Act 4, Scene 3

Marcus Andronicus and his son, Publius, are both concerned that Titus might be losing his grip on sanity. He makes strange speeches in which his grief and his hopes for revenge are mixed with imagery of the underworld and asks them to shoot arrows in the air with messages for the gods. When a clown enters, carrying a basket with pigeons in it, he believes these are replies from Jupiter to his messages. Even the clown, whose stock-in-trade is absurd repartee, can think of nothing to say to him. Titus asks him to deliver a message of supplication to the emperor, wrapped around a knife, and the clown agrees.

Act 4, Scene 4

In front of the palace, Saturninus is holding the arrows shot up to the gods by Titus and complaining about the old man’s strange conduct. The clown enters and gives him Titus’s letter, whereupon Saturninus orders that the clown should be hanged and that Titus should be brought before him immediately. Aemilius, a Roman nobleman, then enters and warns the emperor that they must take up arms immediately, as Lucius, Titus’s son, is leading an army of Goths against the city. Saturninus is worried, since he believes that Lucius is popular with the citizens of Rome, who will support his cause rather than defending Saturninus. Tamora tries to reassure Saturninus and sets up a parley with Lucius at Titus’s house. She then undertakes to persuade Titus Andronicus to support their cause.

Analysis

One of the most frequently debated questions among students and scholars of Hamlet is whether the prince’s madness is real or feigned. The same problem arises in Titus Andronicus, though it has not received nearly so much critical attention. This is partly because of the relative importance of the plays, but also because readers may find little explanation for why the characters in Titus Andronicus behave the way they do. The psychological structure of revenge tragedy is plausible enough: it is obvious why Tamora hates Titus and equally obvious why he wants to be revenged on her and her sons. Aaron the Moor offers the explanation of sheer malignity and sadism for his actions. Attempting to probe deeper than this, however, tends to yield only incoherence.

Why, for instance, does Titus fire arrows into the air with messages addressed to the gods? Does he really believe that the gods of Rome might give some attention to prayers delivered in this manner? Does he believe in the gods at all? Does he intend Saturninus to find the arrows? Has he simply run out of ideas? As in Hamlet, Shakespeare provides no answer. In the later play, however, the debate about Hamlet’s sanity offers a way of approaching and attempting to understand the prince’s psychology. In Titus Andronicus, a similar discussion leads the reader down a blind alley.

The psychology of Saturninus is similarly obscure. He was desperate to attain the position of emperor at the beginning of the play but never seems to have made much attempt to rule adequately, let alone well. In act 4, scene 4, he begins by complaining peevishly:

Why, lords, what wrongs are these! was ever seen
An emperor in Rome thus overborne,
Troubled, confronted thus; and, for the extent
Of egal justice, used in such contempt?

His question, therefore, is whether any Roman emperor ever had to endure anything worse than finding that an elderly man in a state of mental confusion had fired arrows into the street with messages complaining of his injustice attached to them. The irony of the question lies in...