Worse than Philomel, Worse than Actaeon: Hyperreal Ovid in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus

This chapter engages with various postmodern theories of adaptation (Douglas Lanier’s Shakespearean Rhizomatics in particular) in order to explore how Shakespeare reshaped his source material from Ovid’s Metamorphoses to construct the horrific body trauma of Titus Andronicus. Shifting the typical focus of adaptation theory from recent adaptations of “Shakespeare” to Shakespeare’s own adaptation of Ovid, this essay examines specific moments from both Titus Andronicus and the tales of Philomela and Actaeon in the Metamorphoses—especially in connection to the performance of the “unspeakable,” the “obscene,” and the “irreligious”—in order to better understand the early modern play, the classical poem, and the very act of adaptation itself.