Canadian author Crad Kilodney created the “Shakespeare For White Trash” series to make Shakespeare understandable and enjoyable to the many millions of people living now who have little or no knowledge of Shakespeare, and to prove to them that the stories contained in Shakespeare's plays are superb. The plots and characters are unchanged, but everything else has been radically restyled. Read Crad's versions and you will become a Shakespeare fan.&nbsp; Enjoy! Kilodney originally posted his versions on Wordpress.com from 2010 to shortly before his death in 2014. It was the first time that all 38 of Shakespeare’s plays had been rewritten by one author and published in one place. They are re-packaged here to increase the likelyhood of people, like you, finding them. Mr. Kilodney hoped acting companies would be encouraged to stage these plays more often. Gist of the story: Titus Andronicus has returned to Rome after a victorious war against the Goths. The Goth Queen, Tamora, and her three sons are prisoners. The eldest, Alarbus, is executed as a just sacrifice for the loss of 21 of Titus’s sons. The newly-declared Emperor, Saturninus, seeks to marry Lavinia, but she is promised to Bassianus. Bassianus takes her away with the help of Titus’s sons, one of whom, Mutius, is killed by Titus for his disobedience. Saturninus changes his mind and marries Tamora instead. Now suddenly elevated from prisoner to Empress, Tamora plots revenge against the Andronici with the help of the evil Aaron, her Moorish lover. Demetrius and Chiron rape Lavinia, cut off her hands, and cut out her tongue. They also kill her new husband, Bassianus, and throw his body into a pit. Aaron lures Quintus and Martius into the pit and frames them for Bassianus’s murder. He then tricks Titus into giving up one of his hands to save them from execution, but they are executed anyway. Lucius is banished for attempting to rescue them. Titus tells him to go to the Goths and enlist their help. Lavinia has identified her attackers by scratching their names in the sand. Tamora gives birth to Aaron’s baby, which is black. Aaron suspects Titus knows who raped Lavinia. He kills the two witnesses who know about the black baby and then takes him to the Goths, expecting protection. Titus plots revenge. Tamora and her sons disguise themselves as Revenge, Murder, and Rape and attempt to con Titus into stopping Lucius and the Goths from attacking. Tamora assumes Titus is mad and offers to deliver all his enemies at a banquet in his house. But Titus knows who they are. He cons Tamora into leaving her sons behind. Then he and his kinsmen capture them. He kills the sons and uses their bodies to make a meat pie, which he serves to Tamora and Saturninus at the banquet. Titus kills Lavinia to end her suffering. Then he kills Tamora. Saturninus kills Titus, and Lucius kills Saturninus. Aaron, the Moor, who has confessed to all his crimes to spare his baby, is sentenced to a slow death by starvation. Lucius becomes the new Emperor by popular demand. (Titus Andronicus is notorious for its gruesomeness, but it has been a generally popular play. It is quasi-historical in that it is set in Imperial Rome but all the characters are fictitious. The famous scene in which the Empress is fed a meat pie made from the bodies of her sons was suggested to Shakespeare by a story in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Philomela, the sister of Procne, was raped by Procne’s husband, Tereus. For revenge, Procne killed their own child, Itys, and used his body as food for Tereus. Titus is a heroic figure, but he has one defect — an exaggerated and very rigid sense of honour. He represents an old, traditional Roman conservatism that predates the Imperial era (roughly, the first four centures A.D.), which we remember more for its degenerate Emperors, like Nero and Caligula. There is a movie version of the play, Titus, from 1999, produced and directed by Julie Taymor, and starring Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange. Buy it and own it forever. It’s a masterpiece. Divine spirits got into everyone’s heads when they made this movie. It’s beyond excellent. It’s sublime.)

Shakespeare for White Trash -33- Titus Andronicus PDF

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