HBO's Hit Show Succession is, in Fact, Titus Andronicus: The Continuing Saga

A couple of weeks ago, I caused a firestorm of controversy when I wrote about how similar to Arrested Development this season of Succession appears to be.

And I’m here to cause more controversy.

A revelation came upon me late last night as I awoke from slumber with the truth of Succession in my mind.

Something not a lot of people know is that Brian Cox, the Scottish guy who plays Logan Roy on HBO’s hit show Succession, made a name for himself much earlier in his career by playing Titus Andronicus, the protagonist of William Shakespeare’s infamous play Titus Andronicus.

As I’ve watched Succession, specifically this season, I’ve noted how they refer, slyly, from time to time, to that role that Cox is known for having played.

On the phone, early in season three, he tells his son Kendall he’ll grind his bones to make his bread.

That is an echo of a speech in Titus Andronicus, where the Roman general Titus has captured the two young men who raped and mutilated his daughter, Lavinia. He tells them, just before he slashes their throats open,

You know your mother means to feast with me,
And calls herself Revenge, and thinks me mad:
Hark, villains! I will grind your bones to dust
And with your blood and it I'll make a paste,
And of the paste a coffin I will rear
And make two pasties of your shameful heads,
And bid that strumpet, your unhallow'd dam,
Like to the earth swallow her own increase.
This is the feast that I have bid her to,
And this the banquet she shall surfeit on;
For worse than Philomel you used my daughter,
And worse than Progne I will be revenged:
And now prepare your throats.

He’s telling them he’s going to kill them, make them into pies, and feed them to their mother.

And you can watch Brian Cox act that scene out here.

It’s really something. Something awfully similar to Stephen Toast, I mean.

But what else does this have to do with Succession?

It occurred to me, when I was thinking about this stuff, that the fate of Titus Andronicus, in the play that bears his name, provides us with a diagonal way to understand what’s up with Logan Roy.

Titus’s arc in the play goes like this, more or less.

In the first scene, he returns to Rome a conquering hero, a victorious general. He’s lost twenty-one (!) of his sons who fought with him, but even in spite of that he hasn’t lost his faith in Rome. Then, thanks to machinations by some shitty people, he loses his hand, he loses more of his children, Lavinia is sexually assaulted, and any faith he once had in anything is gone. He is hell-bent on revenge, and has possibly lost his mind. And when he gets his revenge, he himself is murdered.

It’s a bloody play, and people like to think Shakespeare didn’t even write it, because it’s so gory and excessive.

But it occurred to me that, whoever wrote the play, it informs the character of Logan Roy, in that Logan Roy is essentially what Titus Andronicus would become if he had survived the play and, you know, grown his hand back and moved to twenty-first century America.

There’s no need for Titus-as-Logan to get revenge on anyone, now. He’s already gotten it. And so he’s got all of Titus’s nihilism, his hostility toward the whole human race, which he earned by having everything taken from him and his loyalties betrayed. And like any tragic hero, he made a series of terrible mistakes that led him to that awful fate. And he’s just carrying on like that, indefinitely.

A Shakespeare professor I took a class from, once, in grad school, referred to the character of Titus Andronicus as “a devourer of children”—which I took to mean that he’s in the tradition of figures like the titan Kronos, who literally ate his children.

Only, in this more elastic application of that term, you don’t have to literally eat your children in order to be a devourer of children. It’s a term that applies to anyone who knowingly puts their kids in danger, or whose actions get them hurt.

Titus didn’t eat his twenty-one sons on the battlefield, but because of him they were laid to waste.

Close enough. Devourer of children he is.

Titus does cook and serve two children, to their mother—but the relevant thing here is that he’s someone with a multitude of kids who suffer and/or die because of choices he makes.

And what is Logan Roy but a similar figure, in the same tradition? He doesn’t eat his kids—but their lives and well-being are, to all appearances, of no concern to him.

And what are those kids most afraid of, now, at the end of season three, but that he’ll produce more children, whom he’ll treat in this same way?

And what evidence do they find that tells them he’s doing that, but an ingredient he’s been grinding up, so he can devour it with his breakfast?