Titus Andronicus (Vol. 62) - Naomi Conn Liebler (essay date 1994)
Naomi Conn Liebler (essay date 1994)
SOURCE: “Getting It All Right: Titus Andronicus and Roman History,” in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 45, No. 3, Fall, 1994, pp. 263-78.
[In the following essay, Liebler maintains that while much of Titus Andronicus is fictitious and without identifiable sources, Shakespeare's portrayal of Rome was influenced by Herodian's History.]
Some thirty-five years ago, Terence Spencer proposed the context in which an Elizabethan audience would have received Titus Andronicus. Although he did not positively claim it as a source for the play, he referred in some detail to Antonio de Guevara's Decada, translated in 1577 by Edward Hellowes as A Chronicle, conteyning the liues of tenne Emperours of Rome and dedicated to Queen Elizabeth. Spencer noted that among the “lives,” an Elizabethan reader would have found
[A] blood-curdling life of a certain...
[The entire page is 9942 words long]
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