Reviews for Queen Mary and Harold

The average rating for Queen Mary and Harold based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-07-16 00:00:00 Marc Meertens Literally years after people began suggesting that I do this, I finally got around to reading the damn play. So in the words of Bette Davis: fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night. Because here's TITUS ANDRONICUS, ABRIDGED: TITUS: Man, it's great to be me! I'm an awesome general, all my super-handsome sons are awesome, I have a hot daughter who's engaged to a great guy, and even though the emperor just married my enemy Queen Tamora I'm sure that can never backfire on me! Yessireee, everything's coming up Titus! MARCUS: Hey, brother. So, um...got some bad news. I was walking in the woods, and first I found your daughter's husband's dead body. And then...well, I ran into Lavinia. TITUS: JESUS H. TAPDANCING CHRIST! GROUNDLING 1: Holy shit, where are her hands? GROUNDLING 2: Oh my GOD that is a lot of blood. SHAKESPEARE: That's right, this is all happening. Cannot change the channel, people. AARON: Hey Titus, your sons have been framed for murdering Bassianus, but the emperor will let them go if you cut off your hand. TITUS: Sure thing, here ya go. AARON: JK! Here are their heads, later sucker! TITUS: Okay, it's on now, motherfuckers. AARON: Mwahaha. In case anyone in the audience hasn't caught on, I'm the bad guy because I'm black. Othello isn't for a few more years, folks. Enjoy this. Hey guys! How was raping and mutilating Titus' daughter? DEMETRIUS: Pretty awesome, actually. Good thing Mom let us do that instead of just killing her like Lavinia asked. CHIRON: Good thing the audience has conveniently forgotten that Lavinia's husband already raped her at the beginning of the play! Seriously though, why isn't that a bigger deal? DEMETRIUS: He married her afterwards, so it's okay. Also we made her ugly, which is way worse. NURSE: Good news, Aaron! Tamora just had a baby! The bad news is, he's brown. CHIRON: Wait, if my mom's white, and her husband's white, and you're the only black character in the play, then... ACTUAL LINES FROM THE PLAY: "CHIRON: Thou hast undone our mother. AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother" GROUNDLING 1: OH SNAP! SATURNINUS: Mmm, great dinner, Titus. TITUS: Thanks! But I didn't do it alone, I had a great assistant! Come in here, Lavinia! You've sure had a rough couple of days, but it's all going to be okay soon! Also, since you were raped and dishonored, I have to kill you. Sorry. LAVINIA: God, I hate this play. GROUNDLING 1: WHAT THE FUCK? SATURNINUS: That was odd. Hey Tamora, why didn't your sons come to dinner? TITUS: Well, one might say THEY'RE ALREADY HERE! BWAHAHAHA YOU TOTALLY ATE THEM! I MURDERED AND KILLED YOUR SONS FOR WHAT THEY DID! TAMORA: Wait...so, I just ate- TITUS: I KEEL YOU! SATURNINUS: Kill my wife? I KEEL YOU! LUCIUS: NO, I KEEL YOU! GROUNDLING 2: Holy shit so much blood. LUCIUS: Well, guess that makes me emperor! Going somewhere, Aaron? AARON: Augh! Okay, here's the deal: don't kill my mixed race bastard baby and I'll tell you how I planned the whole thing. LUCIUS: Thanks for your cooperation! Now I'm just going to throw your girlfriend's body to the dogs and bury you chest deep in the ground to starve to death slowly! 'Cause you're the black guy. GROUNDLING 1: Dude. GROUNDLING 2: And you wanted to see Romeo and Juliet THE END.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-08-03 00:00:00 Thomas White Like A Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronicus is part of a grammar-school-educated Shakespeare's crash-course substitute for a university education. In Errors, he imitated Plautine comedy's plot structure and stock characters, and--in an experiment to see just how much fun the form could hold--doubled the number of comic misunderstandings by doubling the number of identical twins. In Titus, he imitates the violent plots and magisterial rhetoric of Senecan tragedy, and--again as an experiment--doubles the horrors. In the process, Shakespeare produces for the first time some highly rhetorical, mythology-laden blank verse which flows with a new musical subtlety, and also succeeds in creating over-the-top language and grisly tableaux as outrageous and overwrought as a blood-spattered baroque ceiling--in other words, exactly the sort of excess that would appeal to an Elizabethan audience. Is the play intentionally funny? Except for an occasional line here and there, I doubt it. At any rate, if it is supposed to be, it fails. Shakespeare lacked the anarchic temperament necessary to exult in evil for its own sake (as Marlowe so effectively did in the "Jew of Malta"). On the contrary, his early villains are the most convincing when they reveal their vulnerability--La Pucelle's terror at her auto da fe, the deformed Gloster's fear of courtly dalliance--not when they revel in their nihilism. Without at least a little love for chaos, there can be no real black comedy, and, if such a love can be deemed an artistic virtue, it is a virtue not found in Shakespeare's character. (Eventually, he would depict the cold manipulative rage of Iago, but it would take ten years of life and craft to give him the tools to do so.) Although I like this play, I don't believe it is successful. The plot is too mechanical and the horrors too insincere. The Moor's passionate defense of his newborn son--a villain displaying his vulnerability--is the only part of this elaborate bloodbath that touches the human heart.