Except hes lying. To save his child. He makes himself the monster the romans need to see, after they have killed the only woman who sees him as a man. He confesses to the crimes of the play, yes, but he goes beyond to spit in the faces of the sick bunch that dared to judge him. To save his child.
Moors want more. Appetite is celebtated amongst reprobates. In the end, they all just become canibals. An articulate expression of ones own nature doesnt show evidence of intelligence. No moor ever exibited this level of eloquance anyway. Fck you guys.
@@aplejakks Except what you’re saying makes no sense. Why would portraying himself as such an evil villain make them more likely to save his child? One could argue it’s more likely that they would banish the child after saying all this. And what woman are you talking about? They didn’t kill Tamora before this speech, if that’s who you mean. Finally, there’s only one Roman he’s speaking to - Lucius is leading the Goths here, and Aaron was part of the Goths before so I’m sure they know his reputation. He has no reason to give this speech other than to rub salt in their wounds. He already made them swear they would save his child before this. You’re wrong.
@@aplejakks I've heard people say that but he has plenty of reason to be as hateful and evil as he said he is. His actions in the play itself support his villainy, he took every opportunity to spread chaos and pain to Romans simply because he could. Why would he do this? From the Roman prospective, he should be grateful. Being a captive trophy he wants for nothing, he goes to parties and feasts and is taken care of with no real responsibilities. He should recognize the superiority of the Romans, or so they think - and that's why Aaron hates them so much. They don't realize how much Aaron hates them for parading him around like a pet, a black skinned oddity to remind themselves of their superiority over the Moors. What's more, Aaron realizes they don't realize how much he hates them lol. She he's playing the fool, making jokes like the good little pet he is... all the while scheming of ways to inflict revenge on any and every Roman he can.
Funny enough, in the actual script of the play it's "Let not *your* sorrow die, though I am dead." I'm no expert, but I think the reason is because when he carves this message on a corpse, he's addressing the dead guy's friends (plural) rather than one specific friend (even though this implies multiple friends live in the same house, or I guess because it's to all the other friends who will also see or find out about it). I guess everyone, including Julie Taymor and/or Harry Lennix (and myself until I double-checked the script) default to "thy" because it's what you expect in "Shakespearean English".
Lennix is fantastic, I think Angus MacFadyen is also excellent. His reaction is perfect. He looks so stunned. This is a guy who's seen a lot, but he's still shaken by what he's hearing.
Even now I curse the day, yet I think few come within the compass of my curse Wherein I did not some notorious ill, As kill a man, or else devise his death, Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it, Accuse some innocent and forswear myself, Set deadly enmity between two friends, Make poor men's cattle break their necks; Set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night, And bid the owners quench them with their tears. Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves, And set them upright at their dear friends' doors, Even when their sorrows almost were forgot; And on their skins, as on the bark of trees, Have with my knife carved in Roman letters, 'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.' Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things As willingly as one would kill a fly, And nothing grieves me heartily indeed But that I cannot do ten thousand more
@@bluerisk Jesus Christ, what kind of air of stupidity are you taking in? Get the hell out of here with your abs if your stupid enough to believe that nonsensical garbage.
Yes, yes, he was. I see him as Aaron at that age, and that level of acting/dialog ever since. Doesn't matter what he is in, I just wait for the "Tut." And she gave me twenty kisses.
Aaron lives to give worse than he got. And whatever it was that he got must have been horrible. He is less than in this Roman/Goth world he finds himself in as a war slave and everyone in it is less than human to him. Except, suddenly, he has a son. Victims often become the worst of all villains.
This movie im sure is one of the two movies that subconsciously inspired me to start our theater company! The other was Al Pacino's, Looking For Richard! Thank you for making this Ms.Taymor, wow!
Chiron: Thou *hast* undone our mother. Aaron: Villain, I *have* done thy mother. First person singular: I have Second person singular: thou hast Third person plural: he hath 16th century verb conjugations are weird.
Interestingly this monologue may have been inspired by real executions Shakespeare may have witnessed in London. Generally speaking there was nothing a crowd loved more than a condemned person going to the gallows with defiance. A lack of fear or repentance signaled to the crowd that your actions were justified and that you were right with the almighty. What’s more if you went bravely to the gallows the crowd might help you die when the rope failed to snap your neck as was common before, and even after, the introduction of the long drop. Hence the reason why the law reads “hanged by the neck *until dead.*”
likely no speech seen before in the cinema, are so filled of madness and wickedness, like this one, is pure art in another but sinister level, !SPLENDID¡.
Aaron ; The most thoroughly Immoral, Wicked, dare I say 'Evil' Villain in the Whole of literature. The events that unfold in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, by any standard, are Truly Horrific. There again, Shakespeare had a better grasp of that thing we call 'The Human Condition' than anyone who has ever lived.
Actually, in Shakespeare's time, a "Moor" was not necessarily someone from sub-Saharan Africa. The word applied more generally to anyone of the Muslim faith, including Arabs and Northern Africans (many of whom were not black but did have darker and more swarthy complexions than Europeans). I suspect that one of the reasons why most directors these days cast black men in the roles of Aaron and Othello in Shakespeare is partly in order to create more of a contrast between these two characters and the others since cultural and/or racial differences are a major piece of who these two men are and what happens to them.
Aaron is my favorite Shakespearean character. I don't see him as a sadistic vice figure, but one that is utterly fed up with the subjugation of white roman society. He has nothing to lose in such a society and therefore he's out to get vengeance. His famous line, "Is black so base a hue?" shows that despite all the shit he gets for being black, he is nonetheless proud.
@@colmdoherty767 well technically it's a theatre piece which usually would be played like that but it was a movie adaptation. Meaning you wouldn't need to shout for the people in the back.
@@colmdoherty767 they do but usually it's because of the tone and context of the scene. He sounds like he's lamenting his actions and justifying why he shouldn't be executed.
@@myfirstcrappyvideobilly you just don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s a reason why he’s a professional film actor and you’re not. Also, he does theatre too, so he’s an expert at different styles of acting. You’re not. Learn to know your knowledge deficits.
He forgot to mention the time he blocked off a highway and then babbled in court to assume his purported rights under the constitution while denying any umbrage to said sovereignty which the aforementioned rights are protected by. LOL
