to placing it in a specific time. This is a film that takes place from the year 1 to the year 2000." At the end of the film, young Lucius takes the baby and walks out of Rome; an image of hope for the future, symbolised by the rising sun in the background. Originally, the film was to end as Taymor's 1994 production had, with the implication that Lucius is going to kill Aaron's baby, but during production of the film, actor Angus Macfadyen, who played Lucius, convinced Taymor that Lucius was an honourable man and wouldn't go back on his word. Lisa S. Starks reads the film as a revisionist horror movie and feels that Taymor is herself part of the process of twentieth century re-evaluation of the play: "In adapting a play that has traditionally evoked critical condemnation, Taymor calls into question that judgement, thereby opening up the possibility for new readings and considerations of the play within the Shakespeare canon."


title: Titus Andronicus

text: "William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus", directed by Richard Griffin and starring Nigel Gore as Titus, Zoya Pierson as Tamora, Kevin Butler as Aaron and Molly Lloyd as Lavinia, was released direct to video in 2000. Shot on DV in and around Providence, Rhode Island with a budget of $12,000, the film is set in a modern business milieu. Saturninus is a corporate head who has inherited a company from his father, and the Goths feature as contemporary Goths.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In 2017, "Titus Andronicus" was adapted as "The Hungry" by director Bornilla Chatterjee set in contemporary New Delhi, India. It stars Naseeruddin Shah as Tathagat Ahuja (representing Titus), Tisca Chopra as Tulsi Joshi (representing Tamora), Neeraj Kabi as Arun Kumar (Aaron) and Sayani Gupta as Loveleen Ahuja (Lavinia)


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In 1970, Finnish TV channel Yle TV1 screened an adaptation of the play written and directed by Jukka Sipilä, starring Leo Lastumäki as Titus, Iris-Lilja Lassila as Tamora, Eugene Holman as Aaron and Maija Leino as Lavinia.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In 1985, the BBC produced a version of the play for their "BBC Television Shakespeare" series. Directed by Jane Howell, the play was the thirty-seventh and final episode of the series and starred Trevor Peacock as Titus, Eileen Atkins as Tamora, Hugh Quarshie as Aaron and Anna Calder-Marshall as Lavinia. Because "Titus" was broadcast several months after the rest of the seventh season, it was rumoured that the BBC were worried about the violence in the play and that disagreements had arisen about censorship. This was inaccurate however, with the delay caused by a BBC strike in 1984. The episode had been booked into the studio in February and March 1984, but the strike meant it couldn't shoot. When the strike ended, the studio couldn't be used as it was being used by another production, and then when the studio became available, the RSC was using Trevor Peacock, and filming didn't take place until February 1985, a year later than planned. Initially, director Jane Howell wanted to set the play in present-day Northern Ireland, but she ultimately settled on a more conventional approach. All the body parts seen throughout were based upon real autopsy photographs, and were authenticated by the Royal College of Surgeons. The costumes of the Goths were based on punk outfits, with Chiron and Demetrius specifically based on the band KISS. For the scene when Chiron and Demetrius are killed, a large carcass is seen hanging nearby; this was a genuine lamb carcass purchased from a kosher butcher and smeared with Vaseline to make it gleam under the studio lighting. In an unusual design choice, Howell had the Roman populace all wear identical generic masks without mouths, so as to convey the idea that the Roman people were faceless and voiceless, as she felt the play depicted a society which "seemed like a society where everyone was faceless except for those in power." The production was one of the most lauded plays of the series and garnered almost universally positive reviews.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: For the most part, the adaptation followed Q1 exactly (and F1 for 3.2) with some minor alterations. For example, a few lines were cut from various scenes, such as Lavinia's "Ay, for these slips have made him noted long" (2.3.87), thus removing the continuity error regarding the duration of the Goths residence in Rome. Other examples include Titus' "Ah, wherefore dost thou urge the name of hands,/To bid Aeneas tell the tale twice o'er,/How Troy was burnt and he made miserable?" (3.2.26–28), Marcus' "What, what! The lustful sons of Tamora/Performers of this heinous, bloody deed" (4.1.78–79), and Titus and Marcus' brief conversation about Taurus and Aries (4.3.68–75). The adaptation also includes some lines from Q1 which were removed in subsequent editions; at 1.1.35 Titus' "bearing his valiant sons/in coffins from the field" continues with "and at this day,/To the Monument of that Andronicy/Done sacrifice of expiation,/And slaine the Noblest prisoner of the Gothes." These lines are usually omitted because they create a continuity problem regarding the sacrifice of Alarbus, which hasn't happened yet in the text. However, Howell got around this problem by beginning the play at 1.1.64 – the entrance of Titus. Then, at 1.1.168, after the sacrifice of Alarbus, lines 1.1.1 to 1.1.63 (the introductions of Bassianus and Saturninus) take place, thus Titus' reference to Alarbus' sacrifice makes chronological sense.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: Another notable stylistic technique used in the adaptation is multiple addresses direct to camera. For example, Saturninus' "How well the tribune speaks to calm my thoughts" (1.1.46); Tamora's vow to slaughter the Andronici at 1.1.450–455 (thus absolving Saturninus from any involvement); Aaron's soliloquy in 2.1; Aaron's "Ay, and as good as Saturninus may" (2.1.91); Aaron's soliloquy in 2.3; Tamora's "Now will I hence to seek my lovely Moor,/And let my spleenful sons this trull deflower" (2.3.190–191); Aaron's two asides in 3.1 (ll.187–190 and 201–202); Lucius' "Now will I to the Goths and raise a power,/To be revenged on Rome and Saturnine" (3.1.298–299); Marcus' "O, heavens, can you hear a good man groan" speech (4.1.122–129); Young Lucius' asides in 4.2 (ll.6 and 8–9); Aaron's "Now to the Goths, as swift as swallow flies,/There to dispose this treasure in mine arms,/And secretly to greet the Empress' friends" (4.2.172–174); and Tamora's "Now will I to that old Andronicus,/And temper him with all the art I have,/To pluck proud Lucius from the warlike Goths" (4.4.107–109).


title: Titus Andronicus

text: The most significant difference from the original play concerned the character of Young Lucius, who is a much more important figure in the adaptation; he is present throughout Act 1, and retrieves the murder weapon after the death of Mutius; it is his knife which Titus uses to kill the fly; he aids in the capture of Chiron and Demetrius; he is present throughout the final scene. Much as Julie Taymor would do in her 1999 filmic adaptation, Howell set Young Lucius as the centre of the production to prompt the question "What are we doing to the children?" At the end of the play, as Lucius delivers his final speech, the camera stays on Young Lucius rather than his father, who is in the far background and out of focus, as he stares in horror at the coffin of Aaron's child (which has been killed off-screen). Thus the production became "in part about a boy's reaction to murder and mutilation. We see him losing his innocence and being drawn into this adventure of revenge; yet, at the end we perceive that he retains the capacity for compassion and sympathy."


title: Titus Andronicus

text: In 2001, the animated sitcom "South Park" based an episode on the play. In "Scott Tenorman Must Die", Eric Cartman is swindled by Scott Tenorman. Cartman tries various methods to get his money back, but Scott remains always one step ahead. He then decides to exact revenge on Scott. After numerous failed attempts, he hatches a plan which culminates in him having Scott's parents killed, the bodies of whom he then cooks in chili, which he feeds to Scott. He then gleefully reveals his deception as Scott finds his mother's finger in the chilli.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: The Netflix TV series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt features a character originally named Ronald Wilkerson that changed his name to Titus Andromedon, possibly derived from this play.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: The play has very rarely been staged for radio. In 1923, extracts were broadcast on BBC radio, performed by the Cardiff Station Repertory Company as the second episode of a series of programs showcasing Shakespeare's plays, entitled "Shakespeare Night". In 1953, BBC Third Programme aired a 130-minute version of the play, adapted for radio by J.C. Trewin and starring Baliol Halloway as Titus, Sonia Dresdal as Tamora, George Hayes as Aaron and Janette Tregarthen as Lavinia. In 1973, BBC Radio 3 aired an adaptation directed by Martin Jenkins, starring Michael Aldridge as Titus, Barbara Jefford as Tamora, Julian Glover as Aaron and Frances Jeater as Lavinia. In 1986, Austrian radio channel Österreich 1 staged an adaptation by Kurt Klinger, starring Romuald Pekny as Titus, Marion Degler as Tamora, Wolfgang Böck as Aaron and Elisabeth Augustin as Lavinia.


title: Titus Andronicus

text: All references to "Titus Andronicus", unless otherwise specified, are taken from the "Oxford Shakespeare" (Waith), based on the Q1 text of 1594 (except 3.2, which is based on the folio text of 1623). Under its referencing system, 4.3.15 means act 4, scene 3, line 15.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: WrestleMania 21 was the 21st annual WrestleMania professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). It was held for wrestlers from the promotion's Raw and SmackDown! brand divisions. The event took place on April 3, 2005, at Staples Center in Los Angeles, California.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: The main event of the show, which was the main match from the Raw brand, saw Batista challenge Triple H for the World Heavyweight Championship, which Batista won by pinfall after executing a Batista Bomb. The main match on the SmackDown! brand, which was the event's penultimate match, saw John "Bradshaw" Layfield defend the WWE Championship against John Cena, which Cena won by pinfall after performing an FU. Another primary match was an inter-promotional match between The Undertaker and Randy Orton, which Undertaker won by pinfall after performing a Tombstone Piledriver. The featured matches on the undercard were Kurt Angle versus Shawn Michaels and the first-ever Money in the Bank ladder match. The event also featured the return of Stone Cold Steve Austin who started his part-time appearances with WWE at this event and also the final WrestleMania event that Eddie Guerrero competed in, as he died in November that same year.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: WrestleMania 21 was the first WrestleMania held at Staples Center, but the fifth to take place in the Los Angeles metropolitan area (after 2, VII, XII, and 2000, with 39 set to take place in 2023). Tickets sold out in less than one minute for the event, making it the fastest ticket sell-out in the company's history as well as the fastest ticket sell-out at Staples Center. The event drew a Staples Center record attendance of 20,193 people from 37 countries and 50 states and grossed more than $7.1 million in ticket sales, making it the highest grossing WWE event ever at Staples Center. In addition to those in attendance, the event was seen by millions of fans in more than 190 countries.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: WrestleMania is considered World Wrestling Entertainment's (WWE) flagship pay-per-view (PPV) event, having first been held in 1985. It has become the longest-running professional wrestling event in history and is held annually between mid-March to mid-April. It was the first of WWE's original four pay-per-views, which includes Royal Rumble, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series, referred to as the "Big Four". WrestleMania 21 was scheduled to be held on April 3, 2005, at Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. The event featured wrestlers from the Raw and SmackDown! brands. It was the first WrestleMania held at Staples Center, but the fifth to take place in the Los Angeles metropolitan area (after 2, VII, XII, and 2000).


title: WrestleMania 21

text: In line with the event's location and tagline, WrestleMania 21 was promoted on television with a series of parody movie trailers with WWE talent playing the starring roles from famous movies.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: Celebrity guests in attendance for WrestleMania 21 included David Arquette, Motörhead, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top, The Black Eyed Peas, Billy Corgan from The Smashing Pumpkins, Anthony Kiedis from Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ice Cube, Carmen Electra, Sylvester Stallone, Marg Helgenberger, Matt Groening, Rick Rubin, Will Sasso, and Macaulay Culkin.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: At New Year's Revolution on January 9, Triple H won an Elimination Chamber match to win the vacant World Heavyweight Championship by last eliminating Randy Orton following outside interference from Evolution members Batista and Ric Flair. Three weeks later at the Royal Rumble, Triple H successfully defended the title against Orton while Batista won the 2005 Royal Rumble match, earning the right to compete in the main event of WrestleMania 21 against the champion of his choice. On the February 4 episode of "Raw" in Saitama Super Arena("ROAD TO WRESTLEMANIA 21 JAPAN TOUR"), Triple H defeated Edge to retain the World Heavyweight Championship due to Batista's interference. Afterward, as Batista raised Triple H's hand and his championship, Batista got a close look at the World Heavyweight Championship, then stared Triple H down, looking as if he was thinking about challenging Triple H for the title. In an attempt to persuade Batista to challenge WWE Champion John "Bradshaw" Layfield (JBL) rather than him at WrestleMania, Triple H concocted a scheme to have Batista run over by a limousine resembling the one used by JBL. Initially, Batista did not want help from Evolution and wanted to confront JBL by himself. Triple H insisted that Evolution accompany Batista anyway, saving him from the oncoming limousine. Batista became aware of the plot while eavesdropping on his fellow Evolution members and signed a contract guaranteeing him a match with Triple H at WrestleMania, thus leaving Evolution and officially turning him face. Batista pretended to sign with the SmackDown! brand, giving Triple H and Flair the "thumbs up", but turned it into a "thumbs down" (alluding to the way Randy Orton was kicked out of Evolution after becoming World Heavyweight Champion at SummerSlam 2004) before attacking the pair. This led to Batista's departure from the stable.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: At No Way Out, John Cena defeated Kurt Angle to earn a spot in the SmackDown! main event at WrestleMania. During the latter event, John "Bradshaw" Layfield (JBL) successfully defended the WWE Championship against The Big Show in a Barbed Wire Steel Cage Match. As a result of Cena's win, he began a feud with JBL and his Cabinet. On the February 24 edition of "SmackDown!", JBL was hosting a party as a celebration in honor of his win. Before the party could get started, however, Big Show came out and interrupted the celebration and attacked JBL and the Cabinet. Soon after, Cena came down and smashed the portrait over JBL's head. Later that night, Cena and Big Show defeated JBL and Orlando Jordan. The following week, JBL cut a promo on Cena, and insulted him, while Cena defended his WWE United States Championship against Jordan. Jordan won the match and the United States Championship after the Basham Brothers distracted the referee, and JBL hit Cena with the WWE Championship belt. JBL then destroyed Cena's customized United States Championship belt and replaced it with the original one. Later that night, Cena brought a steel lead pipe to the ring with him and ordered JBL to come out to the ring and fight him, only to have the SmackDown! General Manager, Theodore Long make his way to the ring and inform Cena that he had to wait until WrestleMania to get his hands on JBL. Cena then gave the ultimatum for Long to be part of a solution or part of the problem. Cena then stated, "Since you're not going to bring JBL out here, then you're part of the problem." Cena then nailed Long with an FU and was thrown out of the arena. During JBL's match that night, Cena returned and attacked The Cabinet. The next week, Long announced that if Cena laid a hand on JBL, apart from in matches, he would lose his WrestleMania match. In a Six-Man Tag Team match that night, Cena and the WWE Tag Team Champions, Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio Jr. defeated JBL and the Basham Brothers, but Cena had to stop himself from attacking JBL after the bell had rung. On the March 24 edition of "SmackDown!", Long clarified that if JBL physically provoked Cena, then Cena could retaliate. Cena then attempted to provoke JBL, by vandalizing his limousine, cutting off his tie, pouring water into his hat and spray painting "FU" on his shirt. On the last "SmackDown!" before WrestleMania, however, JBL interrupted Cena's match against Carlito and had Cena arrested for vandalism. Once Cena was handcuffed, JBL nailed him with a low blow and ended the show by mocking Cena with his signature "you can't see me" taunt.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: At the Royal Rumble, two months before WrestleMania, SmackDown! superstar Kurt Angle relentlessly attacked Raw superstar Shawn Michaels after Michaels had eliminated him from the Royal Rumble match. The next month at No Way Out, Angle lost a number one contenders match to John Cena, losing a spot in the SmackDown! main event at WrestleMania. The next night on "Raw", Michaels told SmackDown! General Manager Theodore Long to inform Angle that he had challenged him to a match at WrestleMania.<ref name="PWWEW - 2/21 Raw"></ref><ref name="OWW - 2/21 Raw"></ref> On the February 28 edition of "Raw", after Michaels defeated Edge in a Street Fight, Angle attacked Michaels and accepted his challenge.<ref name="PWWEW.net - 2/28 Raw"></ref><ref name="411mania.com - 2/28 Raw"></ref> On the next edition of "SmackDown!", Michaels ambushed Angle in the ring, and the two of them brawled, until security broke it up. Angle claimed that he was better than Michaels, and said he would prove it by achieving everything that Michaels had, but doing it faster. He then won a ladder match, mocking Michaels' match from WrestleMania X. He then challenged Marty Jannetty, Michaels former tag team partner to a match. He won after Jannetty tapped out. Angle also persuaded Michaels' former manager, Sensational Sherri to do a spoof of Michaels' theme song, "Sexy Boy", calling his version "Sexy Kurt". Michaels, however, interrupted and played a video highlighting all his accomplishments. When Sherri got emotional from watching the video, Angle put her in the Ankle Lock. Angle also interfered in Michaels' match against Muhammad Hassan on the last edition of "Raw" before the pay-per-view, which resulted in Michaels defeating Hassan by disqualification.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: The other interpromotional match on the card was between Randy Orton and The Undertaker, with Orton representing Raw and Undertaker representing SmackDown!. The feud first started on the March 7 edition of "Raw" when Orton challenged Undertaker to a match at WrestleMania billed as ""Legend vs. Legend Killer"" match.<ref name="PWWEW.net - 3/07 Raw"></ref><ref name="OWW - 3/07 Raw"></ref> Orton had been inspired by Superstar Billy Graham, who encouraged him to "go where no wrestler has gone before". Three days later on "SmackDown!", Undertaker accepted Orton's challenge.<ref name="PWWEW.net - 3/10 SmackDown!"></ref><ref name="SLAM! Sports - 3/10 SmackDown!"></ref> On the March 14 episode of "Raw", during Chris Jericho's "Highlight Reel" segment, Jake "The Snake" Roberts, attempted to give Orton advice about his match with Undertaker at WrestleMania, but received an RKO by Orton when Orton was not cooperating.<ref name="411mania.com - 3/14 Raw"></ref><ref name="OWW - 3/14 Raw"></ref> On March 17, a contract signing for the match was scheduled to take place, and was attended by the SmackDown! General Manager, Theodore Long, and Raw General Manager, Eric Bischoff.<ref name="PWWEW.net - 3/17 SmackDown!"></ref><ref name="411mania.com - 3/17 SmackDown!"></ref> The Undertaker immediately signed the contract; however, before Orton signed the contract, he cut a promo on the Undertaker, stating that he has nothing but respect for him and then claimed that the legend of the Undertaker will become a myth when his 12–0 undefeated streak at WrestleMania, would soon be 12–1. Afterwards, he then slapped the Undertaker. Orton fled the ring after the Undertaker began to fill the arena with smoke, and didn't sign the contract. The next week on "Raw", Orton claimed that his confidence was at an all-time high, despite what happened on "SmackDown!" the week before. Shortly thereafter, Orton turned heel and furthered his "Legend Killer" gimmick by performing an RKO on Stacy Keibler, who was his girlfriend at the time.<ref name="411mania.com - 3/21 Raw"></ref><ref name="OWW - 3/21 Raw"></ref> Orton taunted the Undertaker for the next couple weeks, but the Undertaker responded with taunts of his own, as he attacked other superstars. On the final SmackDown! before WrestleMania, Orton's father, "Cowboy" Bob Orton, begged the Undertaker to have mercy on Orton. It ultimately proved to be a set-up, however, as Orton attacked the Undertaker and performed an RKO on him just to show an example of what could happen at WrestleMania when he faces the Undertaker.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: Another match on the card was the Money in the Bank ladder match between Chris Jericho, Christian, Chris Benoit, Edge, Kane, and Shelton Benjamin. The idea for the Money in the Bank match was introduced by Jericho who proposed a six-man ladder match, for the event in which the winner would receive a contract for a World title match at the place and time of his choosing. Raw General Manager, Eric Bischoff, booked the match at WrestleMania 21 soon after. According to Jericho, the first idea was a submission match between Edge, Jericho and Benoit and a ladder match between the other wrestlers.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: Before the event went live on pay-per-view, a dark match was held. A 30-man interpromotional Battle Royal, which featured: Booker T, Paul London, Heidenreich, Spike Dudley, Nunzio, Funaki, Doug Basham, Danny Basham, Orlando Jordan, Mark Jindrak, Luther Reigns, Scotty 2 Hotty, Hardcore Holly, Charlie Haas, Billy Kidman, and Akio from SmackDown and Simon Dean, William Regal, Tajiri, Rob Conway, Sylvain Grenier, Snitsky, The Hurricane, Rosey, Chris Masters, Viscera, Rhyno, Val Venis, Tyson Tomko, and Maven from Raw. Booker T last eliminated Chris Masters to win the Battle Royal.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: The first televised match was between Rey Mysterio Jr. and Eddie Guerrero. At the beginning of the match, Mysterio jumped over the top rope, knocking Guerrero down. Mysterio also attempted another aerial attack but was countered by Guerrero into a Powerbomb. Guerrero performed the Three Amigos on Mysterio and attempted a Frog splash but was unsuccessful. Following a Hurricanrana on Guerrero, Mysterio pinned Guerrero to win. After the match, both men shook hands in the ring.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: John "Bradshaw" Layfield (JBL) and Orlando Jordan were then shown backstage discussing JBL's match against John Cena. Triple H and Ric Flair walked by as Triple H mocked JBL. JBL retaliated by advising Triple H to worry about losing the World Heavyweight Championship to Batista and assured him that Cena would be unsuccessful at defeating JBL for the WWE Championship. Triple H responded that only the end of the night would reveal who would still be champion.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: The match that followed was the first Money in the Bank ladder match which featured Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, Shelton Benjamin, Edge, Kane, and Christian with Tyson Tomko at ringside. The match contained many notable moments, including points where Jericho, Christian, Benjamin, and Kane all jumped over the top rope to the outside of the ring to knock down multiple opponents. Another moment included Benjamin executing a T-Bone Suplex on Edge off a ladder and later using an inclined ladder as a ramp to run up and perform a Clothesline on Jericho. Benoit also executed a Diving headbutt off a ladder onto Kane. In the conclusion of the match, Benoit climbed a ladder to attempt to retrieve the Money in the Bank briefcase but was stopped by Kane, who had also climbed the ladder. Benoit used repeated headbutts to knock Kane to the floor and attempted to retrieve the briefcase once more but was knocked down by Edge, who struck him with a steel chair. Edge then climbed the ladder and successfully retrieved the briefcase to win the match.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: In an interlude, Eugene came down to the ring and shared his excitement about being at his first WrestleMania with the crowd in attendance. While attempting to recall his favorite WrestleMania moments, Muhammad Hassan and Daivari interrupted him, with Hassan expressing his outrage for not being included in a match for the event. Hassan concluded that since he wasn't scheduled to compete at the event and was therefore denied the opportunity to experience his own WrestleMania "moment", he would have to create a "moment" of his own. Following this remark, Hassan and Daivari began to assault Eugene. With Eugene placed into a Camel clutch while Daivari verbally attacked him, Hulk Hogan came down to the ring, knocking Hassan and Daivari out of the ring. Hogan celebrated by posing in the ring for the crowd.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: The third match featured The Undertaker and Randy Orton. Bob Orton Jr., Randy's father, interfered and attacked Undertaker with his arm cast, resulting in Orton gaining control of the match. Undertaker attempted to chokeslam Orton, but Orton countered the maneuver with an RKO for a near-fall. Orton then attempted a Tombstone piledriver on Undertaker but it was reversed by Undertaker into a Tombstone of his own to win the match and continued his undefeated streak at WrestleMania with a 13–0 record.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: The next match was for the WWE Women's Championship, an encounter between Trish Stratus and Christy Hemme with Lita at ringside. Stratus controlled most of the match though Hemme attempted many pinning maneuvers that were unsuccessful. Hemme then executed a Twist of Fate on Stratus for a near-fall. After a roll-up attempt by both Stratus and Hemme, Stratus performed a Chick kick to win the match and retain the WWE Women's Championship.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: The fifth match was the encounter of Shawn Michaels and Kurt Angle. The beginning of the match saw back-and-forth action between the two. Mid-way in the match, Michaels hit Angle with a low blow, after he countered a suplex from Angle. Following the low blow, which was not seen by the referee, Michaels leapfrogged from the ring and laid out Angle on a broadcast table. Angle would then gain control of the match, as he would force Michaels to submit to the Ankle Lock to win the match. After the match, Shawn Michaels was given a standing ovation from the audience.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: "Rowdy" Roddy Piper confronted "Stone Cold" Steve Austin in Piper's Pit until Carlito interrupted and insulted them. Carlito received a Stone Cold Stunner from Austin and Piper threw him out of the ring. Both ended the segment celebrating with beer until Austin gave Piper a Stone Cold Stunner.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: The next match was between Akebono and Big Show in a Sumo match. The match was a little over a minute and Akebono won the match after he threw Big Show out of the ring.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: The next match was John Cena versus John "Bradshaw" Layfield (JBL) for the WWE Championship. JBL controlled most of the bout. Cena won the match after ducking a Clothesline from Hell attempt and executing an FU to win the title.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: The main event was Triple H defending his World Heavyweight Championship against Batista. Triple H entered to "The Game" performed live by Motörhead. The action was back and forth, with neither man in control for very long periods. While the referee was down, Triple H attacked Batista with a low blow and the title belt for a near fall. In the climax, Batista would pin Triple H after a Batista Bomb to win the match and title.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: WrestleMania 21 received universally positive reviews from critics and fans. However, most critics have pointed out that the main events of the show were disappointing and let down WrestleMania 21 overall. John Powell of Canadian Online Explorer's professional wrestling section noted that "The changing of the guard that many people expected came with a whimper instead of a bang. In a total reversal from last year's show – where a largely mundane card was saved by the emotional title victories of Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero – this year's elevation of rising stars John Cena and Dave Batista had no such drama. Unable to live up to the high standards set by the Undertaker-Randy Orton and Shawn Michaels-Kurt Angle bouts, the "main events" offered the worst kind of anticlimax and would have been right at home buried in the middle of the card." He rated the entire event 7 out of 10 stars, which has a higher rating than the previous year's event. The main event between Batista and Triple H for the World Heavyweight Championship was rated 6 out of 10 stars, the match between John "Bradshaw" Layfield and John Cena was rated 5 out of 10 stars, the match between Kurt Angle and Shawn Michaels received the highest rating of 9 out of 10 stars, the match between The Undertaker and Randy Orton and The Money in the Bank ladder match were rated 8 out of 10 stars. Robert Leighty Jr of 411mania gave the event an overall score of 7.0 out of 10.0 noted that "If the two Title matches would have delivered this would have gone down as one of the greatest WrestleMania's ever, but they didn't and that left a flat ending to the show. Everything up to Shawn/Angle is fantastic and things kind of close with a whimper. Still, this is a historic show as it cemented the rise of Batista/Cena/Orton as Main Event players. It also has two great matches with Shawn/Angle and Money in the Bank. Definitely a good WrestleMania, but it could have been much more." J.D. Dunn of 411mania response towards WrestleMania 21 was also positive. He stated that "this was on its way to being every bit as good as last year's Mania" but like most of the other critics who thought the main events were disappointing also said that "then it hit a wall in the last 90 minutes." He later stated that "If this were a regular PPV with the Michaels vs. Angle match being the main event, this would be one of the greatest PPV's ever. Unfortunately, it drags on after that and limps to a finish." Although he praised the booking of the event saying that, "they made all the right moves booking-wise, so while the matches weren't great, they still have a certain historic value." The match between Kurt Angle and Shawn Michaels would go on to win the 2005 Pro Wrestling Illustrated match of the year award. In 2019 WWE named it the fifth best WrestleMania match of all times.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: For the Staples Center's 10th anniversary in 2009, WrestleMania 21 was ranked number 7 on the list of greatest moments in the venue's history as voted by fans.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: Batista and Triple H's feud would continue to Backlash where Batista and Triple H had a rematch for the World Heavyweight Championship. Batista won the match after a Batista Bomb. Following that, the two concluded their storyline at Vengeance where Batista scored the third and final win over his former mentor inside Hell in a Cell. Shortly thereafter, Batista was drafted to the SmackDown! brand, ending their feud and taking the title with him to his new brand, while Triple H went on hiatus. 14 years later, at WrestleMania 35, Triple H (as a face) would defeat Batista (as a heel) in a No Holds Barred match with Triple H's career on the line.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: John Cena and JBL continued to feud until Judgment Day, where they faced off in an "I Quit" match for the WWE Championship, which Cena won. Shortly after, Cena was drafted to Raw, ending their feud and taking the title with him.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: Edge would hold on to his Money in the Bank briefcase until the following year at New Year's Revolution, where he cashed in the briefcase on the doctor of thuganomics John Cena after Cena just competed in an Elimination Chamber match, to retain his WWE Championship.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: Shawn Michaels and Kurt Angle would continue their feud and face off again at Vengeance with Michaels picking up the win.


title: WrestleMania 21

text: The tournament to determine the number one contender for the WWE Championship match at WrestleMania 21 was held between February 1 and February 20, 2005. At WrestleMania 21, John Cena defeated John "Bradshaw" Layfield to become the new champion. The tournament brackets were:


title: Imp

text: An imp is a European mythological being similar to a fairy or demon, frequently described in folklore and superstition. The word may perhaps derive from the term "ympe", used to denote a young grafted tree.


title: Imp

text: Imps are often described as troublesome and mischievous more than seriously threatening or dangerous, and as lesser beings rather than more important supernatural beings. The attendants of the devil are sometimes described as imps. They are usually described as lively and having small stature.


title: Imp

text: The Old English noun "impa" meant a young shoot or scion of a plant or tree, and later came to mean the scion of a noble house, or a child in general. Starting in the 16th century, it was often used in expressions like "imps of serpents", "imp of hell", "imp of the devil", and so on; and by the 17th century, it came to mean a small demon, a familiar of a witch. The Old English noun and associated verb "impian" appear to come from an unattested Late Latin term *"emputa" ("impotus" is attested in the Salic law), the neuter plural of Greek ἔμϕυτος 'natural, implanted, grafted'.


title: Imp

text: Originating from Germanic faith and stories, the imp was a small lesser demon. Unlike the christian folklore, demons in Germanic legends were not necessarily always evil. Imps were often mischievous rather than evil or harmful and in some religions they were attendants of the gods.


title: Imp

text: A legend in Lincolnshire dating to the 14th-century recounts that the devil, being annoyed with the completion of the cathedral, paid a visit, accompanied by two imps who proceeded to wreak havoc in the building. An angel appeared and ordered them to stop. One turned to throw a rock at the angel and was instantly petrified.


title: Imp

text: While his companion fled, the unfortunate imp remains enslaved by the Angel Choir at the east end of the cathedral.


title: Imp

text: The imp is also depicted on the emblem of the local football team Lincoln City F.C. They are also nicknamed The Imps.


title: Imp

text: Imps are often shown as small in stature and not very attractive. Their behaviour is described as being wild and uncontrollable, much the same as fairies', and in some cultures they are considered the same beings, both sharing the same sense of free spirit and enjoyment of all things fun. It was later in history that people began to associate fairies as being good and imps as being malicious and evil. However, both creatures were fond of pranks and misleading people. Most of the time these pranks were harmless fun, but some could be upsetting and harmful, such as the switching babies or leading travelers astray in places which they were not familiar. Although imps are often thought of as being immortal, they can be damaged or harmed by certain weapons and enchantments, or be kept out of people's homes by wards.


title: Imp

text: Imps were also portrayed as lonely little creatures in search of human attention, using jokes and pranks to attract human friendship. This often backfired when people became annoyed with the imp's endeavours, usually driving it away.


title: Imp

text: Even if the imp was successful in getting the friendship it sought, it still often played pranks on its friend either out of boredom or simply because this was the nature of the imp. This trait led to using the word “impish” for someone who loves pranks and practical jokes. Eventually, it came to be believed that imps were the familiar spirit servants of witches and warlocks, where the little demons served as spies and informants. During the time of the witch hunts, supernatural creatures such as imps were sought out as proof of witchcraft, though often the so-called imp was merely a black cat, lizard, toad or some other form of uncommon pet.


title: Imp

text: Imps have also been described as being “bound” or contained in some sort of object such as a sword or crystal ball. In other cases imps were simply kept in a certain object and summoned only when their masters had need of them. Some even had the ability to grant their owner's wishes much like a genie. This was the object of the 1891 story "The Bottle Imp" by Robert Louis Stevenson, which told of an imp contained in a bottle that would grant the owner their every wish, but their soul would be sent to Hell if they didn't sell the bottle to a new owner before their death.


title: Imp

text: Imps can be found in art and architecture throughout the world, most of the time carefully and painstakingly hidden and only being found by the most interested and observant of people.


title: University at Buffalo

text: The State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly called the University at Buffalo (UB) and sometimes called SUNY Buffalo, is a public research university with campuses in Buffalo and Amherst, New York. The university was founded in 1846 as a private medical college and merged with the State University of New York system in 1962. It is one of the two flagship institutions of the SUNY system. As of fall 2020, the university enrolled 32,347 students in 13 schools and colleges, making it the largest and most comprehensive public university in the state of New York.


title: University at Buffalo

text: Since its founding by a group which included future United States President Millard Fillmore, the university has evolved from a small medical school to a large research university. Today, in addition to the College of Arts and Sciences, the university houses the largest state-operated medical school, dental school, education school, business school, engineering school, and pharmacy school, and is also home to SUNY's only law school. UB has the largest enrollment, largest endowment, and most research funding among the universities in the SUNY system. The university offers bachelor's degrees in over 140 areas of study, as well as over 220 master's programs and over 95 doctoral programs, and 55 combined degree programs. The University at Buffalo and the University of Virginia are the only colleges founded by people who became United States Presidents.


title: University at Buffalo

text: The University at Buffalo is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". In 1989, UB was elected to the Association of American Universities, a selective group of major research universities in North America. UB's alumni and faculty have included five Nobel laureates, five Pulitzer Prize winners, one head of government, two astronauts, three billionaires, one Academy Award winner, one Emmy Award winner, and Fulbright Scholars.


title: University at Buffalo

text: The University at Buffalo intercollegiate athletic teams are the Bulls. They compete in Division I of the NCAA and are members of the Mid-American Conference.