Titus Andronicus (Vol. 73) | Robert S. Miola (essay date 1981)
Robert S. Miola (essay date 1981)
SOURCE: Miola, Robert S. “Titus Andronicus and the Mythos of Shakespeare's Rome.” Shakespeare Studies 14 (1981): 85-98.
[In the following essay, Miola probes Shakespeare's thematic appropriation of two Ovidian myths—the rape of Philomela and the story of the world's four stages—in Titus Andronicus.]
Readers have rarely praised Shakespeare's strenuous imitation of classical authors and themes in Titus Andronicus. For most of us, the play is a vile hash of Ovid, Seneca, Plutarch, and Virgil, made more unpalatable by the self-consciousness of the various imitations and allusions. Critical indigestion has begotten critical indignation; it would be easy to compile a colorful anthology of disparaging pronunciamentos beginning with Ravenscroft who in 1687 likened the structure of Titus Andronicus to “a heap of Rubbish.”1 Such critical repugnance, however, has...
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