Titus Andronicus by Shakespeare

Titus Andronicus is the most bloody Shakespeare play I’ve read so far. Almost all the main characters were killed; four people dropped dead one after another in one particular scene. One of the characters was mutilated in extremely cruel and brutal ways. Storyline aside, I’m very curious about the production side of things for this character. There are only three women in the play, all three were killed by the end. Titus Andronicus the title character faced enormous trials and suffering. How he dealt with the trials, what he wanted and valued at the beginning and at the end, and how he changed throughout the play – it’s fascinating to think about.

Before I go any further and go down any rabbit holes, I’ll give you a brief summary of the play. I repeat my usual disclaimer here, I’m not an expert in Shakespeare, I only started reading Shakespeare two years ago. This is not an academic study, it’s just my amateur opinion. Titus Andronicus is particularly challenging compared to some previous plays. I’m super glad that you found my previous posts useful. But if you have different opinions or interpretations, that’s completely fine. Leave me a comment, I’d love to hear from you.

So. Titus Andronicus is the name of a war hero of Rome. He and his sons fought for their country, as Coriolanus did (my favourite protagonist last year), for honour and glory. Titus had lost twenty-one sons by now and he was proud of them. At the beginning of the play, they came home after ten years of war, with the Queen of Goth and her sons as the prisoners of the recent victory. The Andronici buried their dead brothers and sacrificed the Queen’s eldest son despite her pleading.

LUCIUS
Away with him, and make a fire straight,
And with our swords upon a pile of wood
Let’s hew his limbs till they be clean consumed.

The first graphic detail of brutality done to a human body. It happened off-stage.

Also in Act 1 Scene 1 (there’s in fact only one massive scene in Act 1), the Roman Emperor just died and his two sons were fighting for the throne. The Tribunes and Senators respected Titus Andronicus so much, they first offered the throne to him, which he rejected, then they said that whoever Titus chose, they’d have him for the new Emperor.

The older brother Saturninus appealed to his father’s honour and the fact that he was the firstborn son; the younger brother Bassianus based his claim on virtues. Titus chose the older brother Saturninus because of honour, and consequently forfeited virtue altogether. Saturninus did not have any virtue, and when Bassianus died, virtue died with him. No one stood out as particularly virtuous throughout the play. Anyway because Titus supported Saturninus, he returned the favour by asking Titus’ daughter, Lavinia’s hand in marriage.

Strange thing number one, Titus didn’t know that Lavinia was engaged to the younger brother Bassianus already. And Lavinia, when she was given to Saturninus, didn’t protest either. When the truth came out, Lavinia’s brothers helped her and Bassianus run away from the emperor’s guard and their father’s wrath. In the process, Titus killed one of his few surviving sons on the spot, calling him a traitor.

TITUS (speaking to Lucius his eldest son)
Nor thou, nor he (the son he just killed), are any sons of mine:
My sons would never so dishonour me.
Traitor, restore Lavinia to the emperor.

The action of killing his son without the slightest hesitation and the label traitor say a lot about Titus’ values at the beginning of the play. The emperor and Rome took absolute priority. Titus would give his life most willingly to the emperor and Rome, or his children’s lives, to the point of blindness and plain unreasonableness. When his son disobeyed, there was no question about how to remove the rebellion and disobedience – he treated his own family like he did the enemies. Disobedience equals death. He himself said,

Titus, unkind and careless of thine own…

Which I think is a key character of him.

Saturninus was angry with Titus because of Lavinia and, in a moment of extreme power reversal, Saturninus chose Tamora the captured Queen of Goths to be his new queen. She was a captive in chains one moment and the most powerful woman robed in splendour the next. Tamara in power reminded me a lot of Lady Macbeth.

It’s a fascinating turn of events, Titus was sent crashing to his doom with his own power right at the beginning of Act 1 Scene 1. Think about it.

• Titus with his military strength conquered and captured the Queen of Goths and ruthlessly sacrificed her son. So naturally, Tamora hated Titus and all who belonged to him.

• Titus with his political power raised Saturninus onto the throne. But Saturninus was not a wise leader, he wasn’t even a very decent person.

So with Tamora, we see Titus’ power without mercy. With Saturninus, we see Titus’ sense of honour without wisdom.

When the stupid Saturninus used the power given by Titus to choose the cruel and revengeful Tamora to be his wife, Titus’ tragedy was set in stone. The questions left were, what would the revenge look like (which is Act 2 and 3) and how would Titus respond (which is in Act 4 and 5).

With such a clear trajectory, Shakespeare still managed to surprise me. The revenge first came in the form of the killing of Bassianus and the rape of Lavinia, by Tamora’s two sons. Then two sons of Titus were accused of the murder of Bassianus and arrested for trial. While his sons were on trial, the Andronici found Lavinia, not only raped, but also her tongue and hands chopped off (this also happened off-stage) so she couldn’t say who the culprits were. As the family wept for her, Titus was deceived into cutting off one of his own hands (on stage) in the hope of ransoming his two sons on trial, only to receive back their heads in mockery. His only surviving son, the eldest, Lucius was banished from Rome.

By Act 3, the downfall of Titus Andronicus was complete, he lost his honour and glory as a war hero to whom the emperor and the whole of Rome were indebted, and he had now become a madman. He lost all his 25 sons in various ways and now he was left with an elderly brother, a mutilated daughter and a grandson.

After Act 3, it was time for Titus and his own to take action and revenge. Everyone had a job to do, even the boy was sent alone to the enemy’s camp. My heart stopped for him as he went forth. Titus, how could you, after losing all your sons, send the only surviving offspring to possible death so casually? I think Titus was still “unkind and careless” of his own. His desire for revenge was so desperate, his actions became careless and desperate as well.

Do you notice the arc of the story? Titus started from a high point, fell to the lowest point in Act 3 and succeeded in his revenge in one sense by the end. His family became even more glorious than it was at the beginning – the surviving son of Titus Andronicus became the emperor of Rome. Unbelievable as it is, this bloody play where individual characters suffered horrendously has the shape of a comedy, if you look at the Andronici as a whole.

A comedy usually has a happy ending. It’ll be a stretch to say our play has a happy ending. You can also define comedy as a story that works out with a positive outcome in the end. In Romeo and Juliet, the lovers didn’t resolve the family opposition despite the help of the priest – it’s a tragedy. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the lovers managed to pair up with the right person and the relationship worked out with the help of the fairies – it’s a comedy.

Did Titus Andronicus as the main character reach the desired outcome? I guess it depends on what the desired outcome is. What did Titus want? He wanted glory and honour at the beginning of the play and he wanted revenge and justice at the end. He got both. So it is a comedy. But he died in the process. Is it still a comedy? I think the answer is not black and white.

There are a few first-born sons in the play. Alarbus, the first-born son of Tamara, Queen of Goths, was the first who got killed. Saturninus, the first-born of the Roman Emperor was the last one who was killed. Lucius, the first-born of Titus Andronicus became the Emperor after Saturninus was killed. That seemed to be all done and dusted. But it gets interesting if you think of the next generation. Would young Lucius, the only and first-born son of Lucius Andronicus become the next Emperor after his father? And don’t forget the newborn baby of Aaron the Moor by Tamora. Aaron was Tamora’s lover and partner in crime. All of the tragedies were plotted, if not executed by him. It’s not 100% clear, but this baby boy fathered by this villain was taken in by Lucius and presumably would be raised in the Emperor’s household. I can’t help but think about what will happen in the future between young Lucius and this boy.

Caroline left a comment saying “I know the main theme is metamorphosis and change but as I read it I was struck by how many references there were to characters being silenced.. sometimes the change was happening but Ovid specifically refers to tongues and mouths being closed and silenced. I thought that was really interesting bearing in mind Ovid’s exile and don’t know if that was intentional as a comment on his own silencing.”

I thought that super interesting too! I wish I had read those stories in Metamorphoses by this point so I could have taken them into account. There were a lot of characters who were silenced or whose speeches were cut short in Titus Andronicus. Lavinia is the most explicit example where her tongue literally was cut off. Many characters were gagged and couldn’t speak. It sounds like Shakespeare was not only inspired by the story of Pilomela in Metamorphoses but also by the idea of voice being silenced.

For this play, I’m extremely curious about the theatre production side of things. How do the designers create the mutilated effect of Lavinia’s tongue and hands? There are a lot of pictures online. How does she act while remaining silent on stage for the majority of the play? I think it’s quite a unique case among Shakespeare’s characters. Character building depends heavily on speech, they’re plays after all. How do we know Lavinia’s thoughts and personality without her speaking? Especially after such trauma. Shakespeare also asks the actors to shed a lot of tears in many scenes. Do the actors actually have tears in their eyes? Practically how do they manage it day after day on a theatre stage?

Overall, I don’t think I have even scratched the surface of this play. There are a lot more to think about. Let me know what stand out to you most if you’ve read Titus Andronicus.