After the break are excerpts from a few of the emails I sent Elli in the course the past two days, as I struggled to write about a specific motif in Shakespeare’s notoriously grisly revenge play, Titus Andronicus.
warning: uncharacteristically salty language!
_____________________________________
Now I have to go figure out how to write an essay about Titus Andronicus that doesn’t consist solely of the phrase “Dude, that shit’s fucked up.”
_____________________________________
After re-examining Titus, considering it in light of the secondary texts, thinking through some framing motifs, and plucking out a few salient quotes, I reiterate my thesis: No, man, that’s some fucked-up shit. For reals.
Gosh, my prof will just love that essay.
_____________________________________
Oh my god I’m still up why am I up oh god
_____________________________________
Ha, I just typed the phrase “With his gravitas removed, Titus….”
Uh, I think I meant, “stripped of his gravitas, Titus…” It wasn’t removed, like some sort of operation, like a gravitas-ectomy. Hey, Titus, is your gravitas actin’ up still? Naw, they took it out. I got it in a jar on the shelf, next to my appendix.
Yeah, def. time for bed now.
_____________________________________
macbebekin.wordpress.com 
Word.
I took Shakespeare a complete year as an undergraduate–two professors–we never read Titus Andronicus. I love Shakespeare and right now I don’t think I ever read Titus Andronicus which could mean that I have amenesia (-: Must be grad school material…
Or it could have been that in the 60s the prof was tired of getting papers that said, “man, that’s far out.”
(-: LOL
I don’t even like to think about this play.
It really makes me uncomfortable and twitchy. Stumbling upon a particularly grisly scene on HBO (from the Anthony Hopkins version) a few years ago didn’t help matters. I didn’t need that visual.