SOURCE: Johnson, Robert. “Titus Andronicus: The First of the Roman Plays.” In Essays on Shakespeare in Honour of A. A. Ansari, edited by T. R. Sharma, pp. 80-7. Meerut, India: Shalabh Book House, 1986.

[In the following essay, Johnson evaluates the ambivalent attitude toward classical Rome presented in Titus Andronicus, and considers affinities between the drama and Shakespeare's later Roman plays.]

I do not wish to enter the discussion of authorship of Titus Andronicus¹ or necessarily to defend the play against its most virulent attackers, who include Dr Samuel Johnson.² To be sure, the play has most recently had its share of defenders and a number of critics have seen positive qualities in the play, especially in the opening act.³ Thomas P. Harrison has even argued for a continuity between Titus Andronicus and King Lear, concluding that a ‘study of the two plays bears witness to the orderly development of Shakespeare in dramatic technique as in his view of the human scene.’⁴

Although the comparison to King Lear is an illuminating one, I would suggest that the more appropriate comparison is to the other Roman plays. The critical emphasis on Shakespeare's reliance on Ovid may have obscured the thematic similarities between Titus Andronicus and the other Roman plays.

I would identify two major characteristics of the Roman plays. First is the ambivalent attitude the audience feels towards the Roman world. We are both attracted to it as a positive alternative and forced to question it because of its extremes.⁵ The second characteristic is our similarly ambivalent attitude toward the protagonist. His actions, his decisions, are from one point of view correct, but from another point of view, they are foolish and ill-conceived.

One reason for this dual response is that in the Roman plays the protagonist, along with the other major characters, is portrayed in a public role, a role defined by the society of which he is a part. But each of the major characters—Titus, Brutus, Julius Caesar, Antony, and Coriolanus—has a private side—a self which conflicts with that public role and eventually brings on the individual's destructlon. In the Roman plays the social norm or ideal is very early defined. The most obvious example is in Antony and Cleopatra; in the opening scene Demetrius and Philo measure Antony against the Roman model and find him lacking:

Take but good note, and you shall see in him
The triple pillar of the world transform'd
Into a strumpet's fool.          Behold and see.

(1,1,11-13)⁶

But as we see in the course of the play, the Roman ideal will be questioned, and Cleopatra and Egypt will emerge, despite their negative characteristics, as positive alternatives to Rome.

Julius Caesar opens on a scene of celebration of the triumphant return of Caesar after his victory over Pompey, but it is a triumph in a civil war and there are those who would stop the celebration. The society is obviously divided, and that societal division is reflected in Brutus's own attitude toward the killing of Caesar.

Brutus rationalizes his decision to kill Caesar on the basis of what he might become. He argues that the murder itself must be a ritualistic act, and the bathing in Caesar's blood after the assassination does suggest such a ritual, but at the same time it emphasizes the barbarism, the butchery of such an act. Brutus is, to be sure, an honorable man, but not only his strained rationalization for his decision, but also his quarrel with Cassius will force us at least to qualify this honor, and to recognize that the society he will attempt to create is no better than the social structure he has destroyed.

In Coriolanus we find the same problem, the divided society and a protagonist who is torn between his two roles. One of the ironies of this play is that the protagonist is both the perfect representative of the Roman world—a brave, courageous soldier who devotes his entire life to the protection of his country—and the extreme representative of his class which opposes the plebians and is dedicated to rendering them powerless. And Coriolanus's final conflict is between his public and his private roles. Forced to choose between the personal glory and victory to be achieved by sacking Rome and handing the defeated country over to the Goths and his own death if he acquiesces to his mother's pleas, Coriolanus finds that he cannot break away from his familial and societal bonds; he finds that he cannot be his own master and he does sacrifice himself.

Titus Andronicus is Shakespeare's initial attempt to explore the ambiguous Roman world, to show how the attractive qualities mask, or at times are indistinguishable from, the negative aspects of the opposing forces.

The opening act of Titus Andronicus will serve as an initial example of this conflict between the public and private roles and our ambivalent attitude toward the Roman world. Titus returns from his victorious battles to a Rome on the verge of civil strife because of the rival claims of the late emperor's sons, Saturninus and Bassianus. Saturninus makes his claim as the first-born son, while Bassianus argues for the crown on the basis of his virtues. But the potential division is to be healed, for the people ‘have by common voice’ chosen Titus Andronicus as the emperor and the two brothers seem willing to acquiesce in this choice.

But before Titus is offered the crown, he comes on stage in a triumphal procession. Victorious over the Goths, Titus now must bury his sons who have been slain in battle. The burial is, of course, a ritual, a ceremony which emphasizes the sense of community, the ties between those who have fought and died in this battle and in past battles and those who have survived. Lucius asks for the proudest prisoner of the Goths as a sacrifice to the gods and to appease those who have died. Tamora, the defeated Queen of the Goths, pleads in vain for her son's life. But Titus refuses, emphasising the sacrificial nature of the act:

These are their brethren, whom your Goths beheld
Alive and dead, and for their brethren slain
Religiously they ask a sacrifice:
To this your son is mark'd, and die he must,
T'appease their groaning shadows that are gone.

(I,i, 121-126)

But the audience must have a mixed reaction to such a sacrifice. While Titus emphasizes the ritualistic nature of the act, his son creates an image that suggests the butchery of the act:

Away with him, and make a fire straight
And with our swords, upon a pile of wood,
Let's hew his limbs till they be clean consum'd.

(I,i,127-129)

The reactions, then, of Tamora—‘O cruel, irreligious piety!’—and of Chiron—‘was never Scythia half so barbarous’—are a legitimate counterpoint to the ritualistic burial performed by Titus.⁷

After the burial Titus is offered the crown. But Titus recognizes that this new role would be in conflict with his normal social or public role. He is the loyal soldier, the respected warrior. And he refuses the crown because he wants, instead, the honor and recognition in his old age due a soldier who has served his country some forty years. Refusing the empery for himself, he asks the people to grant the crown to Saturninus, the first-born son. Titus's decision is, of course, one which emphasizes the stability of the society. The first-born son has a legitimate claim, and from that perspective is the obvious choice. But as the opening lines of the play suggest, the society is torn between the two factions—that of Saturninus, who makes his claim on the basis of his birth, and that of Bassianus, who argues for election on the basis of ‘justice, continence, and nobility.’

Saturninus's first act as emperor is to make Lavinia, the daughter of Titus, his wife. As a later aside indicates, Saturninus would prefer the captive Tamora for his bride, so we must see his choice of Lavinia as a decision governed by his public role, a political marriage which pays honor to Titus and his family and supposedly binds the two men together. The mutual praise which follows this proposal emphasizes the social bonds which would tie the two families together. But, of course, Saturninus' speech is but a facade.

Titus's loyalty to the state and to the ruler of the state is most evident when Bassianus claims Lavinia as his rightfully betrothed. Titus's reaction to Bassianus' seizure is swift. He chases Bassianus, vowing to rescue Lavinia. When one of his sons, Mutius, blocks his way, Titus slays him, showing no remorse or sympathy since this son has dishonored him by opposing him. He even refuses at first to allow his brother and other sons to bury Mutius. Titus's loyalty to the state is so strong that even when the state is corrupt, when the individual cause is correct, Titus will remain fiercely loyal to that state, and still naively will expect that his loyalty will be rewarded.

His refusal to bury his son who opposed him and aided Bassianus's escape with Lavinia emphasizes again the ritualistic quality of the earlier burial, its sense of communal feeling, the idea of honor bestowed by the country on both the dead and those who have lived. But to Titus, his newly slain son does not qualify for such a ceremonial burial:

Traitors, away, he rests not in this tomb.
This monument five hundreth years hath stood,
Which I have sumptuously re-edified.
Here none but soldiers and Rome's servitors
Repose in fame; none barely slain in brawls.
Bury him where you can, he comes not here

(1,1, 349-354)

Marcus's reply (‘My lord, this is impiety in you.’) echoes Tamora's earlier accusation, and when Marcus and his sons kneel before Titus begging for permission to bury Mutius, the stage action mirrors Tamora's earlier pleas. When Titus relents and allows the burial, the ritual has lost its meaning; Titus does not participate, and the words of the brothers have an ironic ring: ‘No man shed tears for noble Mutius. He lives in fame, that died in virtue's cause’ (1, 1, 389-90).

The play opened with Saturninus and his followers entering from one door, and Bassianus and his followers entering from the other door.⁸ The act ends with a similar scene as Saturninus and Tamora enter from one door; Bassianus and Lavinia from the other. The tension is high, but Tamora falsely assures Titus that all is forgiven, and the act ends with the facade of peace and Titus still blindly loyal to the state and to his new ruler.

However, Titus changes in acts two and three.⁹ When his two sons are unjustly accused of murdering Bassianus, Titus first seeks mercy from the state, pleading before the judges and the senators that they ‘be pitiful to my condemned sons.’ But they ignore his pleas, passing silently across the stage. His other son, who has attempted to rescue his brothers by force, has been banished, and now finally Titus recognizes the corrupt Roman society; he counsels his banished son:

O happy man, they have befriended thee!
Why foolish Lucius, dost thou not perceive
That Rome is but a wilderness of tigers?
Tigers must prey, and Rome affords no prey
But me and mine.

(3, 1, 52-56)

But for one last time Titus will seek a perverted form of Roman justice. Aaron reports to Titus, Marcus, and Lucius that if one of them will chop off a hand, Saturninus will free Titus's two sons. Such a barbarous idea manifests the complete disintegration of Roman law and justice, but Titus accepts the offer and hastily cuts his hand off as the other two argue who should have the honor of ransoming Martius and Quintus. It is only when the messenger returns with the two heads and his hand that Titus makes the complete break with the Roman society and seeks his personal revenge. And when Lavinia reveals in act four that her attackers were Tamora's sons, Chiron and Demetrius, Titus quotes from Seneca's Hippolytus, pleading for justice not from society, but from the heavens. And later he will shoot his arrows, burdened with messages, to the gods since he recognizes that Astrea, the goddess of justice, has left the earth.

How Titus finally accomplishes his revenge is familiar to students both of Shakespeare and Ovid. I want to emphasize, however, the contrast between Titus's killing of his son in the first act and his slaying of Lavinia at the end of the play. In the first act his action confirms his loyalty to Rome and his role as a public figure. His killing of Lavinia is a private act, a commitment to a personal relationship, an attitude towards honor which defines the self in relation to his famlly and a definition of honor which is personal, individual and not a social concept of honor.

That Titus and his son Lucius have taken a personal revenge and have acted against the Roman society not for or with it must now be judged by that society. And Marcus, the spokesman for right throughout the play, asks for the Romans to judge Titus's actions:

Now have you heard the truth, what say you, Romans?
Have we done aught amiss, show us wherein,
And, from the place where you behold us pleading,
The poor remainder of Andronici
Will hand in hand all headlong hurl ourselves,
And on the ragged stones beat forth our souls,
And make a mutual closure of our house.
Speak Romans, speak, and if you say we shall,
To hand in hand Lucius and I will fall.

(5, 3, 128-136)

The Romans cry for Lucius to be emperor and the restoration of peace and harmony is evident at the end of the play. The righteous ruler, Lucius, is now on the throne, and the public and private roles are in accord. The play ends as it began, with a funeral and with the continuing contrast between the ritualistic—Titus and Lavinia will be buried in the family's monument—and the barbarous—Aaron will be set ‘breast-deep’ in the ground to starve to death and Tamora's corpse will be thrown outside the city to be devoured by birds of prey. The two-fold attitude towards Rome continues, then, throughout the play.

In this the first of the Roman plays Shakespeare develops with considerable skill a contrast between the Rome of barbarity and cruelty, a Rome divided between the public and private needs and a Rome attempting to reconcile these needs. Titus Andronicus surely anticipates the more successful handling of these ideas in the three other Roman plays.

Notes

1. J. C. Maxwell summarises the authorship controversy in his introduction to Titus Andronicus in The Arden Shakespeare, London, 1961.

2. In a note to his edition of Titus Andronicus Johnson wrote, ‘The barbarity of the spectacles, and the general massacre which are here exhibited, can scarcely be conceived tolerable to any audience.’ He went on to add, however, that ‘they were not only borne but praised.’

3. Some of the more balanced and perceptive treatments of Titus Andronicus include Ronald Brouder, ‘Roman and Goth in Titus Andronicus,’ Shakespeare Survey, 6 (1972): 27-34; Andrew Ettin, ‘Shakespeare's First Roman Tragedy,’ ELH, 37 (1970: 325-41; Ann Haaker, ‘Non sine causa: The Use of Emblematic Method and Iconology in the Thematic Structure of Titus Andronicus,’ RORD [Reserach Opportunities in Renaissance Drama] ‘13-14 (1970-71): 143-168; Clifford Huffman, ‘Titus Andronicus: Metamorphosis and Renewal,’ MLR [Modern Language Review], 67 (1972): 730-41; G. K. Hunter, ‘Shakespeare's Earliest Tragedies: Titus Andronicus and Romeo and Juliet’, Shakespeare Survey, 27 (1974): 1-9; D. J. Palmer, ‘The Unspeakable in Pursuit of the Uneatable: Language and Action in Titus Andronicus,’ Critical Quarterly, 14 (1972): 320-39; Alan Sommers, ‘Wilderness of Tigers’: Structure and Symbolism in Titus Andronicus,’ EIC [Essays in Criticism], 10 (1960): 275-89; William B. Toole, ‘The Collision of Action and Character Patterns in Titus Andronicus, ‘Renaissance Papers 1971, (1972): 25-39; E. Waith, ‘The Metamorphosis of Violence in Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare Survey, 10 (1957): 39-49

4. ‘Titus Andronicus and King Lear: A Study in Continuity’ in Shakespearean Essays, ed. by Alwin Thaler and Norman Sanders, Knoxville. University of Tennessee Press, 1964, p, 129

5. Compare Alan Sommers' comment: ‘The essential conflict in Titus Andronicus 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, original nature.’ (p. 276)

6. All quotations from the plays are from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. by G. Blakemore Evans, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974

7. The varied response to this sequence is suggested by the following comments: ‘Shakespeare has been at pains both to establish the fact that this is an integral part of the Roman rites and to graphically reveal its savagery. Tamora's response becomes our own.’ Andrew Ettin, pp. 332-333. ‘Shakespeare seems here to be dramatizing a clear conception of the religious basis of the Roman way of life; there is no suggestion that he is criticizing the system.’ G. K. Hunter, p. 7

8. See Ann Haaker's excellent discussion of the emblematic groupings in this play.

9. D. J. Palmer describes the change thus: ‘The progression of the play's first two Acts represents the metamorphosis of Roman civilization into Gothic barbarism through a transition from solemn ceremony to wild and brutal sport,’ (p. 326).