In the grad­u­ate depart­ment where I once taught fresh­men and sopho­mores the rudi­ments of col­lege Eng­lish, it became com­mon prac­tice  to include Shakespeare’s Titus Andron­i­cus on many an Intro to Lit syl­labus, along with a view­ing of Julie Taymor’s flam­boy­ant film adap­ta­tion. The ear­ly work is thought to be Shakespeare’s first tragedy, cob­bled togeth­er from pop­u­lar Roman his­to­ries and Eliz­a­bethan revenge plays. And it is a tru­ly bizarre play, swing­ing wild­ly in tone from clas­si­cal tragedy, to satir­i­cal dark humor, to com­ic farce, and back to tragedy again. Crit­ic Harold Bloom called Titus “an exploita­tive par­o­dy” of the very pop­u­lar revenge tragedies of the time—its mur­ders, maim­ings, rapes, and muti­la­tions pile up, scene upon scene, and leave char­ac­ters and readers/audiences reel­ing in grief and dis­be­lief from the shock­ing body count.

Part of the fun of teach­ing Titus is in watch­ing stu­dents’ jaws drop as they real­ize just how bloody-mind­ed the Bard is. While Taymor’s adap­ta­tion takes many mod­ern lib­er­ties in cos­tum­ing, music, and set design, its hor­ror-show depic­tion of Titus’ unre­lent­ing may­hem is faith­ful to the text. Lat­er, more mature plays rein in the exces­sive black com­e­dy and shock fac­tor, but the bod­ies still stack up. As accus­tomed as we are to think­ing of con­tem­po­rary enter­tain­ments like Game of Thrones as espe­cial­ly gra­tu­itous, the whole of Shakespeare’s cor­pus, writes Alice Vin­cent at The Tele­graph is “more gory” than even HBO’s squirm-wor­thy fan­ta­sy epic, fea­tur­ing a total of 74 deaths in 37 plays to Game of Thrones’ 61 in 50 episodes.

All of those var­i­ous demis­es will now come togeth­er in a com­pendi­um play being staged at The Globe (in Lon­don) called The Com­plete Deaths. It will include every­thing “from ear­ly rapi­er thrusts to the more elab­o­rate viper-breast appli­ca­tion adopt­ed by Cleopa­tra.” The only death direc­tor Tim Crouch has exclud­ed is “that of a fly that meets a sticky end in Titus Andron­i­cus.” In the info­graph­ic above, see all of the caus­es of those deaths, includ­ing Antony and Cleopa­tra’s snakebite and Titus Andron­i­cus’ piece-de-resis­tance, “baked in a pie.”

Part of the rea­son so many of my for­mer under­grad­u­ate stu­dents found Shakespeare’s bru­tal­i­ty shock­ing and unex­pect­ed has to do with the way his work was tamed by lat­er 17th and 18th cen­tu­ry crit­ics, who “didn’t approve of the on-stage gore.” The Tele­graph quotes direc­tor of the Shake­speare Insti­tute Michael Dob­son, who points out that Eliz­a­bethan dra­ma was espe­cial­ly grue­some; “the Eng­lish dra­ma was noto­ri­ous for on-stage deaths,” and all of Shakespeare’s con­tem­po­raries, includ­ing Christo­pher Mar­lowe and Ben Jon­son, wrote vio­lent scenes that can still turn our stom­achs.

Recent pro­duc­tions like a bloody stag­ing of Titus at The Globe in 2014 are restor­ing the gore in Shakespeare’s work, and The Com­plete Deaths will leave audi­ences with lit­tle doubt that Shakespeare’s cul­ture was as per­me­at­ed with rep­re­sen­ta­tions of vio­lence as our own—and it was as much, if not more so, plagued by the real thing.

via The Tele­graph/Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Shake­speare Cours­es: Primers on the Bard from Oxford, Har­vard, Berke­ley & More

Read All of Shakespeare’s Plays Free Online, Cour­tesy of the Fol­ger Shake­speare Library

Shakespeare’s Rest­less World: A Por­trait of the Bard’s Era in 20 Pod­casts

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

1949’s Death of a Sales­man is one of the most endur­ing plays in the Amer­i­can canon, a sta­ple of both com­mu­ni­ty and pro­fes­sion­al the­ater.

Play­wright Arthur Miller recalled that when the cur­tain fell on the first per­for­mance, there were “men in the audi­ence sit­ting there with hand­ker­chiefs over their faces. It was like a funer­al.”

Robert Falls, Artis­tic Direc­tor of Chicago’s Good­man The­ater, brings the expe­ri­ence of dozens of pro­duc­tions to bear when he describes it as the only play that “sends men weep­ing into the Men’s room.”

Small won­der that the tit­u­lar part has become a grail of sorts for aging lead­ing men eager to be tak­en seri­ous­ly. Dustin Hoff­man, George C. Scott, and Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man have all had a go at Willy Loman, a role still asso­ci­at­ed with the tow­er­ing Lee J. Cobb, who orig­i­nat­ed it.

(Willy’s wife, Lin­da, with her famous grave­side admo­ni­tion that “atten­tion must be paid,” is con­sid­ered no less of a plum part.)

On Feb­ru­ary 2, 1955, Arthur Miller joined Salesman’s first Mrs. Loman, Mil­dred Dun­nock, to read selec­tions from the script before a live audi­ence at Manhattan’s 92nd Street YMCA. In addi­tion to read­ing the role of Willy Loman, Miller sup­plied stage direc­tions and explained his ratio­nale for pick­ing the fea­tured scenes. The Pulitzer Prize winner’s New York accent and brusque man­ner make him a nat­ur­al, and of course, who bet­ter to under­stand the nuances, moti­va­tions, and his­tor­i­cal con­text of this trag­i­cal­ly flawed char­ac­ter?

Miller told The New York­er that he based Loman on his fam­i­ly friend, Man­ny New­man:

Man­ny lived in his own mind all the time. He nev­er got out of it. Every­thing he said was total­ly unex­pect­ed. Peo­ple regard­ed him as a kind of strange, com­plete­ly untruth­ful per­son­al­i­ty. Very charm­ing. I thought of him as a kind of won­der­ful inven­tor. For exam­ple, at will, he would sud­den­ly say, “That’s a love­ly suit you have on.” And for no rea­son at all, he’d say, “Three hun­dred dol­lars.” Now, every­body knew he nev­er paid three hun­dred dol­lars for a suit in those days. At a par­ty, he would lie down on his wife’s lap and pre­tend to be suck­ing her breast. He’d curl up on her lap—she was an immense woman. It was crazy. At the same time, there was some­thing in him which was ter­ri­bly mov­ing. It was very mov­ing, because his suf­fer­ing was right on his skin, you see.

If Miller and Dunnock’s per­for­mance leaves you hun­gry for more, you can see her and Lee J. Cobb reprise their roles on tele­vi­sion in a 1966 CBS pro­duc­tion. See Act 1 above, and Act 2 here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Camus Talks About Adapt­ing Dos­toyevsky for the The­atre, 1959

Hear Antonin Artaud’s Cen­sored, Nev­er-Aired Radio Play: To Have Done With The Judg­ment of God (1947)

Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade Pushed the Bound­aries of The­ater, and Still Does

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her play, Fawn­book, is now play­ing in New York City . Fol­low her @AyunHalliday