SOURCE: “The Formalization of Horror in Titus Andronicus,” in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 1, Winter, 1970, pp. 77-84.

[In the essay that follows, Reese maintains that the violence in Titus Andronicus is subdued through various techniques, such as the use of characters resembling classical “types,” ironic repetition of themes and motifs, and the stylization of physically violent acts.]

Although Titus Andronicus was a splendid success in its own day,¹ it has been almost universally castigated since. As early as 1687, Ravenscroft called it “a heap of rubbish”;² Coleridge suggested that it was “obviously intended to excite vulgar audiences by its scenes of blood and horror”;³ and, in this century, Dover Wilson has said that it “seems to jolt and bump along like some broken down cart, laden with bleeding corpses from an Elizabethan scaffold, and driven by an executioner from Bedlam dressed in cap and bells.”⁴ Indeed, many critics, repelled by what they term the play's Senecan excesses, have either denied Shakespeare's authorship or insisted that he merely touched up an old play.⁵

In light of Titus' reputation as Grand Guignol fare, then, the unqualified success of Peter Brook's 1955 Stratford production must have come as somewhat of a surprise to those who had the rare opportunity of seeing the play acted. Certain concessions, it must be admitted, were made in that production to modern sensibilities—Vivian Leigh appeared with scarlet ribbons dangling from her mouth and sleeves in response to the startling stage direction, “Enter Lauinia, her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out, & ravisht” (II.iv);⁶ the deaths of Tamora's two sons were, mercifully, related rather than enacted; the heads of Titus' two sons were delivered to him tastefully concealed in black cloths and steel baskets; and Lavinia was allowed to carry her father's hand offstage in her arms rather than in her mouth. A thoroughly “refined” Titus, however, would be impossible, and one must accept the fact that the Stratford production succeeded, not because of the relatively minor deletions or alterations, but because of the competency of the actors, led by Miss Leigh, Sir Lawrence Olivier, and Anthony Quayle, and the skill of the director in establishing an appropriate style of performance.

That manner, as many reviewers pointed out, was highly formal—at times, even stylized. As one observer said, “It was as if the actors were engaged in a ritual at once fluent from habitual performance and yet still practised with concentrated attention. There was something puppet-like about them. …”⁷ Other commentators noted the way in which the priests moved in “hieratic solemnity”;⁸ the opening “formal scene in black, brown, and gold”;⁹ the corpses which looked “very elegant, particularly the ladies”;¹⁰ the banquet scene in which “the victims topple forward in succession across the dinner-table like a row of ninepins skittled from behind”;¹¹ the characters “marching and counter-marching with obstinate purposefulness in a dirge-like quadrille.”¹² Mr. Brook later explained why he staged the play in the manner clearly indicated by even these brief quotations:

The real appeal of Titus … was that abstract—stylized—Roman—classical though it appeared to be, it was obviously for everyone in the audience about the most modern of emotions—about violence, hatred, cruelty, pain—in a form that, because unrealistic, transcended the anecdote and became for each audience quite abstract and thus totally real.¹³

Richard Findlater explains more simply, “If the audience at Stratford is not sickened by men chopping off hands and tearing out tongues, by mothers inciting their sons to rape and later eating them at dinner, it is partly because of the way in which Mr. Brook has formalized the horror.”¹⁴

This paper will suggest that it was not Mr. Brook who “formalized the horror” in Titus Andronicus, but Shakespeare. Many readers, I believe, have dismissed the play as an immature exercise in sensationalism because they have failed to recognize certain highly formal elements in the play which subdue (or “abstract”) the horror, especially in the stage version which Shakespeare conceived.¹⁵

There is, first of all, an elaborate system of “balances” and “opposites” in the play. As William T. Hastings has pointed out, we are presented with “a Renaissance world without nuances, a world of black and white, of extremes (whitest chastity and blackest lust, supreme love and supreme hate); the moral code is that of complete self-sacrifice, of intense devotion, of unlimited revenge.”¹⁶ It is very clear that the characters are either wholly good or wholly bad, with perhaps two exceptions: Titus, who, despite his essential nobility, is led by pride and misguided zeal for country to make several tragic errors,¹⁷ and Aaron, who is allowed the one decent impulse of wishing to save the life of his illegitimate son. Neither figure, however, could ever be regarded as complex, and their contemporaries are merely embodied virtues or vices. The scene in V.ii where Tamora and her two sons assume the allegorical roles of Revenge, Murder, and Rapine can be viewed as a symbol of the characterization of the entire work.

This characterization deeply affects the audience's reaction to the unpatriotic gore of Titus. We are not terribly moved by what happens on stage, primarily because we do not believe in the humanity of the characters; we will accept them only as classical echoes or “types”. We are shocked far less by Lavinia's fate, for example, than that of Desdemona, because Desdemona is a woman, not an emblematic figure representing Injured Innocence, which Lavinia largely is.

Moreover, the systematic designation of the characters into diametrically opposed groups imposes an unconvincing neatness on the materials of the plot and constantly reminds one of the “literary” flavor of the play, especially in view of the other obvious parallels and “opposites”. For example, Roman civilization and pagan barbarism are clearly contrasted, as Alan Somers points out: “The essential conflict … is the struggle between Rome and all that this signifies in the European tradition to which we, and Shakespeare, belong, and the barbarism of primitive nature.”¹⁸ In the opening scene, Bassianus and Saturninus are paired against each other in rivalry for the crown; later, they become rival candidates for the hand of Lavinia, and finally rival bridegrooms. Titus and his sons are ranged against Tamora and her sons. There is even some purely rhetorical balancing in the play; when Tamora and Aaron meet clandestinely in the forest, she describes their love-nest in highly sensual terms:

The birds chant melody on every bush,
The snake lies rolled in the cheerful sun,
The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind
And make a chequer'd shadow on the ground. …

(II.iii.12-15)

A few moments later, after she and her lover have been discovered by Bassianus and Lavinia, she complains to her bloodthirsty sons that she has been enticed to this “barren detested vale”, where

The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean,
O'ercome with moss and baleful mistletoe:
Here never shines the sun: here nothing breeds,
Unless the nightly owl or fatal raven. …

(II.ii.94-97)

This system of “balances” or “opposites” is related to another dramatic technique which contributes heavily to the formal atmosphere of the play, the repetition of words, phrases, scenes, and images, often with an ironic twist. Titus' grand entrance in Act I is almost parodied at two subsequent points, the opening of Act III where he grovels in the dust seeking a reprieve for his sons from the same officials who had earlier greeted him as Rome's saviour, and the grisly procession in Act IV made up of the amputee Titus and his brother Marcus, each bearing the head of one of Titus' executed sons; the now-banished Lucius; Lucius' young son; and Lavinia, carrying the severed hand of her father between her teeth.¹⁹ There are also a number of references to “hands”: Lavinia loses both of hers, Titus one of his; we are reminded that this same hand had frequently saved Rome; Titus uses his remaining hand to “thump down” his heart “all mad with misery” (III.ii.7-11); Lavinia identifies her attackers by writing in the sand “Without the help of any hand at all” (IV.i.70), and so forth.²⁰

The most significant pattern of repetition in Titus, however, is seen in the frequent pleas and supplications, which may be divided into two groups, passionately genuine requests for mercy and hypocritical dodges to advance an evil cause.²¹ The first occur when: Tamora asks Titus to spare her youngest son (I.i.104-120); Marcus and his nephews seek permission to give Mutius a proper burial (I.i.347-383); Bassianus pleads with Saturninus to restore Titus to his honored estate (I.i.413-423); Lavinia implores Tamora to prevent her rape (II.iii.136-178); Titus asks Saturninus to allow his sons to be placed in his custody (II.iii.288-298) and begs the tribunes for their lives (III.i.1-31); Aaron asks Lucius not to kill his illegitimate son (V.i.53-58); and Marcus requests the people of Rome to withhold their judgement concerning the mass slayings until he and Lucius have had the opportunity to explain what has happened (V.iii.67-136). The false or hypocritical pleas include Tamora's supplication to Bassianus to restore Titus and his family to favor (I.i.434-458); her promised intercession with the emperor in behalf of Titus' sons (II.iii.304-305); the ominous “supplication” sent Saturninus by Titus (IV.iii.106-118); and, indirectly, Tamora's suggestion that Titus gather his family for a banquet, to which all his enemies will come to “stoop and kneel” at his mercy (V.ii.110-120); and her promise to Saturninus that she will “entreat” Titus to stop Lucius from destroying Rome with his army of Goths (IV.iv.88-103). The remarkable frequency of these supplications suggests that, in addition to giving artistic shape to the play, they help to create a particular atmosphere. Of the genuine pleas for mercy, the vast majority are disallowed, while the hypocritical supplications generally further the villainous ambitions of their makers. Surely, the irony is intentional. The consistent refusals of reasonable requests for mercy and justice symbolize the chaotic state into which Rome lapses for a time; they echo Titus' complaint, “Terras Astraea reliquit” (IV.iii.4), a fitting motto for the “wilderness of tigers” which is Rome.

These pleas and supplications, moreover, are frequently delivered from bended knee, as are prayers, expressions of respect to parents and sovereigns, and the performance of solemn rituals. A reader of the play is likely to overlook the number of these kneeling scenes, which, according to the Q1 stage directions and the dialogue, unmistakably occur when: Tamora asks that Alarbus be spared (I.i.104-120; see I.i.454-455); Lavinia greets her father on his return to Rome (I.i.161); Marcus and his two nephews seek permission for the burial of Mutius (S.D., I.i.369); Mutius' body is interred (S.D., I.i.389); Titus, Bassianus, and Titus' family ask forgiveness before the emperor (I.i.457, 459, 481, 485); Titus seeks the custody of his two sons (II.iii.288-289); he and Lavinia pledge themselves to revenge (II.i.209), shortly after which they, Marcus, and young Lucius solemnly consecrate themselves to the destruction of their enemies (IV.i.87-88); and the rustic clown delivers Titus' “supplication” to the emperor (IV.iv.42-48; see IV.iii.108-110). In addition, Shakespeare very likely conceived characters to be kneeling when the coffin of Titus' son who was killed in the war is placed in the tomb (I.i.150-156); Tamora is chosen by Saturninus for his wife (I.i.329-333); Lavinia begs Tamora for mercy (II.iii.136-186); Chiron and Demetrius have their throats cut (V.ii.166-205); and Marcus, Lucius, and his young son pay their last respects to the dead Titus (V.iii.151-175).

The ironic effect of this repetition is very strong: the audience quickly senses that the repeated tableaux of kneeling figures signify, not piety and respect, as might be expected, but rejected pleas for mercy and justice, vain prayers to indifferent gods, barbaric perversions of solemn rites, and frightening reminders of previous outrages. (For example, Tamora's plea for Alarbus is paralleled by Lavinia's request for the preservation of her innocence, which is in turn paralleled by the deaths of Chiron and Demetrius, kneeling before her and Titus.) In other words, these scenes help to create the sense of moral and spiritual desolation which dominates the play.

The tableaux also help to “formalize the horror”. The repetition of very obvious motifs or themes—visual or verbal—tends, of course, to make a play more artificial. The characters become less like human beings and more like symbols being manipulated in an excessively orderly framework, and the carefully-planned stage “pictures” freeze the characters into symbolic groupings. This is especially true of Titus Andronicus, as witnessed in the repeated exhibition of characters engaged in the ritual of prayer or supplication or some other solemn occasion, and in other significant tableaux which Shakespeare planned carefully.

The stage directions in the 1594 Q1, likely set from the author's foul papers, are remarkably complete and descriptive, and the dialogue contains a number of indications of stage business.²² Indeed, one gets the impression that the young Shakespeare was almost as much concerned with the arrangement of his characters on stage as he was with what they had to say. The opening stage direction in Q1 is a good example: “Enter the Tribunes and Senators aloft: And then enter Saturninus and his followers at one dore, and Bassianus and his followers, with Drums and Trumpets.” The F adds the phrase, “at the other”, after “Bassianus and his followers”, undoubtedly by way of confirming the staging as the author conceived it, for throughout the play (and especially in Act I) antagonistic groups are neatly paired off against each other. Here, for example, the rival candidates for the crown are ranged on opposite sides of the stage, the belligerent attitudes of their followers immediately establishing the violent mood of the play. The balancing is further emphasized by the opening speeches of the two antagonists (I.i.1-17) which are approximately the same length and very similar syntactically. Each consists of an alliterating series of nouns of address (“… patricians … patrons …” as compared with “Romans, friends, followers, favourer …”), followed by a series of imperative verbs (“Defend … Plead … Let … Nor Wrong …” as compared with “Keep … suffer not … let … fight …”).

While this quarrel is taking place, Marcus Andronicus makes a dramatic entrance on the balcony, bearing the crown of the late emperor. Now the scene is wholly symmetrical; facing each other on the main stage are the two hostile groups, the fates of their leaders in the hands of the tribunes and senators who are, appropriately, standing above them. On the balcony are probably two senators on one side and two tribunes on the other, with Marcus in the middle. At this point, then, the entire stage arrangement “points” at the glittering crown borne by Marcus, the competition for which will set in motion the bloody course of events to follow.

Titus' magnificent entrance is equally symmetrical and symbolic. After the Captain announces the triumphant return of Rome's greatest hero, there is the remarkable stage direction:

Sound Drums and Trumpets, and then enter two of Titus sonnes, and then two men bearing a Coffin covered with black, then two other sonnes, then Titus Andronicus, and then Tamora the Queene of Gothes and her two sonnes Chiron and Demetrius, with Aron the More, and others as many as can be, then set downe the Coffin, and Titus speakes.

(I.i.69).

(Modern editors add Alarbus, upcoming victim of Andronici revenge, to the list of Tamora's sons, since he obviously enters at this point.) The procession is mechanically symmetrical, and, as the frequently-published Longleat drawing shows, so is the tableau which follows.²³ On one side of the stage stand Titus and his sons; on the other Tamora, her sons, and the mysterious Moor Aaron—two groups whose enmity will largely destroy each other and almost drown Rome in a sea of blood. In the middle of the stage, framed by the antagonists, is the coffin covered with black—a highly appropriate symbol of the slaughters to follow. The parallelism is continued with the offstage sacrifice of Alarbus on the funeral pyre as compensation for the young Andronicus whose body is about to be placed in the family tomb.

Another striking illustration of this carefully planned stage grouping takes place later in Act I after Lavinia is snatched out from under the nose of Saturninus by Bassianus: “Enter aloft the Emperour with Tamora and her two sonnes and Aron the moore” (I.i.298). Only Titus remains on the center stage below. The hostile Saturninus announces his intended marriage to Tamora, who will thus be at liberty to revenge herself upon her conqueror and the murderer of her son. Again, the arrangement of the figures is patently symbolic: Tamora, Demetrius, Chiron, and Aaron, aloft on the balcony, now have the upper hand, while Titus' rapid fall from power and prestige is emphasized by his inferior position and lack of attendants. His isolation is underlined even more strongly a few lines later when the characters on the balcony retire and he is left completely alone for the space of three lines (I.i.338-340), the only occasion in this extraordinarily busy first act, full of bustling processions, noisy entrances and exits, and large crowd scenes, when the stage is not crowded with figures.²⁴

The result of such meticulously-conceived stage tableaux is to create an atmosphere of ritualism and formality, to stress the “emblematic or heraldic” quality which Miss Bradbrook believes distinguishes all the characters. Indeed, her analysis of one of Titus' speeches as giving the effect “of a living picture rather than life itself”²⁵ may be applied to the entire play.

Nor is this pictorial quality created solely by the arrangement of the characters. Throughout Titus are strikingly graphic verbal descriptions of imagined or offstage scenes, as carefully conceived as the groupings noted above. These passages, which seem more appropriate to the context, say, of Lucrece than a tragic drama, further emphasize the artificiality of the play; in a sense, they suggest to the audience that it is hearing a poem read rather than seeing the events of that poem put into dramatic form. Titus' remarks to Lavinia after her mutilation are a good example:

Shall thy good uncle, and thy brother Lucius,
And thou, and I, sit round about some fountain,
Looking all downwards to behold our cheeks
How they are stain'd, like meadows yet not dry,
With miry slime left on them by a flood?
And in the fountain shall we gaze so long
Till the fresh taste be taken from that clearness,
And made a brine-pit with our bitter tears?
Or shall we cut away our hands like thine?
Or shall we bite our tongues, and in dumb shows
Pass the remainder of our hateful days?(26)

(III.i.122-132)

This essay was intended to demonstrate that Mr. Brook's success in staging Titus Andronicus resulted at least in part from his recognition (and translation into modern stage practices) of those largely visual devices in the play which “abstract” or formalize the horror. Although the work is extraordinarily bloody, the blood which is shed is often clearly identifiable as red ink or whatever sixteenth-century stage managers used to simulate wounds. The elaborate system of balances and parallels, the repetition of motifs, the meticulously-arranged stage tableaux, the pictorial quality of many scenes all tend to de-emphasize the physical violence by stylizing it. The characters are de-humanized by their language, their selfconscious posturing, and their association with a deeply formal and ritualistic environment. Consequently, Titus Andronicus represents, not a deliberate effort to shock an audience, but a fascinating and partially successful attempt to subdue the sensationalism of the most shocking material imaginable.

Notes

1. Both Q2 (1600) and Q3 (1611) maintain that the play was acted “sundry times” by the Lord Chamberlain's Men (who by 1611 were the King's Majesty's Servants); see also Ben Jonson's complaint in the “Induction” to Bartholomew Fair (1614): “Hee that will swear, Ieronimo, or Andronicus are the best plays, yet, shall passe vnexcepted at, heere, as a man whose Iudgement shews it is constant, and hath stood still, these fiue and twentie, or thirtie yeeres.”

2. Edward Ravenscroft, Titus Andronicus, or the Rape of Lavinia (1687), sig. A2.

3. Coleridge's Shakespearean Criticism, ed. T. M. Raysor (Cambridge, Mass., 1930), II, 31.

4. Titus Andronicus, ed. J. Dover Wilson (Cambridge, 1948), p. xii.

5. The controversy is adequately summarized by J. C. Maxwell in the Introduction to his Arden edition of the play (3rd ed., London, 1961), pp. xx-xxx. Since this essay pertains to the play itself rather than to the question of authorship, I am accepting the opinion of Maxwell and others that the work is substantially Shakespeare's.

6. Stage directions herein quoted are taken from Joseph Quincy Adams' facsimile edition of the 1594 Q1 (New York, 1936); citations from the text are from the 1961 Arden edition.

7. Sir Richard David, “Drams of Eale”, SS 10 (1957), p. 126. Sir Richard comments at length on the “powerfully simple” setting used to enhance the “compulsive and incantatory” performance.

8. J. C. Trewin, Shakespeare on the English Stage, 1900-1964 (London, 1964), p. 255.

9. “This Other Stratford”, Saturday Review, XXXVIII (Sept. 24, 1955), 24.

10. Evelyn Waugh, “Titus With a Grain of Salt”, Spectator (Sept. 2, 1955), p. 301.

11. David, p. 126.

12. Ibid.

13. “Search for a Hunger”, Encore (Jul.-Aug., 1961), pp. 16-17.

14. “Shakespearean Atrocities”, The Twentieth Century (Oct., 1955), p. 369.

15. I have not considered in the following discussion the language of the play, which is often inappropriate to, and detracts one's attention from, the shocking events being portrayed. Muriel C. Bradbrook, Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy (Cambridge, 1935), p. 99, has described the tone of the play as incongruously “cool and cultured”, and Eugene M. Waith, “The Metamorphosis of Violence in Titus Andronicus”, SS 10 (1957), p. 39, has noted the “formal, rhetorical style” which makes the characters “purely emblematic”. Certain features of the play invited, if they did not demand, non-dramatic, “literary” language: the necessity for spelling out in the dialogue many of Lavinia's movements and postures after her mutilation; Shakespeare's futile attempts to differentiate among Titus' reactions to the incredibly severe catastrophes which befall him; the extensive background of classical legend which encouraged the use of “stately” language; and the presence of a great many ceremonies and rituals which called for the special rhetoric of public address. This last aspect of the play is discussed by A. C. Hamilton, “Titus Andronicus: The Form of Shakespearian Tragedy”, SQ, XIV (1963), 206-207, and Alice C. Venezky, Pageantry on the Shakespearean Stage (New York, 1951), passim.

16. “The Hardboiled Shakespeare”, SAB, XVII (1942), 117.

17. His senseless sacrifice of Tamora's youngest son, Alarbus; his wrong-headed support of Saturninus, the poorer candidate for the crown; his offer of Lavinia to the new emperor; and the violent slaying of his own disobedient son.

18. “‘Wilderness of Tigers’: Structure and Symbolism in Titus Andronicus”, EC, X (1960), 276.

19. Hamilton identifies many additional ironic “echoes” in the play.

20. Laura Jepson, “A Footnote on ‘Hands’ in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus”, Fla. State Univ. Studies, XIX (1955), 7-10, discusses this repetition, claiming that it accentuates “the ironic undertone, which gathers force in the play until it breaks vehemently in the murderous onslaught at the end.”

21. Judith M. Carr, “The Pleas in Titus Andronicus”, SQ, XIV (1963), 278-279, omits many of these supplications, specifying six principal ones. Her thesis is, “As well as strengthening the unity of the play, these pleas are a rich source of irony in that the positions of refusing and being refused are significantly reversed.”

22. See W. W. Greg, The Shakespeare First Folio (Oxford, 1955), 203-204.

23. This drawing, discovered in the library of The Most Hon. the Marquess of Bath, Longleat, and attributed to Henry Peacham, was first published by Sir E. K. Chambers in The Library for March, 1925. It has since been reproduced many times. John Munro in TLS (10 June and 1 July, 1948) argued that the picture was a “comprehensive” depiction of the entire play, while John Dover Wilson,“‘Titus Andronicus’ on the Stage in 1595”, SS I (1948), pp. 17-24, and Thomas Marc Parrott, “Further Observations on Titus Andronicus”, SQ, I (1950), 22-29, have maintained that it records the action at I.i.129. Obviously, I favor the latter assumption.

24. These three scenes are the most carefully-planned and “symbolic” in the play, but there are many others in which the characters are frozen into memorable tableaux. Among the most deliberately pictorial are II.iii.192-306 (Martius and Quintus in the trapdoor-“hole”); the opening scene in Act III (Titus prostrating himself before the unsympathetic judges and senators who are leading his two sons to their deaths); III.i.279-287 (the pitiful procession of Titus and what is left of his family); IV.i. 76 (Lavinia writing in the sand); the opening of IV.ii (“Enter Aron, Chiron, and Demetrius at one doore, and at the other doore young Lucius, and another with a bundle of weapons, and verses writ upon them”); IV.iii (Titus and his followers shooting arrows with messages attached to them into the Emperor's “court”); the opening of V. ii. (Tamora and her sons in disguise); V.ii. 166-205 (the ritualistic sacrifice of Chiron and Demetrius); V.iii (the formal dinner which turns into stylized slaughter).

25. Shakespeare and Elizabethan Poetry (London, 1951), p. 105. Miss Bradbrook claims that Titus is “more like a pageant than a play” (p. 110).

26. Cf. II.iii.12-29; II.iii.198-202; II.iii.226-236; III. ii.39-45; V.i.98-120; V.ii.45-59.