Delicious Cannibalism – Titus feeds Tamora her own sons in Titus Andronicus

Horror Moments, Shakespeare Edition

[Spoilers: Titus Andronicus (1592), The Merchant of Venice (1596), Theatre of Blood (1973)]

‘Horror Moments’ is a series examining horror-inflected scenes and themes in unexpected places. The ‘moments’ are published weekly on Thursday mornings, and I share bonus content on the history of magic, theatre, storytelling, and more on Monday afternoons – don’t forget to subscribe!

Act V scene 3 of Titus Andronicus brings the cycle of revenge that we’ve been following in our last few horror moments to its violent climax. It’s a ludicrous, audacious end to Shakespeare’s first attempt at tragedy where the audience hardly knows whether to laugh, scream, or cry.

Titus turns up, dressed as a cook, to a dinner where his remaining enemies are waiting to be served. Unbeknownst to Tamora, he has already murdered her sons, Chiron and Demetrius, who raped and mutilated his daughter, Lavinia. The audience has watched Titus string them up, cut their throats, and bleed them like pigs whilst the tongueless, handless Lavinia held the bowl that caught their blood between her stumps.

Now, having spent some time in the kitchen disposing of the bodies, Titus is enjoying himself as he plays the chef. Many productions have him adopt an outlandish French accent (I haven’t yet seen him played like the Swedish chef from The Muppets but that would be amazing).

It’s all very jolly and everyone is enjoying the pie he has baked them until suddenly, and seemingly with her consent, he kills his daughter Lavinia in front of them all.

The guests are, understandably, shocked:

TAMORA

Why hast thou slain thine only daughter thus?

TITUS ANDRONICUS

Not I; 'twas Chiron and Demetrius:
They ravish'd her, and cut away her tongue;
And they, 'twas they, that did her all this wrong.

Tamora, naturally, has no reply to this. She knows he’s telling the truth, but can’t admit this in front of everyone else. Her husband, the emperor, calls out

SATURNINUS

Go fetch them hither to us presently.

Now comes the punchline to the play’s sickest joke:

TITUS ANDRONICUS

Why, there they are both, baked in that pie;
Whereof their mother daintily hath fed,
Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred.
'Tis true, 'tis true; witness my knife's sharp point.

Here the actress playing Tamora usually starts gagging and forcing her fingers down her throat.

Titus savours this reaction and then, to crown his last act of revenge, he kills her. The emperor immediately stabs him in return and there, within breaths of each other, the two antagonists around whom all this horror has swirled are gone. Tamora and Titus lie dead and bloodied beside the pitifully bandaged body of Lavinia and the apparently delicious remains of Chiron and Demetrius.

If you want to find out who survives the ensuing massacre, you’ll have to watch the play. Each production shapes its own interpretation of the ending, some hopeful for a future purged of violence, some indicating that it will one day start all over again.

I began this Shakespeare edition of horror moments with the pound of flesh scene from The Merchant of Venice, exploring how the wonderful horror comedy Theatre of Blood delights in showing us a gory death that a character escapes in the original play.

You’d think that with Titus Andronicus it’d be impossible to make a scene more disgusting than Shakespeare intended, but the film does a pretty good job of trying.

Spurned actor Edward Lionheart, played by Vincent Price (who is loving every second), is seven murders deep in his spree of killing unappreciative critics in the manner of Shakespearean deaths. His attention now turns to one Meredith Merridew.

The flamboyantly camp Merridew becomes the ‘queen’ Tamora of the cannibal-pie scene (I know, I know, it’s a 70s movie), but he escapes being fed actual human flesh. Instead, his two poodles, his ‘babies’, are minced and funnelled directly into his mouth. Unlike Tamora, who spits out the few mouthfuls of the meal before being stabbed to death, Merridew is force-fed to suffocation. Tamora’s torment suddenly looks far more psychological: it’s the idea of what she’s done that horrifies her, she isn’t having pink sludge piped down her throat.

Strangely enough, Lionheart’s scenery-chewing turn as the chef is almost identical to the performances actors are usually directed to give when playing Titus in this scene. As so often happens in Theatre of Blood, we find that Lionheart does in fact know his Shakespeare inside out and understands the original spirit of the scenes he gleefully reshapes into murder set pieces.

As we explored last week, Titus has gone beyond caring for his life or his future and has decided to enjoy himself, knowing that his story is coming to an end. He and Lavinia are about to leave their suffering behind forever – why not put on some silly costumes and voices and go out with a flourish? Likewise, this will be Lionheart’s last murder in the film.

And it’s our last murder in this series! I hope you have enjoyed this batch of horror moments. If you haven’t already, why not go back and read my last set which explored horror moments in the Wallace & Gromit films.

I’ll be taking a two-week break for Christmas so the next series of horror moments will begin on 30^th December just in time to herald in the new year. What’s coming next? All I’ll say is:

It’s in the trees! it’s coming!

Until then, be careful who you accept a mince pie from and happy (Christmas) nightmares everyone!

Horror moments are posted every Thursday and a wide variety of articles exploring the history of magic, theatre, storytelling, and more are published on Monday afternoons.