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Titus Andronicus Chapter 2 Titus Andronicus Shakespeare’s earliest plays were comedies and histories. The Taming of the Shrew (1590–1), The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1590–1) and 2 and 3Henry VI (1591) were probably all written before his first tragedy, Titus Andronicus. The first recorded performance of Titus Andronicus was at the Rose in January 1594, but it may have been written as early as 1592. Some have argued that it was co-written with George Peele, who wrote the bloody and spectacular Battle of Alcazar (1588–9), while others, including Jonathan Bate, the play’s most recent Arden editor, believe that the play is wholly by Shakespeare.1 Ido not propose to discuss the question of authorship here, but readers should be aware that the first scene of the play, which I will use below to discuss aspects of stagecraft and scenic form, is considered by some to be wholly or partly by Peele. Since, in any case, I will argue that its strongly rhythmic and symmetrical stagecraft is heavily influenced by Kyd, purity of authorship is not the primary issue here. My concern is with the way the play as a whole operates, and what kind of impact it seeks to make. Whether Shakespeare or a collaborator wrote any given scene, it may be taken that, if there was collaboration, both authors approved, and possibly improved, each other’s work. It should also be noted at the start that the scene is the basic unit of construction underpinning a Shakespearean play. The early quarto texts were printed with scene divisions only; a majority of the Folio printed versions have act divisions, but these are not necessarily Shakespeare’s.2 Titus Andronicus is both a Roman play and a revenge tragedy, indebted to Seneca in style and content, but not obviously modelled on any known source. Its debt to Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy is equally evident. Both plays show protago- nists driven to revenge by the unavailability of justice through any other means, and driven to madness by the experience of grief. Both show acts of barbaric violence set against an implied norm of civil society. And both carefully cere- monialise the performance of revenge. This ceremonial aspect is of particular interest, partly because ritualised or ceremonial action continues to shape the dramaturgy of Shakespeare’s later tragedies, though often ironically or oppo- sitionally, and partly because the emphasis on ceremony in Titus emphasises 25 Downloaded from http:/www.cambridge.org/core. National Library of the Philippines, on 06 Oct 2016 at 09:30:52, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at http:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511816994.003 26 The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespearean Tragedies the appropriateness of a formal approach to the play. Since character-study, usually within a realist framework, has been such a dominant approach to Shakespearean tragedy over the last two centuries, it is important to note its limitations in approaching such a consciously patterned play as Titus. Scenic form Flourish. Enter the Tribunes [including Marcus Andronicus] and Senators aloft. And then enter [below] Saturninus and his followers at one door, and Bassianus and his followers at the other, with drums and colours. Act1,scene1ofTitus begins with a fanfare of trumpets and a ceremonial entry with drums and flags from three directions, including the stage gallery and the stage doors either side of the tiring house wall.3 The stage is filled rhythmically by the paced, sequential entrance of each group, and the speeches that follow continue this formality. The voice of the leader of each group is heard in turn. Rome needs a new emperor; Saturninus and Bassianus want to go to war over their opposing claims to the title, but Marcus Andronicus, who holds the crown aloft and speaks at greatest length, speaks on behalf of his brother Titus, whose return from war is imminently expected, and who has been elected emperor by the people of Rome. Saturninus and Bassianus accept his request to dismiss their followers and plead their causes peaceably, and the two groups of soldiers on the main stage exit as formally as they entered, while Saturninus and Bassianus ascend to the stage gallery to join Marcus in the imagined location of the Senate House. Immediately the scene shifts into a new mode with another symmetrical and even more formally choreographed entry. Here is the detailed stage direction in full: Sound drums and trumpets, and then enter two of Titus’ Sons, and then two men bearing a coffin covered with black, then two other Sons, then Titus Andronicus, and then [, as prisoners,] Tamora, the Queen of the Goths, and her [three] sons, [Alarbus,] Chiron and Demetrius, with Aaron the Moor, and others as many as can be. Then set down the coffin and Titus speaks. (1.1.72) It is possible that Titus enters in a triumphal chariot, since later in the scene he offers his sword, chariot and prisoners to Saturninus (250–6).4 (Debo- rah Warner’s production in 1987 had Titus sitting on a horizontal ladder carried by his sons, with the prisoners’ heads sticking through between the rungs.) Here, the formality is not based on the symmetry of the two doors but on the hierarchy of a procession, focused on two groups and one striking Downloaded from http:/www.cambridge.org/core. National Library of the Philippines, on 06 Oct 2016 at 09:30:52, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at http:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511816994.003 Titus Andronicus 27 The drawing attributed to Henry Peacham, possibly of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, is reproduced by permission of the Marquess of Bath. anomaly: the Romans, headed by Titus Andronicus, bearing the coffin of his son (he has in fact lost more than one son in the conflict, but the single coffin may be emblematic); the Goths, prisoners to the Romans; and Aaron, marked out as separate by his colour and race and referred to by these attributes in the stage direction as ‘the Moor’. Both the symmetry of the play’s staging and the separateness of the Moor are visible in the only surviving contemporary sketch possibly depicting a per- formance from the theatre of this period. The drawing, attributed to Henry Peacham, shows a prominent horizontal symmetry, with opposing groups of characters arranged on either side of the central point of Titus’ spear.5 It also shows clearly the importance of props, stances and gestures, showing Tamora and her sons kneeling in supplication, Titus responding with a wide gesture, as though to indicate the impossibility of acceding to her request, his sol- diers standing in precisely parallel stances, with their pikes raised, and Aaron standing proudly, forward and to one side of the kneeling group, his body showing clear opposition, his sword raised in one hand, and his other hand gesturing threateningly towards its point. The single piece of clear evidence for an eyewitness view of the play also responds to the play primarily as a piece of visual spectacle. A private performance of Titus was given at the house of Sir John Harington at Burley-on-the-Hill in Rutland in January 1596. The household French tutor, writing to Anthony Bacon, expressed the view that ‘la monstre [the spectacle]’ had more value than ‘le sujet [the subject matter]’.6 Titus’ speech following this entrance is a piece of high rhetoric correspond- ing to the solemnity of the ritual; indeed formal rhetoric is a regular and Downloaded from http:/www.cambridge.org/core. National Library of the Philippines, on 06 Oct 2016 at 09:30:52, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at http:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511816994.003 28 The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespearean Tragedies recognisable part of the dramaturgy that establishes the pace and elevation of ceremonial moments. Like Hieronimo’s lament for his son (p. 18), loss is here formalised and sculpted into a verbal tribute as detached and shapely as a funerary urn. The speech, however, is public where Hieronimo’s was private, and Titus’ sons have died defending Rome whereas Hieronimo’s son was mur- dered. There is a sense of both necessity and honour about the slow opening of the tomb that will unite them with their many dead brothers, and Titus’ direct address to the tomb continues to hold the moment still as the ceremony pursues its stately course: Osacredreceptacleofmyjoys, Sweet cell of virtue and nobility, How many sons hast thou of mine in store That thou wilt never render to me more! (1.1.95–8) At this precisely timed, ceremonial moment, however, that stillness is instantly disrupted by one of Titus’ surviving sons, Lucius, who calls for the death of the noblest of the Goths in return, constructing it as a reciprocal, sacrificial rite, a necessary duty to the dead. Thus death is coolly demanded and agreed to in a formal exchange of question and answer between Titus and his eldest surviving son: lucius Give us the proudest prisoner of the Goths, That we may hew his limbs and on a pile Ad manes fratrum sacrifice his flesh Before this earthly prison of their bones, That so the shadows be not unappeased, Nor we disturbed with prodigies on earth. titus I give him you, the noblest that survives, The eldest son of this distressed queen. (96–103) This is the cue for Tamora and her sons to kneel to Titus for the life of Alarbus, but Titus’ response again emphasises that for himself and the Romans this is a matter not of personal revenge but of religious sacrifice.
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