Summary

Titus Andronicus opens in the twilight of the Roman Empire, in the aftermath of the Emperor's death. His two sons - Saturninus, his firstborn, and Bassianus, his second - are pleading to the Roman elite for their respective causes. Saturninus argues that because he is the emperor's eldest son the right to succession is naturally his, while Bassianus counters that Saturninus is unfit for the position and that he, the more honorable son, should succeed their father. This debate is interrupted when Marcus Andronicus, the tribune of Rome, announces that the people of Rome have elected his brother, Titus, to be the next emperor, on the basis of his recent successes in the wars against the Goths. Saturninus and Bassianus dismiss their factions and Titus enters victorious from battle, though greatly grief-stricken because he has lost twenty-one of his twenty-five sons.

Titus' eldest remaining son, Lucius, orders that the eldest prince of the Goths, Alarbus, who has been taken in battle, be sacrificed to appease the Roman gods. The queen of the Goths, Tamora, falls to her knees to beg Titus not to kill her son; Titus, however, orders the sacrifice to commence and Tamora and her two remaining sons, Chiron and Demetrius, both swear that Romans are far more barbaric than Goths. Following Alarbus' death, Titus' beloved daughter, Lavinia, enters to receive her father's blessing. Close behind is Marcus, who announces that Titus is the new emperor. Titus rejects the honor, saying that he is too old and feeble to take on the role of emperor. Meanwhile, Saturninus rouses up his faction to seize the empery for himself; this action is rendered inconsequential, however, when Titus, with the blessing of the Tribune and above the protestations of Bassianus, bestows the empery upon Saturninus.

Immediately upon becoming emperor, Saturninus declares Lavinia to be his wife, though she was promised to his brother Bassianus. Titus readily agrees to the match. Saturninus then turns his attention to the Goth prisoners, and finds himself instantly smitten by Tamora. He promises the Goth queen that she shall be made greater in Rome than she ever was as a Goth. As he is leaving with his entourage, Bassianus seizes Lavinia, declaring that she is rightfully his; Titus' sons, knowing that Bassianus and Lavinia were betrothed, defend Bassianus' right to seize her, an action that Titus interprets as treason.

Titus pursues them and in his rage slays Mutius, one of his sons. Saturninus, for his part, declares Lavinia's fleeing to be Titus' fault and rebukes the general, while in his next breath he takes Tamora for his queen; they depart to consummate their marriage. Marcus and Lucius enter bearing Mutius and insisting that he receive proper funeral rites. Titus initially refuses, declaring Mutius and the rest of his family to be base traitors. However, rejected by the emperor and estranged from his family, Titus eventually agrees to entomb Mutius after his family kneels and begs him.

Saturninus and Tamora return from their consummation, and Saturninus immediately rails against Bassianus and Titus. He threatens revenge until Tamora, the newly-crowned queen, interjects and entreats him to forgive them. She whispers to Saturninus that she will "find a day to massacre them all," promising revenge on Titus because he sacrificed Alarbus despite her pleas for his life. Saturninus agrees to forgive Titus and the rest of his family. Having regained the emperor's favor (or so he thinks), Titus invites Saturninus to join him in a hunt the following day.

Analysis

Titus is simultaneously very familiar and very strange to someone who has read Shakespeare's more famous works: almost like Shakespeare as seen in a funhouse mirror. Many of the themes that he explores later in his career are present here: revenge, primogeniture, marriage. And one can detect shades of Lady Macbeth in Tamora, hints of King Lear in Titus, and other character similarities even after only one Act. But all of these recognizably Shakespearean features unfold against an unfamiliarly grotesque backdrop. Even from the very beginning of the play, the characters and actions in Titus seem more horrific than is typical of Shakespeare.

The most obvious example of this in the first Act is the presence of extreme violence. Certainly later works contained instances of murder and mayhem: all of his major tragedies end with death. But the violence in Titus is unique. For one thing, horrific, ritualistic acts of violence occur right from the play's beginning. The deaths in Shakespeare's later plays almost always occur in later Acts, after they have been keenly anticipated and their consequences considered. The violence in the third Act - and indeed throughout the play - is quite different: random, brutal, and ineloquent. People are killed on a whim, limbs lopped off almost merrily. This is not violence in the pursuit of power, as in Macbeth, or as a form of revenge, as in Hamlet. It is simple chaos.

And who is the perpetrator of these initial acts of violence? The namesake of our play, Titus Andronicus. Titus' first major action is to sacrifice Alarbus despite the eloquent pleading of Tamora. His second is to give his daughter - whom he presumably knows is promised to Bassianus - to the unlikable Saturninus. His third is to kill one of his four remaining sons. This is our hero? It is almost impossible to sympathize with his zealous, almost nonsensical devotion to Rome - a corrupt, factious state that he helps to make all the more corrupt by giving Saturninus power. And what is more, Shakespeare makes no effort to win Titus sympathy. He displays Titus' coldhearted murderousness in the sacrifice of Alarbus and the murder of Mutius. Even the Goths - no strangers to barbarous acts, as we shall see - declare that they are not "half so barbarous" as Rome, and lament Titus' "cruel irreligious piety." Titus, in any other Shakespearean play, would be a sanctimonious villain; here, however, he is our tragic hero.

Titus' behavior - his chaotic actions in the name of Roman order, his barbarity in the name of civilization - gets at the chief thematic mode of Titus: contradiction. Titus' unthinking devotion to traditional Roman customs is actually bad for the state. His idea of honor - forcing his daughter to break her betrothal - is actually (and quite obviously) dishonorable. And this kind of ambiguity exists in many characters besides Titus. Shakespeare consistently confounds dualisms - male/female, barbaric/civilized, weak/powerful - in ways that define his characters. Saturninus, for instance, is ambiguous in terms of his power. He has no power at the beginning of the play, but Titus soon grants him absolute power, after which he reveals himself to be under Tamora's control; thus he is defined by both the weakness of his character and the power of his official status as emperor. Tamora, too, is a character with innate ambiguities. She is sympathetic in her first appearance, when she is seen pleading for her son's life, but becomes increasingly unsympathetic as the play progresses. Moreover, she contains both masculine and feminine qualities - she attracts Saturninus because she is a "goodly lady," only to insist to the emperor, once she is his queen, "be ruled by me."

Even at the level of language, as in the oxymoron "irreligious piety," there is central ambiguity. The language of Titus reflects the actions of its characters. Notice that almost all of Titus is written in end-stopped poetry - that is to say, almost every line of poetry ends with a pause, whether a natural break in the syntax of a sentence or a punctuation mark. This is in some ways typical of early Shakespeare. His Henry VI plays, for instance, are composed almost completely in end-stopped lines. But in Titus this rigid, formal style, which contrasts so oddly with the chaotic actions contained in the style, enacts the kind of ambiguity we see on the level of characters. The poetry itself is like Titus - brutally formal, barbaric yet civilized, oxymoronic. Its blunt, rushing formality is quite noticeable when you read the lines aloud - as they would be, of course, in performance. The effect of so many regularized lines about such grotesque events is numbing; it subtly dehumanizes the speakers of the poetry, revealing the corrupt yet militaristically ordered society of the late Roman Empire. Just as Titus is hardly sympathetic, so too the poetry of his play is hardly human. Both characters and language cooperate in constructing the bleak stage - rigid yet chaotic - upon which the escalating tragedy of Titus unfolds.

Summary

Aaron the Moor, standing alone on the stage, declares that he plans to catch a ride on Tamora's coattails: she has gone from being a lowly prisoner to one of the most important people in Rome, and Aaron, her lover, plans to use her newfound leverage for his own betterment. Suddenly, Chiron and Demetrius rush in, fighting with one another about which of them is more worthy of Lavinia's love: it seems they have both fallen for Bassianus' new wife. Aaron, quickly seeing through their clichéd declarations of love, hatches a plot so that they might both rape Lavinia during the scheduled hunt, and the boys readily agree to the idea.

On to the hunt, then, where Titus and his sons meet with the emperor and his attendants. Aaron, meanwhile, hides a bag of gold under a tree in the forest (part of his plot to undo Lavinia and Bassianus). Tamora soon breaks off from the main hunting party to meet Aaron. She tries to initiate sex with him, but he resists; he's more in the mood for murder. Suddenly, Bassianus and Lavinia come upon the lovers. They mock Tamora for lusting after a black man, and Bassianus tells Tamora that he is going to tell Saturninus all about what he has witnessed.

Just as Bassanius and Lavinia are about to leave to tell the emperor about the tryst, Chiron and Demetrius happen along. Tamora tells her sons that Bassianus and Lavinia enticed her to the spot in order to torment her, and Chiron and Demetrius fatally stab Bassianus in retribution. Tamora then moves to stab Lavinia, but her sons stop her, explaining that they want to rape her instead. Lavinia, horrified at the prospect of such a violation, begs Tamora to intervene with her sons, but Tamora refuses, reminding Lavinia that Titus was deaf to her own pleas for Alarbus' life. When Lavinia begs Tamora to kill her rather than allow her to be raped, Tamora leaves her to be dealt with at her sons' discretion. Chiron and Demetrius, following Aaron's orders, throw Bassianus' body in a hole and drag Lavinia offstage.

Just then, Aaron enters with Quintus and Martius, two of Titus' sons, in tow. He leads them to the pit where Chiron and Demetrius placed Bassianus' body, saying that a panther lies there asleep. The hole is concealed, and Martius stumbles in only to find Bassianus' body, which he recognizes because of a distinctive ring that shines in the darkness. Quintus, in an effort to save his brother, falls into the hole himself. Aaron leads Saturninus to the hole, where he is informed that his brother has been found dead. Aaron's plot unfolds further when Tamora and Titus enter with a letter insinuating that Martius and Quintus murdered Bassianus for the bag of gold. Aaron then "finds" the bag of gold in question, which is still lying in the very place that he hid it. Saturninus is thus convinced of the Andronici's guilt and orders them to be executed without a trial, despite Titus' pleas.

A ghastly scene follows, as Chiron and Demetrius drag the wretched Lavinia onstage. She is still alive, but her tongue has been cut out and her hands chopped off to prevent her from identifying her rapists. They mock her hideous condition, and then exit. Marcus enters and, in a long-winded speech, laments Lavinia's mutilated appearance. He finally gathers that she has been raped, and exits with her in search of Titus.

Analysis

The final scene of Act Two is by far the most disturbing scene in a play rife with violence and murder. By presenting his audience with the spectacle of Lavinia's ravished, mutilated body, Shakespeare offers us the supreme metamorphosis: a beauty transformed into a beast. It is fitting, then, that Marcus draws upon the tale of Terseus and Philomel (from Ovid's Metamorphosis) when presenting her to Saturninus. The spectacle of Lavinia's woeful transformation speaks for itself despite her muteness; that fact, however, does not stop Marcus from trying to speak for her, for better or for worse.

Marcus' speech upon finding Lavinia contains some of the best poetry in the play - or, at least, some of its most self-consciously poetic. Consider these words: "Alas, a crimson river of warm blood, / Like to a bubbling fountain stirred with wind, / Doth rise and fall between thy rosed lips, / Coming and going with thy honey breath." These lines are monstrously incongruous with the spectacle onstage. Marcus takes Lavinia's appearance as an opportunity to wax poetic, to explore comparisons and allusions. He beautifies her ugliness, but in such a forced and inappropriate manner that his speech was routinely cut from earlier productions of Titus.

Indeed, Marcus' speech is either one of the most inept miscalculations of Shakespeare's career, or a remarkable example of deliberate incongruity. Many critics have sided with the former estimation, but there is a strong case to be made for the latter. The rape and mutilation of Lavinia is the key action of the play - it sets into motion Titus' quest for vengeance, and is also the central image of the play, representing many of the play's thematic concerns. Lavinia's loss of her hands and tongue, for instance, represents her loss of agency - the loss of her ability to speak or act against manipulation by those who seek to victimize her. Lavinia herself personifies the Roman state - she is even called "Rome's royal mistress" in the first Act - and her rape symbolizes, in the bluntest way possible, the corruption of Rome by the barbarous Goths.

If Lavinia's mutilation and rape, then, is so central to the play's imagery, Marcus' incongruous response to her misery must be interpreted as an example of the futility of language in the face of such horror. The disconnect that we saw in Act One between poetic, metered speech and gruesome violence reaches a climax in Marcus' speech. Marcus' poetic talents are too meager to effectively convey the extent of Lavinia's suffering, though his limitations don't stop him from trying to do so. In a similar manner, Titus and his entourage generally fail to speak or act with any real impact. Lavinia may have had her hands and tongue chopped off, but her allies are equally (if less literally) bereft of tongues and hands, and are incapable of opposing the corrupt Rome that raped her.

No analysis of Act Two would be complete without a word about Aaron. He, like the other major characters in Titus, is a walking contradiction: Shakespeare paints him as the stereotypically evil black man who haunted the imaginations of his contemporaries, but also infused his character with a surprising degree of sympathy. That sympathy, needless to say, is hardly apparent in Act Two, but it does come later. For now, notice how much fun Aaron has with language. His speech is full of macabre puns and innuendos - his ability to manipulate language, indeed, mirrors his facility at manipulating people. Aaron is the opposite of Marcus: he is capable of finding just the right words for the occasion, and his speeches are never fumbling or long-winded.

Summary

As the Roman elites walk toward the site of Martius and Quintus' imminent execution, Titus kneels before them and pleads with them to reconsider their rash judgment. They pass him by without a word. Lucius reveals that he has been banished, and Titus tells him that he should be happy to be banished from a cursed place like Rome. Just then, at the highest pitch of Titus' misery, Marcus enters with Lavinia, revealing the extent of her mutilation. Titus and Marcus weep over the girl and contemplate how to avenge her.

Aaron enters and tells Titus that the emperor has decided to spare his sons after all if he, Lucius, or Marcus chops off a hand and presents it to him. All three Andronici leap at the chance to perform the sacrifice. Marcus and Lucius rush off to get an ax, but while they are gone Titus has Aaron cut off his hand, thus preempting his son and brother. Soon afterwards, however, a messenger returns with Titus' sons disembodied heads and Titus' severed hand. The Andronici collapse in grief, and Lavinia kisses her brothers' heads. Titus begins to laugh ghoulishly, swearing that he will seek out Revenge's cave. He then orders his daughter to take his hand between her teeth; he and his brother each pick up a head. Lucius, meanwhile, declares that he will raise an army against Rome during his banishment.

Some time later, Titus and his family sit down to a meal. Titus declares that he will interpret Lavinia despite her infirmity. When Marcus kills a fly Titus reprimands him, insisting that any killing is unjust, but after Marcus compares the fly to Aaron the Moor Titus swats the creature himself. Thus the Act comes to a close with the Andronici in a state of deepest despair.

Analysis

Act Three is largely a series of tableaux, each of which underscores the powerlessness of the Andronici clan. In many ways, these stagings are quite obvious. Titus' sacrifice of his hand, for instance, represents the surrendering of his agency to the Roman state. Although he initially surrendered his agency in Act One when he made Saturninus emperor, here he does so quite literally, but just as his sacrifice was scorned then, so it is scorned here. Now two of the Andronici have lost their hands, though Lavinia's were taken, not freely given. Indeed, Titus is obsessed with hands. The words "hand" or "hands" appear almost eighty times throughout the play, more than they do in any other Shakespearean work. They represent action, duty, work, agency - all values that come to naught for Titus and his family.

The counterpoint to hands - and the other body part Lavinia has lost - is the tongue. Like the sacrifice of his hand, Titus' speeches in Act Three are ineffectual. He "tells his sorrows to the stones" of Rome, as he says in a particularly moving speech, because his words are meaningless to the Roman elites he might have ruled over. In Act Three, Titus' language borders on madness. It is full of repetitions and gruesome puns, and he constantly reminds the audience of Lavinia's mutilation ("Let us that have our tongues / Plot some device of further misery"; "What accursed hand / Hath made thee handless in thy father's sight"). These distasteful lines, like his laughter at the end of scene one, reveal a Titus who is unhinged by his misery, who sees the unspeakable injustice of his family's treatment as darkly humorous - almost like a macabre play.

Though Lavinia is commented upon, wept over, poeticized, and lamented, she remains mute. The men who presume to weep for her victimization continue to put words into her mouth, thus rendering her doubly powerless. Titus insists that he can read her "martyred signs" - though he obviously cannot, as he comes no closer to figuring out who mutilated her than Marcus did. He even has his daughter carry his severed hand between her teeth, an image that simultaneously evokes her central position in his desire for revenge and belittles her, mocking her deformity. Lavinia wields very little power even over those who claim to love her. Indeed, Titus never cared for Lavinia's agency - recall his immediate willingness to hand her over to Saturninus in Act One. Shakespeare is perhaps suggesting that despite the obvious depravity of Chiron and Demetrius' behavior, Titus' is not that much different. He too takes Lavinia's agency for granted, sulking over her injury as an affront to himself, as a "spurn" to his own "soul". Lavinia is trapped between the men who raped her and the men who would avenge her.

Summary

Act Four opens with Lavinia chasing Lucius' son. The child is horrified by Lavinia's appearance, and must be calmed by Titus and Marcus. As they try to find Lavinia's reason for chasing the boy, she gestures to young Lucius' book, Ovid's Metamorphosis, and manages to turn the leaves to the story of the rape of Philomel. Titus thus gathers that she was raped. Marcus grabs a tree branch, and by placing one end of the branch between his teeth and guiding it on the sand with his arms shows how she might write the names of her assailants. She does so, informing the men that it was Chiron and Demetrius who raped her. Marcus and Titus both swear revenge, and Titus hatches a plot to send presents to the rapists before seeking revenge outright.

Per Titus' orders, young Lucius delivers Chiron and Demetrius the best weapons from Titus' armory with verses of Horace wrapped around them. Aaron enters to see the delivery, and immediately realizes that Titus has found out the facts of the crime. Meanwhile, we discover that Tamora is in labor. The nurse enters with the child, revealing that it is a black baby, and thus obviously Aaron's. The nurse then brings the child to Aaron and orders him to kill it. Demetrius and Chiron are appalled that Aaron and their mother have conceived a black child, and they both try to kill it themselves. Aaron, however, rescues the baby, swearing that he will protect his newborn son with his life, all while making fun of those with white skin.

When Chiron and Demetrius realize that Aaron is not going to kill his son, they decide to keep the birth a secret. Aaron kills the nurse so that she won't tell anyone about the child's existence, and instructs Chiron and Demetrius to buy the newborn child of a white countryman he knows in order to fool the emperor into believing his son to be white. He also tells them to send the midwife to him so that he can kill her too, thus eliminating everyone who knows about the birth, save for Tamora and her sons. Aaron leaves to join the Goths outside Rome's walls, planning to find a home for his child.

In the meantime, Titus' plot for revenge unfolds. Although his family and friends believe him to be mad, he convinces them to shoot arrows with letters wrapped around them into the Roman court. The letters advertise the injustices being perpetrated by the Roman government, and declare that since they can't find justice in Rome, they will seek out the justice of the gods. While shooting the arrows Titus comes across a pigeon-keeping Clown, whom he hires to deliver a personal message to Saturninus.

In the court, meanwhile, Saturninus is furious that Titus has been calling him unjust. Tamora calms him, silently plotting to deal with Titus herself. The Clown enters and delivers his message: yet another accusation of injustice. After reading the message, Saturninus orders the Clown hanged. Just then Aemilius arrives with news that Lucius has raised an army of Goths to march against Rome and depose Saturninus. The emperor turns pale upon hearing this, and swears that all is lost because the people of Rome love Lucius more than they love him. Tamora tries to snap her husband out of his self-pity with a rousing speech, and declares that she will have to use "all her art" to solve the Titus problem in an expedient manner.

Analysis

The question of Lavinia's agency becomes even more complicated in Act Four. Despite the fact that Marcus knows she was raped and actually compared her to Philomel when he first found her, Lavinia is forced to prod her male protectors into action by getting them to read the story of the rape of Philomel in a volume of Ovid's Metamorphosis. (Her own metamorphosis is underscored by the fact that the young Lucius runs from her and treats the previously desirable woman like a monster.) Marcus' idea to use the tree branch as a writing instrument is another example of Lavinia's compromised agency: she is able to overcome her infirmity and name her rapists, but only by doing the bidding of her patriarchs. Thus Lavinia is both a catalyst for revenge and a submissive instrument, simultaneously active and passive. With Lavinia's insistence, the Andronici finally cease wallowing in self-pity, and move to take action.

Those who plotted and executed her rape, meanwhile, must deal with the problematic byproduct of another forbidden tryst: the child borne to Tamora and Aaron. The passage in which Aaron refuses to kill his child and expresses his belief in the superiority of black skin is one of Shakespeare's most remarkable: "What, what, ye sanguine, shallow-hearted boys! / Ye white-limed walls! ye alehouse painted signs! / Coal-black is better than another hue / In that it scorns to bear another hue; / For all the water in the ocean / Can never turn the swan's black legs to white, / Although she lave them hourly in the flood." Aaron deftly constructs a counter-narrative to Chiron, Demetrius, Tamora and the Nurse's hatred of the color black. He argues, in effect - hundreds of years before the Black Power movement of the 1970s - that black is beautiful, and he does so with more eloquence and wit than any of the other characters can muster in their claims to white superiority.

With the coming of his child, Aaron evolves from a clever, cruel trickster to a true sixteenth century anomaly: a (somewhat) sympathetic black man. Indeed, his pride in his color and his refusal to genuflect before white authority make Aaron more attractive in many ways than Othello. Aaron offers furious and scathing speeches during a manifestly racist time - the Elizabethan era - when the equation of black with evil and white with virtue was simply common sense.

As Titus' revenge proceeds apace, it is important to consider traditional Elizabethan conceptions of madness. The Elizabethans did not universally ostracize the insane. Some forms of madness, indeed, were to a degree socially acceptable - and one of these "acceptable" forms was madness stemming from an intense desire for revenge. The work that likely inspired Titus, The Spanish Tragedy, tells the story of another mad father, Hieronomo, whose thirst for retribution drives him mad. The subtitle on the play's title page in its original printing read: "Hieronomo is mad again." This and many other similar examples suggest that for the Elizabethans, madness and the desire for revenge were inseparable. The difficulty of seeking out justice in an unjust world made one mad - it was as simple as that.

Yet madness brought on by the need for revenge is not the same as full-blown insanity. With revenge-madness comes a certain clarity, a degree of subtlety. Think of Hamlet: for centuries, audiences and critics have wondered, "Is Hamlet really crazy, or is he just faking it?" The truth is, he is neither, and he is both. Revenge-madness, for the Elizabethans, did not always compromise the madman's sense of reality; he was still able to devise intricate plans for retribution. Titus, like Hamlet, is ambiguously insane. When characters in the play describe him as "mad", they are referring to the fact that he is justice-starved, not incapacitated. Even in his madness he is quite lucid - single-minded and absurd, yes, but wholly driven to consummate his vengeance as soon as the opportunity arises.

Summary

Act Five opens outside the walls of Rome, where Lucius stands before his army of Goths. He announces that the Roman public desires the deposition of their emperor, and a Goth leader assures him that they too want to take revenge on Tamora. Another Goth enters leading Aaron and his child and says that the infant is the product of an adulterous affair between Tamora and the Moor. Lucius, remembering Aaron's plot to divest Titus of his hand, orders Aaron and the child to be hanged. Aaron says that he will confess to his many crimes in exchange for his child's life. Lucius agrees, and Aaron confesses to his affair with Tamora and his role in Lavinia's rape and mutilation, and admits to having masterminded the plot to execute Titus' sons. He goes on to admit to many other heinous crimes, causing Lucius to have him gagged and sentenced to a slow death. Aemilius then enters and tells Lucius that Saturninus wishes to see him at Titus' house for a parley.

Tamora, meanwhile, sets in motion her plot to destroy Titus. Accompanied by her sons, who are disguised as Rape and Murder, she comes to his house in the guise of the goddess Revenge. Titus immediately recognizes her, but she refuses to admit to her true identity. She talks Titus into joining her, while he all the while remarks how alike she and her companions are to the empress and her sons. He even instructs his visitors to kill Tamora and her sons, whom he says they will know by their similarity to themselves. Tamora then tells Titus to summon Lucius to the parley at his house, and Titus instructs Marcus to do as she bids. When Tamora and her sons ready themselves to leave, Titus insists that Rape and Murder stay with him. They do so, assuming that they'll be able to continue the charade.

As soon as Tamora leaves, however, Titus has Publius bind and gag her sons. He goes into the house for a knife and returns with Lavinia, who is holding a basin. Titus tells the rapists that he is going to slaughter them and bake their flesh and blood into a meat pie, which he will then serve at the parley banquet. He cuts their throats, and the baking begins.

Marcus and Lucius, meanwhile, make their way to the parley, where they meet Saturninus and his queen. Titus, dressed in cook's garb, sets up a table and serves his meat pies. As Saturninus eats, Titus asks him about the tale of Virginius and his daughter, who was violated and then slain. Saturninus agrees that Virginius was right to kill his daughter because she had been raped. Upon hearing this, Titus kills Lavinia. When Saturninus and Tamora ask why he would do such a thing, he tells them that Chiron and Demetrius raped and mutilated her. They ask for the boys to be fetched, but Titus declares that they are already dead and have been baked into the pies that sit on the table before them. He then kills Tamora, after which Saturninus stabs Titus, and Lucius slays Saturninus.

After the bloodshed has finished, Marcus and Lucius explain to the Roman elites the sad history of the Andronici: how Lavinia was raped and Bassianus killed, how Titus' sons were wrongfully executed and his hand needlessly chopped off, how Aaron and Tamora conceived a child, and so on. The Romans all agree that Titus' revenge was justified, and unanimously elect Lucius the next emperor of Rome. The remaining Andronici pay homage to Titus, and Lucius orders that Aaron the Moor be buried chest-deep in the ground and starved to death. He orders funeral rites for Titus and Saturninus, but declares that Tamora will not receive a proper burial: instead, she will be devoured by birds and wild beasts.

Analysis

Although the characters in Titus occasionally evoke sympathy from the audience and from each other, Act Five contains very few instances of such pity or understanding. In Act Five, the brutality that runs rampant throughout the play comes to a horrifying climax that leaves few of the major characters still standing. And Shakespeare doesn't just kill his characters-he slays them in such elaborate and grotesque ways that one wonders whether these characters held any personal significance for the playwright. Just as Titus relishes each detail of his final revenge - not merely killing Chiron and Demetrius, but cooking them into meat pies and feeding them to their mother; not merely killing Lavinia, but doing so in a strikingly theatrical, undignified manner - so too Shakespeare seems driven in these final pages to unleash the darkest parts of his imagination. He thrusts his audience into a nightmare and, to some degree, seems quite delighted by the result. Perhaps Titus belongs as much to the modern horror movie genre as to the Elizabethan revenge tragedy.

The first character forced to face his fate is Aaron. The audience sympathizes with the Moor, having been made privy to his paternal, selfless nature, but the characters in the play are unified in their desire to take their revenge on him. Everyone agrees that Aaron's son is an abomination, bringing shame to all parties involved. Even Tamora is not allowed a proper burial at the play's end. Her lust for a black man has transformed her into a wild animal in the eyes of the Roman elites, and so they leave her to the mercy of the beasts.

In sharp contrast to his portrayal in the beginning of the play, Aaron is at least partially redeemed in Act Five. In a magnificent speech, he declares, "I have done a thousand dreadful things / As willingly as one would kill a fly, / And nothing grieves me heartily indeed / But that I cannot do ten thousand more." This speech is a true tour de force, as extravagant in its macabre language as Titus is in his macabre actions. Aaron self-consciously allegorizes his misdeeds; it is as though he considers himself the very embodiment of evil. We know, however, from his concern for his child that he is not wholly inhuman - the speech is thus quite clearly a performance, an act of defiance in the face of a society that scorns him. Even at the play's end, facing unspeakable torment, Aaron does not waver from his ideals: his courage is in itself a sort of victory. Aaron's sentence is a fascinating example of the bodily violations that are so common in Titus: in being buried up to his chest he is both mutilated and left intact, both living and dead. His body will literally be swallowed by the country that he so despises.

Another notable performance - and a decidedly unsuccessful one - occurs when Tamora and her sons don disguises to go before Titus. Their attempt to mock Titus' revenge and ruin him at the banquet is the most egregious miscalculation in the play. Without their help, Titus may have never been presented with the opportunity for such a horrific revenge. Indeed, prior to their arrival before him he seemed content to continue his letter-writing approach. Instead, he succeeds at dehumanizing her on an almost unimaginable level: the consumption of one's own children is a distinctly unnatural act more suited to a beast than to a person. Just as she is "against nature" in sleeping with Aaron and controlling her husband, so too she disobeys the dictates of nature by engaging in cannibalism. The gruesomeness of her punishment, however, is truly horrifying - perhaps even out of proportion to the crimes she has committed. Despite the extent of her misdeeds, we must remember that it was Titus' own barbarity in Act One that spurred her on. Indeed, Titus is largely responsible for the tragedy that befalls his family: it was he who made Saturninus emperor and sacrificed Alarbus. His barbarity in Act Five, however much he may view it as due justice, mirrors his barbarity in Act One, leaving us with a decidedly ambiguous opinion of the plays "hero".

Yet Titus' most unforgivable act - one even more horrible than the punishment he doles out to Tamora's sons - is almost surely his killing of Lavinia. In case his audience holds any lingering doubts about how Titus views his daughter, here Shakespeare shows us the extent to which he sees her as chattel. The fact that she has been grossly violated barely registers with Titus in comparison to the damage that he believes has been done to his own reputation and person. He kills his daughter - his "property" - so that "by her presence" she can no longer "renew his sorrows." The spark of agency that Lavinia showed from time to time even after her mutilation is abruptly snuffed out, as if to prove that a woman in Rome has no agency at all. Despite the ghastly pies and the cold-hearted slaughter of Lavinia, despite all the trumpery surrounding the ascension of Lucius, Rome's ambiguous status as a barbarous yet civilized state remains unchanged.

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