Well in King Lear someone gets their eyes gouged out on stage. And there is plenty of walking around with someone's head in a number of the plays. And then there's Titus Andronicus... But in Streetcar, I don't mean a graphic depiction just what Kazan had put in at the time...which was cut out then. Rhe scene barely registered at all until they restored it in the 90s.
Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.
Even now I curse the day--and 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. -- Titus' Aaron
A really bad role model for the children. Think of the children!
Unless they had sacrificial actors, the Shakespearean stage could not match the nightmare realism of today's special effects films.