In act 5, scene 2 (lines 28–49) of Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare uses imagery, personification, and image clusters to illustrate the play’s themes of vengeance and violence.

Tamora enters the scene fully committed to her disguise as Revenge to “help” Titus defeat his enemies. She is the personification of revenge, the human embodiment of this malevolent, inescapable force. Hellish imagery emphasizes an evil origin:

I am Revenge, sent from th’ infernal kingdom
To ease the gnawing vulture of thy mind
By working wreakful vengeance on thy foes.
Come down and welcome me to this world’s light.

She does not arrive of her own volition, but is “sent” by the devil from the “infernal kingdom” below. Tamora beckons Titus to “come down” to her, as if she were beneath the Earth. She asks him to “welcome” her into the world above, a place of “light” where she can wreak havoc on his “foes.”

Ironically, Tamora proposes herself as a force of vengeance for Titus’s benefit when in reality, she wishes to avenge Titus’s murder of her son Alarbus. Associated with death, the “vulture” recalls this murder and the vindictive, violent events that continue to unfold as a result of Alarbus’s death.

No matter where Titus’s enemies hide, Tamora as Revenge promises to unearth them.

There’s not a hollow cave or lurking-place,
No vast obscurity or misty vale
Where bloody murder or detested rape
Can couch for fear but I will find them out,
And in their ears tell them my dreadful name.

Dark or murky imagery like “cave” and “lurking-place” all stress the themes of evil and inevitable death. Tamora swears that she will infiltrate every place—just as violence permeates the entire play.

An image cluster is the recurring use of images aligned with a specific motif. In this passage, one image cluster recalls the theme of violation. For example, Tamora as Revenge would invade cavities like a “hollow cave” or “misty vale” just as her sons Chiron and Demetrius raped Titus’s daughter Lavinia. Before this, they killed her fiancé Bassianus and hid his corpse in a pit, a cavity of “obscurity” from which someone could “lurk.” Other images of bodily invasions—“the gnawing vulture of thy mind” and “in their ears tell them my dreadful name”—reiterate the theme of rape.

Another image cluster evokes the past mutilation of Lavinia and portends the fate of Chiron and Demetrius. Titus tells Tamora,

Lo, by thy side, where Rape and Murder stands,
Now give some surance that thou art Revenge:
Stab them, or tear them on thy chariot wheels,
And then I’ll come and be thy wagoner.

Hoping to expose Chiron and Demetrius’ disguises as Rape and Murder, Titus proposes testing them by stabbing them or tying them to a wagon to spin or drag them to death. “Stab” recalls how Chiron and Demetrius cut off Lavinia’s hands and tongue to immobilize and silence her. Both acts—stabbing and dragging—lead to bodily mutilation. Little does Tamora know that her two sons will be stabbed, sliced, and baked into a pie.