@dipplayer:
You're absolutely right--Deuteronomy is a legalistic book. It's as if passages from the US Code were recovered thousands of years from now as part of a holy book of the Americans. They would find it tedious, uninteresting, and perhaps even worthy of mockery. So what? Nobody in modern Christianity is spending much time on Deuteronomy. That's not what the religion is about."
I don't believe I DID reference Christianity in this thread's description, dipplayer...?
I was having fun with a clearly-absurd and immoral passage from the book many claim as a foundational text of morality...to paraphrase Mark Twain, parents are worried about all the violence and smut in TV and movies...and yet they direct their children to the Bible, where Solomon and his thousands of wives/concubines and this brutal, anti-feminist gem may be found as well. ;)
So to be fair, at the outset, I was NOT tackling Christianity here.
"Seriously, if you wanted to encourage people to read Shakespeare, would you let them use Titus Andronicus as their standard?"
I'M SO GLAD YOU ASKED!
(And instantly, everyone else isn't.) ;)
I actually had "Titus Andronicus" as my first Shakespeare play to study in college years and years ago now...and...yes and no is my answer.
From a moral standpoint would I do so?
Oh yes--as unlike in the Bible, where lopping off limbs is A-OK, in Titus, it's not only a tragedy, but a high, HIGH CRIME; where Deuteronomy says "show her no pity," in Titus, Lavinia losing her boyfriend, brothers, hands, tongue, virginity, and finally her life is one of the heights of dramatic tragedy and empathy in that play...
For all it's violence (and it IS Shakespeare's most bloody and, let's be honest, crude tragedy by far, I think something like 12-15 people die in it) "Titus" is very much a play about the HORRORS of violence, factionalism, and, especially towards the end in a speech Titus gives in which he almost becomes atheistic, about the nihilism of life in the midst of such tragedy and violence.
There are two beautiful speeches that are given, one where Titus, after Marcus tells him to govern his grief with reason, exlaims:
"If there were reason for these miseries,
Then into limits could I bind my woes:
When heaven doth weep, doth not the earth o'erflow?
If the winds rage, doth not the sea wax mad, 1360
Threatening the welkin with his big-swoln face?
And wilt thou have a reason for this coil?
I am the sea; hark, how her sighs do blow! "
And so teeters on the nihilist edge there and thereafter, besides trying to grapple with both reason and intense emotion in that speech and using nature-based metaphors to do so...
And a second, even better speech, a reason I WOULD use it for morality, after Marcus does something so seemingly-inconsequential as kill a fly:
"But how, if that fly had a father and mother?
How would he hang his slender gilded wings,
And buzz lamenting doings in the air!
Poor harmless fly,
That, with his pretty buzzing melody, 1510
Came here to make us merry! and thou hast
kill'd him."
THAT speech is where the moralistic weight of the story stems from, dipplayer...
This man, who had once been the most conservative of Romans...
Who'd been a general, killed thousands in battle, killed his own son to uphold tradition--
NOW, after all that's happened to his poor daughter Lavinia, NOW he realizes...
Those wars he foguth and men he slew--they had families...
Mothers and fathers who must've grieved as he is grieving now...
Violence, war, tradition, all these things which Titus once clung to as pillars...
ALL are shown to be wrong or hollow, and NOT the pillars of a moral life.
They may seem like only two speeches amidst all that seat-selling violence (and yes, let's be honest, it WAS the violence that sold the play, after all, so I'm not arguing that that's not the case) but consider their arrangement:
Both in Act III, Scene 1 and Scene 2, which as just about every professor, actor, director, scholar, and Internet-wannabe-scholar of Shakespeare's tragedies ever has said is the Act where crucial, play-changing, pay=-attention-kids moments occur.
Hamlet's "To be or not to be" followed by his spat wioth Ophelia...
Hamlet stabbing Polonius...
Tybalt slaying Mercutio and Romeo Tybalt...
King Lear's famous, transformative, symbolic scene in the storm...
Macbeth seeing Banquo's ghost while no one else does and flipping his lid...
and so on.
When Shakespeare wants emphasis on something in the middle of his tragedies...
More often than not, he puts these transformative moments in Act III.
So, we get the violence which PRECEDES these speeches in Acts I and II...
But the morals of family, non-violence, and then either a turn towards nihilism or just an abject questioning of what is just at all...
THESE comprise Act III, and these are the moral focal points of Shakespeare's play, dipplayer, so yes, I'd teach it for moral reasons, if I believed in that sort of thing...what's more, I probably don't have to tell you, Shakespeaer's soure material for this play is Ovid's poem largely, so there's stuff to draw off there.
NOW.
If you mean "Would you teach this as the paragon of Shakespeare's works, Obi?" the answer's obviously no, but not because the morals are lacking, but rather just because from a stylistic and literary point of view this play's easily Shakespeare's mot crude tragedy.
Granted I don't at all think it's his worst (I think it's themes, Gothic atmosphere, and intensity make it more enjoyable than, say, "Julius Caesar," and I might note that the famous "Friends, Romans, Countrymen" speech there is ALSO in Act III, continuing my point on emphasis there) but it's by no means his best.
The Core Four (Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear) are all so much better comparing Titus to them is almost like comparing this take on Titus and Shakespeare to T.S. Eliot, George Orwell, and Harold Bloom's best essays on him (and yes, Bloom dislikes Titus, I'll address that point in a moment) and then Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, those are both ahead as well...Coriolanus...hmmm...I'd have to think about that one, but you get my point, NO, stylistically, Titus Andronicus isn't Shakespeare's best.
BUT...nevertheless...
I WOULD teach it in high school over, say, any of the Core Four, save perhaps Macbeth.
"But that's insanity, Obi, you just said they're far, FAR better plays!"
And they are...but they're also better in part because they're far, far more mature and complex plays, in their composition, characters, and themes...and far too many people get lsot or frustrated with Shakespeare right off the bat because they can't understand the long speeches of Hamlet or why King Lear is such a tragic figure...
They get started off with the gems, sure, but that's like taking me and expecting me to do B/C Level Calculus when I can barely solve for X and Y squared, as it were.
I'll just get frustrated, understandably not be ABLE to understand, and quit.
And then I'll miss out on all the beauties Calculus has to offer, right?'
So, teach Titus--PACKED full of action, it's not AT ALL dull (that's one thing, like it or hate it, you have to say about it) or slow-paced, the conflict's easier to comprehend, perhaps, than other Shakespeare plays for a beginner, the language is simpler and less ornate...it's also not as sharp adn not nearly as good as the Core Four, but that's why this is a good stepping stone play, to get your feet wet with a Shakespeare play where there's plenty of action, easier language, and it IS shorter than several of the other, better tragedies (excluding the one of the Core Four I excluded from my "Don't teach to beginners" list, that is, "Macbeth," which is of course the shortest Shakespearean tragedy and is the other tragedy I'd recommend teaching first, as it is the shortest, is one of the best, and also has plenty of action...it's more complex, but also shorter, so it's a trade-off for first-time Shakespeare students, I suppose, which they'd prefer, a shorter, more complex play, or slightly longer, simpler, but not nearly as good play.)
"How barbaric that work is!"
See the above on why that's not only not the case, but a BAD misreading of the work, in my opinion.
(And before someone starts--show me where in Deuteronomy chopping off a woman's hand is shown to be BAD, and I'll agree I misread it...but as you said, it's legalistic, so to be fair, another example...show me where God, Moses, or anyone says "Gee, that was a crummy thing we did, killing the sick, elderly, and the children of the Amalekites" and I'll agree that I misread that little genocidal passage. Again, I don't have a problem with VIOLENCE in stories...I'm a Shakespeare fan, after all...I have a problem with what sort of violence is endorsed, against whom, WHY it is endorsed and, indeed, if it IS endorsed at all or, as is the case in Titus, if violence is shown to be a terrible, terrible thing, so terrible that the once-great general Titus laments the mere swatting of a FLY, so terrible is the cost of violence and so precious the ties of family.)
"Or King Henry Sixth! Tedium!"
...Yeah...a bit...lol...maybe it's because I'm not a resident of the UK and thus it's not my history, but as much as I love Shakespeare and Henry VI Parts 1-3 are decent plays...yeah, they CAN get a bit tedious, you do have to be honest about that (but hey, it caps off with Richard III, which is fun-fun-fun, especially ion the Ian McKellan version where he REALLY plays up the whole "Yeah, I'm the villain...and I'm gonna have FUN WITH THIS, DAMN IT!" angle, lol...)
"There can't possibly be anything to this Shakespeare guy, if you want to focus on those."
I DEFINITELY disagree, as I've already said, especially with regards to "Titus."
"But, no, you'd point them to Macbeth, to Hamlet, to Lear, to Twelfth Night, to Midsummer Night's Dream. In the same way, if you want to talk about the Bible, talk about Genesis, about the Gospels, the Psalms, Isaiah, Job, 1 Samuel and 1 Corinthians."
1. I think I've effectively disproven your theory by now that I WOULD point to just those plays, or plays like them, and not to other, "less desirable" plays such as you listed, by virtue of me, well, just giving a very, very short (and believe me, comparatively, that IS a short) defense of their Shakespearean quality...
2. For fairness' sake, I'll give the best argument against "Titus" (since if we do the Henrys we'll be here forever) I know, namely, Harold Bloom's, wherein he essentially argues that A. this is a money-making revenger's tragedy, not really intended as a work of art, and B. any attempt to argue there is artistry behind it is undercut by the extreme violence, over-the-top situations, and moments of sheer comedic camp (the best example--and the one he uses--being where hand-less Lavinia carries the severed hand of her father in her mouth like a dog.) My response, VERY quickly, as this is already Shakespearean in length as far as responses go (and my GOOD laptop is fixed now, so as soon as this post is done I can switch back finally, hooray) would be A. you can make the same charge that Hamlet is "just a revenger's tragedy" as, well, it is a revenger's tragedy in it's most basic form (something T.S. Eliot takes issue with a bit in his own essay "Hamlet and His Problems," which is probably the best and one of the most famous critiques against the de facto pearl among pearls in the Shakespearean canon, but one revenger's tragedy and high-brow literary critique at a time) and so just because it IS a revenger's tragedy and thus WAS designed to draw people with that same formula as that's what sold doesn't mean that there aren't themes or characters which flesh that form out and make it work, as is obviously the case with "Hamlet" for most, and B. Bloom's argument that the over-the-top violence and camp comedy elements under-cut any real tragedy or genuine moments is an understandable criticism, and does have a definite amount of weight to it, but I wouldn't at all go so far as to say it destroys the ability to take the play seriously or find anything besides bawdy violence, rape, and genuinely-odd moments trying to pass for comedy...after all, to take that other, very violent, short play I'd teach to introduce people to Shakespeare, "Macbeth," THERE is featured a seemingly-out-of-place seen in which, just after Duncan is murdered and just before things really start getting out of hand, there's the infamous scene with the character of The Porter who, well, essentially shows up, is very, very drunk, spouts off quite a bit, does just about anything for even the cheapest laugh, and then exits without further context or consequence. It's just as much a "What the HELL?" moment as Lavinia carrying her father's severed hand in her miuth like a dog, and there are not one but two complementary explanations for the existence of both scenes--Shakespeare likes to show that even in the midst of tragic moments there ARE moments of irony and humor (and vice versa with comedies, that even in silly moments there can be moments of seriousness) and, of course, Shakespeare again also needed to attract people to the theatre, so throwing in the odd comedic scene or display of violence helped...after all, he WAS competing with the next door neighbors, who had bear baitings at their place next to the Globe, so this was the level of entertainment you had to compete with and, arguably, pander with occaisionally to make money. If you're like Bloom, you'd probably argue that it was more pandering and less art; in both cases, I think the form of one serves the function of the other, that is, yes, both scenes are pandering a bit, but they DO also serve, in a comedic fashion, serious themes in their plays--the Porter's drunken state and haphazard attitude may easily be seen as a metaphor for the crazed political climate at the moment, and we certainly see Macbeth "drunk on power" later on in the play, whereas, silly as it looks, Lavinia carrying her father's hand like that ties in a bit with the theme of family--Titus and Lavinia have now both lost their limbs and, essentially, their livelihood, but they still (for the moment) have each other, and that compensates for their lack of limbs at this moment.
3. Hamlet, Lear, Twelfth Night and then probably The Taming of the Shrew or Much Ado About Nothing over A Midsummer Night's Dream (I like it, of course, but do think it's a tad overrated, the same way I think "Antony and Cleopatra" is sadly underrated) and you HAVE to have Richard III or Henry V in there, but whatever. :p
4. To take just your list before I say why I utterly, utterly, utterly disagree:
Genesis--really? You'd take where the logical and moral failings all start? Not to mention how utterly tedious those geneologies are (and yes, I get the point of them, just like the Henry VI plays, though, that doesn't stop them from being just a tad tedious.)
The Gospels--Better than Genesis, I guess, but not saying much, and they're of drastically differing quality...Matthew and Luke, to me, seem far better written than Mark or John (NOT a fan of John at all, but that's probably a given) and yet most scholars would say Mark is the oldest...in any case, I'll concede that, like Genesis, they're all necessary reading for grappling with the West in any real cultural sense, and they ARE all better than Genesis, but while I'd again give Matthew and Luke/Luke-Acts (if we take the theory it's the same author and thus one large texts or two texts that act as a sort of two-parter, as it were) a few extra points over the other two on just the basis of their literary and (attempted) moralistic quality.
The Psalms--no complaints there, there are some genuinely good poems and ideas expressed there...some ideas I don't like, either, but then that's sort of a given with me and the Bible at this point, now, isn't it? ;) I WOULD say there's an issue taking the Psalms, but not at all due to their quality, and I'll say why in a bit.
Isaiah--eh...I understand why it's important prophetically, but even still, not a fan...
Job--Oh, I LOVE JOB, but for all the wrong reasons, lol, for me, that book almost ITSELF provides a moral argument for not following this so-called loving God (and I know that's not the intent of the book--though it'd be hilarious if it WAS actually written by some Bronze Age-atheist trying to write a parody, because that's honestly what the book feels like, a parody of just what a complete and total ass God is in his "relationship" with man, here personified by his essentially killing off Job's family and doing other unspeakable things to him TO WIN A BET...WITH *SATAN!* xD Come on, now, THAT is pretty funny, and if it weren't part of the Bible...doesn't that sound almost like a parody of God that an atheist might make? The book even opens with God and Satan just sort of strolling up to one another as if at the Cosmic Water Cooler...
"Hey, Satan, check out my main man Job! He looooooves me so much...love that guy!"
"Betcha 50 bucks I can get him to hate you by totally ruining his life and killing his family."
"You are SO ON!"
;)
And yes, I KNOW that's not the intent of the book, I'm just saying, it's hilarious in it's own right, it almost seems like a Monty Python spoof of the Bible...I WILL credit the actual text's intent for at least TRYING to tackle the Problem of Evil, and, indeed, admitting that it IS a question to be asked, why a good, loving God would allow bad things to happen to good people, and I like that it's almost structured in the form of a Socratic Dialogue in parts with Job and his hilariously-cruel friends...it naturally falls short for me when essentially God's response to all this is "HOW DARE YOU QUESTION ME! I DID A, B, C, D, I DO E, F, G, G, H, WHAT DO YOU KNOW?!" when, in fact, science tells us now God does NOT do those things (at least not that we can tell) and it doesn't really answer Job's question beyond "How dare you question me, I'm GOD!" which I suppose IS the answer--or one--the text provides...so in fairness, YES, I LOVE the Book of Job, for all the wrong reasons, true, but also because I do give it credit for at least trying to tackle the issue, and it DOES stray from the general formula of a lot of OT narratives...which lends to it feeling so odd and different in places--case in point, Satan just sort of strolling up to God and the two making a bet, that's really something you could see the GREEK gods doing more than the Judeo-Christian deities, so that combined with the Socratic nature of the dialogue makes me wonder if there might have been some Greek influence on the text--yet it's because it's so different from the rest of what I consider good words attached to varying degrees of story achievement and moral or immoral teaching.)
1 Samuel...oy...don't get me started on the Amalekites thing again, lest SC and I start another war over that little infanticide/genocide-laden passage that god condones and orders (as opposed to Shakespeare, who has Macduff act rightfully appalled and full of sorrow followed by resigned rage after Macbeth kills all HIS little children...and Shakespeare's implication Richard III kills his nephews and thus also commits infanticide and is ALSO painted as a wicked villain by that point...so yeah, at least twice bloody, bloody Shakespeare condemns infanticide, and twice--Exodus with the first-borns of Egypt and here in 1 Samuel--God says it's A-OK, just as long as it's the "right" kids that are being killed...uh-huh..."
1 Corinthians--I'll be honest and say THAT one I haven't read yet, as by the time it was time to do so this semester I had 2 finals and 2 17 page papers to write and turn in, so that one got skipped over, and I won't unfairly knock a work I haven't read (I made that mistake with the better-than-expected-though-it-still-fell-short "The Hunger Games" when I bashed that here before actually reading it, won't do that again, lol) so we'll see if I can get to that one this break.
OK, dipplayer.
If THAT isn't a thorough response...then at least it makes up for it by being tl;dr for everyone not seeking a cure for insomnia. ;)
And so I post, and will be right back on my other laptop...exit, stage right... ;)