Michael:

Titus Andronicus differs from all the other Roman plays in having no narrative source. It might seem a “Roman play” mainly in its late fourth-century setting. But it seems also stuffed with lots of Roman bits, narrative scraps, moments, attitudes, things taken from Ovid, but never seeming to add up to anything really Roman. And it may finally seem subversive of Romanitas.

Act 1 is one long scene that seems to settle the question of the succession of rule. Titus enters with the coffins of his dead sons and his captives from the wars with the Goths. His son, Lucius, makes the rather un-Roman demand of a human sacrificial victim for the manes of Titus’ sons. Without hesitation and in spite of Tamora’s appeal, which seems more Roman than Lucius’s demand, Titus seizes her eldest son, Alarbus, and his sons take him out and return quickly with bloody swords and a report of lopped limbs and burned entrails. Titus’s daughter Lavinia sheds tears for her dead brothers, which seems more Roman, and welcomes Titus. Marcus, tribune and brother of Titus, proposes Titus as candidate for emperor. Titus says he’s too old, and what follows seems a bit murky; Saturninus order his followers to draw their swords and, seemingly, to seize power. His brother tribune, Bassianus, appeals to Titus. It’s not clear why, but Titus favors Saturninus, who promptly takes Lavinia as wife and empress. But then he tells Tamora that he would wed her if he were to choose anew, rather an odd position to take in front of Lavinia and Titus. But Lavinia says she’s not displeased with Saturninus’s words, perhaps because she’s committed to Bassianus, but this isn’t clear. Bassianus seizes Lavinia, whom he apparently loved before. Titus calls the Bassianus party traitors, and when Titus’s son, Mutius, tries to defend them, Titus kills him. Lucius, another son, isn’t happy with this. Titus proposes bringing Lavinia back, but Saturninus says he doesn’t need her, and quarrels with Titus. Titus doesn’t want to bury Mutius with his other sons, but urged by his brother, Marcus, seems to give in and allow it.

Marcus urges Titus to cheer up and asks Titus how Tamora suddenly became such a success in Rome. Well he might ask. We might guess that she’s knock-out beautiful. She appears with her two surviving sons, Saturninus, and Aaron the Moor, who we later learn has been her lover. Bassianus and Lavinia and the three surviving sons of Titus appear at the other door. Saturninus accuses Bassianus of raping, i.e., carrying off, Lavinia and Bassianus insists he was just seizing his “own,” now his wife. Could this get any more complicated? Bassianus says that poor Titus was wronged and in the “rescue” of Lavinia killed his youngest son (from 25 sons he’s down to three, it appears). Titus isn’t on Bassianus’s side, but says he’s still with Saturninus.

Tamora wants to speak to everybody and hopes for everyone to be reconciled. She’s apparently forgiven – or rather pretends to forgive –  Titus, who killed Alarbus. But, in an apparent aside to Saturninus, she wants him to dissemble everything for political reasons, pretend amity to all; she’ll find a day to massacre everybody. And now she gathers everyone together and promises goodwill all around. Everyone has been kneeling to the emperor. And Saturninus forgives everybody.

Is there a more complicated and murky scene among the plays? There’s very little sense of motivation in it all –except for Tamora’s bitter need for vengeance. But the bloodshed is just that of Alarbus and Mutius thus far.

Dusty: 

Yes, the first act is busy and murky. Why do Saturninus and Bassianus so quickly agree to renounce their claims in favor of Titus? Is there not something comic about this? It’s curious that in this play some disputes are resolved quickly and bloodlessly, and others are not. As you note, it is not made clear why Titus favors Saturninus. Maybe Saturninus takes Lavinia to wife as a way of returning the favor to Titus. Why does Titus not acknowledge Bassanius’s prior claim to Lavinia? Does he consider himself above the law?

What do we make of Titus killing his own son? Is this irrational rage, or is it a case of a “Roman” putting the claims of the state above those of family? (It would not be the first instance of a Roman killing his own son, would it?) And why does Saturninus declare that he will marry Tamora? Does he consider himself freed from any obligation to Titus?

Tamora appears to resolve another dispute at the end of the act, but we quickly learn that she is only pretending to make peace. We get a sharp focus at the end of the act on Tamora and her desire for revenge: that’s what, so it seems, will drive the play.

Dusty:

Act 2 focuses not on Tamora, but at the outset on Aaron, who is given a soliloquy. (Is he the earliest of Shakespeare’s deep-dyed villains?) His motivation is not clear: he hatches a plot against Lavinia, perhaps because he wants to support his lover, Tamora, in her plan to gain revenge against Titus, by killing all the members of his family, though he does not in fact say this. Indeed, it seems as if what he really wants is to advance his own state and become Tamora’s master, not merely her lover.

Tamora’s sons claim to “love” Lavinia, but it quickly turns out that they will be perfectly happy just to rape her and kill her. (Another dispute — this one between Chiron and Demetrius — is quickly resolved.) The killing of Bassanius is little more than collateral damage.

2.2 moves the plot along by locating Tamora and Lavinia in the woods. Titus doesn’t suspect anything. (Why doesn’t he worry about Tamora?)

In 2.3, when Aaron hides a bag of gold, the audience does not yet know why he is doing it. (It turns out he is thinking two or three steps ahead.) Has he worked out this plot with Tamora, or is he freelancing and improvising? When Tamora and Aaron meet, it seems that she is more interested in love and he is more interested in revenge (on her behalf). Tamora soon focuses more on Bassanius than on Titus, wanting revenge against Bassanius, who knows about Tamora and her lover, and sneers at them.

Once Aaron’s plot is sprung — to blame the murder of Bassanius on two of Titus’s sons — Titus now pleads for their lives. (Why does he ask that they be spared when he was so quick to kill another of his sons in the first act for a misdeed?)

The characters know about Ovid (Philomela and Tereus, Actaeon and Diana), but also about Semiramis, Pyramus, Dido and Aeneas, and Cerberus and Orpheus, and are conscious of reenacting these old stories themselves.

In 2.4 Marcus, the brother of Titus, finds his niece Lavinia and sees that she is a Philomela. (She has had her hands lopped, in a weird reprise of the killing of Alarbus in the first act.) How does a director present the maimed Lavinia on the stage? Do we see bloody stumps at the end of her arms, and do we see blood flowing from her mouth?

Michael:

Yes, Saturninus and Bassianus seem glad to renounce their claims, but then at 1.1.203 Saturninus is ready to challenge Titus. Right away Titus gives the empire over to Saturninus. And we’re not aware of what Bassianus thinks, who seemed to have similar ambition. Perhaps not comic, but a relief to have things settled so easily? And poor old Bassianus loses the claim to Lavinia, but Saturninus’s change of mind restores her. The killing of Mutius seems more from passion than Roman feeling, but Titus doesn’t act when Lucius also defies him, or Saturninus, but then Saturninus is ready to switch to Tamora. All odd and unmotivated, it appears. Tamora’s beauty must be a factor.

Aaron may be a villain because he is a Moor, and his tie to Tamora seems to confirm the villainy. Chiron and Demetrius are perfectly happy to renounce their love and rivalry just to rape and mutilate her. Of course they also kill Bassianus.

Are Chiron and Demetrius paired with Martius and Quintus, evil with innocent? The real image of horror comes in 2.4 as Marcus encounters the mutilated Lavinia. Is this the central image of the play? He makes clear the link with Tereus and Philomel. The image, he says, will blind Titus’s eyes.

Michael:

In 3.1 Titus is initially concerned with saving Martius and Quintus, who have been falsely accused of Bassianus’s death. When Titus hears from Lucius, with drawn sword, that he comes to rescue his two brothers, he says, “Why, foolish Lucius, dost thou not perceive/ That Rome is but a wilderness of tigers?” And he and his family are the main prey. As he says this, Marcus enters with the mutilated Lavinia, and this seems the ultimate blow to the Andronicus family. He calls attention to what they are now, brother Marcus, weeping son Lucius, and the bloody and unspeaking Lavinia.

Aaron brings in the emperor’s word that if Marcus, Lucius, or Titus sends him a severed hand, he’ll spare the other two sons. Titus beats the other two by having Aaron cut off his hand, but Aaron in an aside says he’ll get their severed heads instead. And this is what the messenger sends him. Titus now has just one son, down from the 25 before the Goth wars. He swears vengeance for the two sons, which now puts him in the same position as Tamora. He gathers the Andronici in a circle and reiterates the vow of vengeance, which now extends to Saturninus. Lucius is sent off to the Goths to raise an army, and Lavinia must hold Titus’s remaining hand between her stumps. What an image!

The final scene of the act has Titus understandably going mad, at one point reprehending Marcus for killing a fly. The son of Lucius, young Lucius, is introduced, childishly urging Titus to cheer Lavinia with a pleasing tale. Titus’s madness may forecast the acting of real revenge.

What’s the body count so far? Alarbus, Mutius, Bassianus, Martius, Quintus. And the mutilation of Lavinia and Titus’s hand.

Dusty:

I’m still trying to work out some basic relationships. I now see that Titus presumably recommends Saturninus for Emperor because he is the older or oldest son, so would seem to be next in line to succeed his deceased father. But if Titus is a noble, why is his brother Marcus a tribune (of the people)? In a play dealing with succession to the throne, who is likely to succeed Saturninus? His brother Bassianus is out of the way, and Saturninus doesn’t seem to have any children, though his queen Tamora does. Interesting that most of Titus’s sons die before him, but at the end of Act 4 he still has at least one living son and a grandson.

As a mother of loutish young sons, Tamora might be older than Saturninus. Titus, a soldier for 40 years, and repeatedly said to be “old,” must be  60-ish, and yet he has a young unmarried daughter. (In this he is like Lear.)

Yes, the appearance of the maimed Lavinia in 2.4 does seem to be the central image of horror, but the violence on her takes place off stage, and Shakespeare has more gore in store: the heads of two sons of Titus are brought on stage, and we actually witness the cutting off of Titus’s  hand in 3.1. (Why his hand? Is it meant to be a weird repetition of the cutting off of Lavinia’s hands and the hewing of Alarbus’s limbs?) With all his miseries piled on Titus — the funeral of several sons, Lavinia’s maiming, the execution of two more sons, the banishing of a third — do we now forget his brutal acts in act 1 — the execution of Alarbus, the killing of his own son — and regard him as a man more sinned against than sinning? When Lavinia goes off at the end of 3.1 she carries her father’s lopped hand in her teeth (3.1.282)! That’s even more macabre than carrying it in her stumps.

What is the purpose of the fly-killing in 3.2? Is it meant to indicate that Titus has become deranged? That’s what Marcus thinks.  (Titus had already laughed inappropriately at 3.1.264). By the end of 3.2 the Andronicus family resolves on revenge. In this play of excess, even revenge is doubled: first Tamora swears revenge on the Andronici, and now Titus and his family swear revenge on her. When Titus and Lavinia go off to read “sad stories,” I thought of Lear and Cordelia.

Dusty:

In 4.1 we get more references to Roman history and literature, to Hecuba, Ovid, Tarquin and Lucrece, and Junius Brutus. It’s as if the characters are fated to reenact earlier Roman stories. Is it not until she points to the tale of Philomela in Ovid that Lavinia is able to convey to her family that she has been raped? His family think that Titus has fallen into some kind of madness or “ecstasy,” but in some respects he seems lucid. Is he feigning madness, and if so why?

In 4.2. Titus sends a gift of weapons to Chiron and Demetrius. But why? And why are Chiron and Demetrius pleased to accept the gift? Aaron realizes that something is up — I guess Chiron and Demetrius are a bit thick. Then comes the entrance of the nurse with the black child. The nurse says Tamora wants it killed, and both nurse and Tamora’s sons agree — presumably in order to preserve Tamora’s “honor.” Aaron, its father, understandably wants to preserve his son’s life (unlike Titus, he declines to kill his son), and somehow, after killing the nurse, persuades the sons to go along with his plan. They are indeed thick, but maybe they are reassured when Aaron proposes a swap between the black baby and a white baby. (I don’t know why Aaron did not lead with the baby-swap and then casually suggest to Tamora’s sons that there is no reason to kill the black boy.) Does Aaron have something else up his sleeve? It’s notable, I think, that we do not see him discussing the revenge plot with Tamora, and have not seen them together since 2.3.

In 4.3 Titus, lamenting the departure of Astraea, gives more evidence of being deranged or “distract,” when he arranges to have messages delivered to the gods via arrow. But maybe he’s only mad north by northwest, since as Saturninus realizes, these laments about injustice, when found in the streets, serve to stir up the Roman people. I don’t understand why at the end of the scene Titus arranges to send, via the pigeon carrier, a “supplication” or “oration” to Saturninus, with a knife folded up inside it. Even if it is meant, like the earlier gift of weapons, to be a not-so-veiled threat, why should Titus want to send any kind of warning to his enemies? Or is this more evidence of his derangement?

In 4.4 the pigeons and the “supplication” (now called a “letter”) arrive at court. But the audience does not know what the letter says. (Why not?) Presumably it makes Saturninus nervous. And on top of that he gets news that Titus’s remaining son, Lucius, has raised an army of Goths and is approaching the walls of Rome, and, what is worse, is likely to get the Roman citizens to take his side. It makes sense that the Goths would be ready to attack Rome, but why would they, having been recently defeated in a war by Titus, now agree to follow his son? And what has Saturninus done to make the Roman citizens prepared to overthrow him?

Michael:

Marcus as tribune is a puzzle; did Shakespeare or his collaborator not know what tribune means/implies? Yes, a part of Titus’s tragedy must be in the death of all but one of his 25 sons, one by Titus’s own hand. And this is another of his sins, the death of Alarbus yet another. But by the end he must be a man more sinned against than sinning.

I hadn’t read that Lavinia carries off Titus severed hand in her teeth; at 3.1.281 Titus instructs her to take his hand in her arms. But I see the teeth command in the textual notes. I fear this more grotesque possibility might raise more laughter than horror.

Perhaps the fly-killing moment is to suggest uncertainty about Titus’s mental state. He later insists to Tamora that he’s not mad but perfectly rational in his mental tortures, like the Thyestean banquet. He may be feigning madness (like Hamlet) so as to be allowed to carry out the revenge he desires. But is this necessary? Marcus at 4.1.124ff thinks him potentially mad. But Saturninus at 4.4.21 refers to Titus’s “feigned ecstasies.”

Demetrius and Chiron mostly seem place holders — or eventually part of Titus’s recipe? — and we never see much of them. Their attack on Lavinia becomes just a matter of motiveless malignancy. It might take some careful handling to keep the revelation of Demetrius and Chiron at 4.1. 75 from being comic, but the image of all three of them kneeling and the swearing of another revenge should be powerful.

The nurse who brings in Aaron’s baby is another bit of collateral damage when he kills her. I don’t see that his plan with the white baby is ever carried out. Aaron seems curiously attentive to his own child, and later insists that Lucius, against his inclination, not kill the baby. In fact, the black baby maybe the one loose end in the play.

Yes, the business of Titus sending the supplication and knife to Saturninus does seems strange and unnecessary. Did they use pigeons on stage?

Those Goths must have short political memories, eager as they are to return with Lucius to Rome. The Romans must have some sort of intuition about Saturninus, or maybe they are suspicious of Tamora.

Michael:

Aaron spends most of 5.1 up on a ladder, to a gallows or a tree from which he’s to be hanged. Lucius emphasizes Aaron’s evil deeds, which initially extend to the begetting of the child. Lucius intends to hang the child too, but Aaron persuades him otherwise. Though Aaron speaks of his evil deeds, he persuades Lucius to spare the child.

Does Aaron need to be so consummate a villain? Through 5.1 he is made to embody all possible evil, such that Lucius decides that hanging is too good for him. He does perhaps need to be the fount of much of the suffering in the play, but I’m guessing that a modern production may decide to rethink his entire evil. In any case the question of the black child will remain. In the last scene, 5.3, Marcus is holding the child. Does he hand the child off? There’s no stage direction or dialogue to this effect and by the end of the scene, which is the end of the play, we’re uncertain where the baby is, what has happened to him. Aaron repents only that he might have done one good deed in all his life. Lucius decrees some torture for him before his death, and that’s where he’s left.

Did the acting company have access to a black child? The child seems to be an odd unaccounted-for element in the play, not obviously necessary for the plot.

In 5.2 Tamora comes with her two sons to Titus to persuade him that she is his vengeance, though what she intends doesn’t seem evident. Demetrius and Chiron are Rape and Murder, the companions of Revenge. Titus wants her to stab and kill the two, but he recognizes the trio for what they are and turns their little allegory on themselves. And at 5.2.165ff he lists their crimes, then forecasts what he intends for them all. Lavinia holds a basin to collect their blood, and he cuts the sons’ throats.

In 5.3 Titus brings in the Thyestean banquet for Tamora and Saturninus. But moments after serving it up, Titus kills Lavinia, an apparent mercy killing, but also (he says) to cancel her shame and his sorrow. When Saturninus orders the perpetrators brought in, Titus produces their heads, presumably saved from the baked pie and recognizable to Tamora, whom he kills. Saturninus kills Titus, Lucius kills Saturninus. So that’s it for everybody except Aaron, who will be left for his own punishment forecast by Lucius.

The rest of 5.3 is a rather long denouement which proclaims Lucius emperor and has him, Marcus, and young Lucius kissing the dead Titus. This puts a final focus on Titus, who does seem the center of all the bloodshed and suffering of the play. And we have the final forecast of Aaron’s punishment. And the mysterious non-accounting for the black baby.

What can we say finally of the play? Not, obviously, a very effective tragedy, but one that seems designed to make flesh creep. It’s pseudo-Roman and makes use of much Roman stuff, some of it disreputable. It is a revenge play and seems to make use of that tradition in its complicated and murky way. One imagines it was a hit with audiences, if only because of its lurid plot and material. It has been performed contemporarily, most recently by Julie Taymor with Anthony Hopkins as Titus. I’d like to see that again now that we’ve gone through the play.

Dusty:

Act 5 brings some resolution: all the villains are killed, except for Aaron, and we are assured that he will suffer. Order is restored, and Titus’s son, Lucius, is proclaimed the new emperor. (I’m not sure anybody followed due process in electing him.) It’s presumably satisfying to the audience who have been prepped, along the way, to think of it as a revenge play: Titus gets his revenge on Tamora and her entire family. But it’s still a strange way to end the play.

Why does Aaron proudly insist that he has done all the evil deeds we know about, and more? In the long “ladder scene” I began to wonder whether we had shifted into morality play, and were hearing from the Devil himself.

As you note, it’s not clear what Tamora expects to accomplish by coming in, disguised as Revenge. I guess she figures that Titus is deranged enough that he will somehow allow them to come close enough that they can kill him. But again, I wondered whether we were now in morality-play territory. As it will turn out, Tamora’s revenge plot only partially succeeds: she doesn’t get Lucius or young Lucius.

Is Lavinia really better off dead? My editor suggests that Titus misunderstands the Virginius story, about a Roman centurion who killed his daughter to prevent her from being raped. Titus’s act does indeed seem to be “unnatural and unkind,” as Saturninus says, and it recalls Titus’s earlier killing of a son back in Act 1.

We don’t get to savor the horror of the Thyestean moment, or to witness the horrified reaction of Tamora, who has just dined on her sons, because Titus stabs her one line after telling her what she is eating. The multiple killings — Titus stabs (and presumably kills) Tamora, the emperor kills Titus, Lucius kills the emperor — all take place in the course of three lines, which seems to prevent the audience from giving due recognition to each of the killings. (As for the boys’ heads, I think they have been ground up and baked in the pies.)

Why does Titus have to die? Does it produce a “tragic” effect? Must he die because of his murderous failings? I don’t think it’s ever made clear whether he is deranged or not. And why don’t we get to see Aaron die? He gets a lot of air time in 5.1 and then gets another chance at the end of the play to affirm himself. Is he a bit like Iago in that respect?