Shakespeare Important Quotes And Characters- Titus Andronicus

Front 1

Noble patricians, patrons of my right
Defend the justice of my cause with arms
And countrymen, my loving followers,
Plead my succesive title with your swords
I am his firstborn son that was the last
The wore the imperial diadem of Rome
Then let my father's honors live in me
Nor wrong mine age with this indignity

Back 1

Saturninus, saying why he should be emperor, after his father, Caeasar, has died. Shakespeare likes to open his plays with public declarations

Front 2

Now madam, are you prisoner to an emperor
To him that for your honor and your state
Will use you nobly, and your followers

Back 2

Titus Andronicus- telling Tamora she gets to be a prisoner of ROME- again shows how he places Rome at such a high level in his life

Front 3

O cruel, irreligious piety!

Back 3

Tamora

Front 4

For good Lord Titus' innocence in all,
Whose fury not dissembled speaks his griefs,
Then at my suit look graciously on him.
Lose not so noble a friend on vain suppose,
Nor with sour looks afflict his gentle heart
......
Lest, then, the people, and patricians too,
Upon a just survey take Titus' part
And so supplant you for ingratitude
Which Rome reputes a heinous sin

Back 4

Tamora - shows she knows how Rome works

Front 5

Titus, I am now incorporate in Rome,
A Roman now adopted happily,
And must advise the Emperor for his good.
This day all quarrels die Andronicus

Back 5

Tamora. THe use of the word incorporate shows that there has been a Roman/Goth fusion= metamorphesis. This a has created a "monstrous" fusion- meaning that Rome is now a monster.

Front 6

Now climbeth Tamora Olympus' top,
Safe ouf of Fortune's shot, and sits aloft,
Secure of thunder's crack or lightening flash,
Advanced above pale Envy's threatening reach.
As when the golden sun salutes the moon
....
"So Tamora."

Back 6

Aaron's opening speech-set in iambic pentameter. The "So Tamora." is more effective because it cuts of iambic pentameter- used to call attention
Simile: "As when the golden sun.."-compare event in natural world-magnifies

Front 7

And why should he despair that knows to court it
With word, fair looks, and liberality?
What, hast thou full often struck a doe
And borne her cleanly by the keeper's nose?

Back 7

Demetrius
Speaks of Lavinia as if she is a deer- dehumanizes her- she belongs to someone else, so they are "poaching" her.
Erotic desire is often figured in a venereal nature: the hunt. This metaphor is literalized here because they will actually hunt her. Perhaps calling attention to the type of language used to convey erotic desire

Front 8

The hunt is up, the moon is bright and gray,
The fields are fragrant, and the woods are green. Uncouple here, and let us make a bay
And wake the EMperor and his lovely bride

Back 8

Titus- describing the hunt and the world they are in

Front 9

That you affect, and so must you resolve,
That what you cannot as you would achieve,
You must perforce accomplish as you may.

Back 9

Aaron- Line shows how theatre is highly rhetorical (work is done by language). Language has the ability to conjure realities

Front 10

My lovely Aaron, wherefore look'st thou sad,
When everything doth make a gleeful boast?
The birds chant melody on every bush,
The snakes lies rolled in the cheerful sun,
The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind
And make a checkered shadow on the ground.....
Our pastimes done, possess a golden slumber,
Whiles hounds and horns and sweet mmelodius birds
Be unto us as is a nurse's song
Of lullaby to bring her babe asleep

Back 10

Tamora- describes their evil deeds using nature- seems pleasant

Front 11

Have I not reason, think you, to look pale?
These two have ticed me hither to this place,
A barren, detested vale you see it;
The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean,
Overcome with moss and baleful mistletoe

Back 11

Tamora- telling her sons Demetrius and Chiron how Bassania and Lavinia are making her life miserable. Using nature to describe- making it UNPLEASANT

-Bare stage allows it to be two different things. Gives you an index into what people are thinking, and their interpretation of what their environment is

Front 12

Who have we here? Rome's royal empress,
Unfurnished of her well-beseeming troop?
Or is it Dian, habited like her,
Who hath abandoned her holy groves
To see the general hunting in this forest?

Back 12

Bassanius- (brother of Saturninus, husband of Lavinia, seconde eldest son to Caesar)- teasing Tamora, stepping on her dignity

Front 13

O, how the monster seen those lily hands
Tremble like aspen leaves upon a lute
And make silken strings delight to kiss them for his life.

Back 13

Marcus (Titus' brother, tribune in Rome)- speech when he discovers Lavinia, using TREE IMAGERY to describe.
-uses artifical language to describe- perhaps allows us to understand his intense grief (grief is also sensationalized, not just violence)

Front 14

Who is this? My niece, that fies away so fast?-
Cousin, a word. Where is your husband?
If I do dream, would all my wealth would wake me.
If I do wake, some planet strike me down
That I may slumber an eternal sleep.

Back 14

Marcus- upon discovering Lavinia.
Why isn’t Marcus helping this suffering girl? Time has to stop slightly, so that we can see the magnitude of Marcus’ reaction to Lavinia’s wounds. As if it was a freeze frame, with a voice over. Poetic expression takes lots of time to express emotion.

Front 15

Why, tis no matter, man. If they did hear,
They would not mark me; if they did mark,
They would not pity me. Yet plead I must,
And bootless unto them.
Therefore I tell my sorrows to the stones,
Who, though they cannot answer my distress,
Yet in some sort they are better than the Tribunes.....

Back 15

Titus talking to the stones and Marcus. About how Rome has gone against him and he talks to stones for comfort. The people who once supported him have turned their backs on him. Titus is unaccomodated, unloved. He is trying to find some connections with the natural world. He is also becoming slightly crazy

Front 16

O brother, speak with possibility,
And do not break into these deep extremes.

Back 16

Marcus-
Marcus tries to keep Titus’ mind in reason. Titus used many metaphors, he is the sea, then the Earth. His mind is becoming de-centered and he can’t centralize his thoughts

Front 17

She's with the lion deeply still in league,
And lulls him whilst she playeth on her back;
And when he sleeps will she do what she list.
You are a young hunstman. Marcus; let alone.

Back 17

TItus-
the scene where the young Lucius delivers the amour and presents to Chrion and Demitrius. There is irony in the speech because when Titus tells Young Lucius there is another way, there could be two ways. One way where in the next generation he does not use violence, or the literal way that Titus does mean. He will show the Young Lucius a cunning way to extract true revenge.

Front 18

"But"? How if that fly had a father and mother?
How would he hang his slender gilded wings
And buzz lamenting doings in the ait!
Poor harmless fly,
That, with his pretty buzzing melody,
Came here to make us merry!
And thou hast killed him.

Back 18

The Young Lucius is freaked out because the disfigured Lavinia is trying to grab his books. Marcus then kills a fly. And Titus gets angry at this act of Cruelty against a fly which may in fact have family.

Front 19

Pardon me, sir. It was a black, ill-favored fly,
Like to the Empress' Moor. Therefore I killed him.

Back 19

Marcus-
Titus then changes his mind and condones the killing of the fly.
What you get in a radical oscillation. He has intense sympathy, but also intense hate. Sympathy for others who die, but he can’t see a way to be sympathetic to the Moor and therefore he can never truly see the redemptive quality of the moment. He can’t learn a beneficial lesson from the evil that has been done unto himself. His brutal personality takes over again when Marcus compares the innocent fly to the Black Moor.