In Connotations 6.2, Anthony Brian Taylor provides us with an excellent reading of Lucius as" the severely flawed redeemer" in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. Taylor helps the modern reader to reassess Lucius as a character who (unwittingly?) makes farce out of a conventional narrative etiquette that insists a wise ruler may finally impose order on tragic chaos. Additionally, Philip Kolin's reply to Taylor certainly--and thankfully--complicates and updates Titus Andronicus, if only through Kolin's praise of recent criticism that" privileges ambiguity, indeterminacy, and complexity in the script"(95). However, despite these and other fascinating discussions of Titus Andronicus published in Connotations 6.2, 6.3, and 7.1, I found myself getting oddly frustrated with what I felt was the semi-conscious refusal of all involved to read Titus Andronicus outside the familiar binaries of'great art'and'colossal failure.'

In neither of these essays was a new aesthetic for the play to be found, one that might simply begin with a discussion of Lucius in order to more significantly suggest the possibility that young Shakespeare may have developed Titus Andronicus primarily as an experimental and resolutely anti-narrative spectacle as opposed to a carefully-plotted and reference-rich tragedy. Though Taylor could have easily provided the desired new aesthetic in the context of his argument, he did not overtly suggest Lucius was developed and used by Shakespeare in part to rupture or at least threaten the associations and expectations one might bring to a reading of a" tragedy." Indeed, even Kolin, who recognized the" ambiguity" and" indeterminacy" in the text, nevertheless safely maintained the status-quo dividing" great art" from" exploitation" in his insistence that Titus Andronicus was an" aggressively problematic political play rather than a spectacle of violence an early Shakespeare served up to gore-happy Elizabethans"(95). The division between the yahoos and the erudite is maintained in Kolin's analysis, and Shakespeare survives with his genius intact.