We're talking today about Titus Andronicus. Okay, so like the six lectures which are already on iTunes,

these lectures are each going to be about an individual Shakespeare play, and I'm going to try and

approach it by a kind of meta-question. So I'm going to try and distill what criticism has been

interested in into one question, often a question which seems ridiculously oversimplified,

but to try and use that as a way of showing some of the different things we might try and do

when we study Shakespeare plays.

So I hope that the question is going to be a starting point for you to think about

how you might approach this play and what you might do with it in relation to other plays.

The first one I want to talk about is Titus Andronicus, a play written probably in 1593,

the first play of Shakespeare is to go into print in 1594.

The question I've chosen for Titus Andronicus is, why doesn't Marcus give Lavinia first aid?

Okay, why doesn't Marcus give Lavinia first aid?

And I'm going to back up and talk a bit about the play and why that's a question.

I'm not expecting you when you come to these lectures, particularly to have read the play,

and I hope that the way I talk about it will give you enough sense of the context to make sense of the points.

So, let's back up and talk about what's happening in Titus Andronicus.

So as many of you will know, Titus and Aronacus is a Roman play which begins with two interwoven

plot lines in a tightly packed and unbroken, long first act.

So the first of those plot lines is about who rules Rome.

So it's got that Roman play interest in rule,

in the qualities of a good ruler,

and in political succession, forms of succession.

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