Titus Andronicus

Lavinia is brought onstage with her hands cut off and her tongue cut out, and the unbearable part is not the wound but what she does next: she turns the pages of Ovid with her stumps until she finds the tale of Philomela, then takes a staff in her mouth and writes her rapists' names in the sand. This was Shakespeare's first tragedy and one of the most popular plays of his lifetime, and the four centuries since have spent themselves apologising for it, as though a young poet had lost control of the blood.