Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

"Poor" occurs 16 times in Titus Andronicus (1593): - Titus speaks of "the poor remains": only four of his 25 "valiant sons" survived battle with the Goths (1.1). - He speaks of himself and his daughter Lavina as "poor creatures," and of his "poor right hand" (3.2) after he was deceived to have the left cut off to ransom two sons. [Cover page from the 1594 Quarto of [Titus Andronicus] The most lamentable Romaine tragedie of Titus Andronicus As it was plaide by the right honourable the Earle of Darbie, Earle of Pembrooke, and Earle of Sussex their seruants. Image via Wikipedia and the Folger Shakespeare Library . Public Domain.] "Beg" occurs 10 times, including Lavina in 2.3 begging Tamora to kill her: Her beloved Bassianus had been slain; she'd rather be killed than raped by Tamora's sons. They rape her, cut out her tongue, and cut off her hands in hope that she can't identify her attackers. But later she d...

Tony Tambasco has a good blog post about Shakespeare's play, All's Well That Ends Well, a play title which he notes could be paraphrased as "the ends justify the means," suggesting the play is humorously critical of such thinking. You can read his blog post here . Tambasco explains that the plot of this play involves a woman, Helena, who wishes to marry Bertram, and who tricks him into non-consensual sex, which many countries today would consider rape. He opens his blog post with a comment about how the #MeToo movement and other cultural developments have made Shakespeare's play, Measure for Measure, much more popular, but we should also be considering the rape of Bertram by Helena at this time in history. He notes that because of patriarchy in Shakespeare's England, women often lacked agency (a theme, I would add, that also comes up in Jane Austin's novels regarding the limited options for women and the way they often depended on advantageous marr...