Titus Andronicus

By the end of Act I, the characters’ circumstances are all established, and lines of allegiance are drawn: This act builds on this situation and initiates the main plot through Aaron and Tamora’s revenge quest. Their plot is cursory: The bag of gold and the letter are not compelling evidence against Titus’s sons. However, Shakespeare uses this mechanism to reveal important aspects of characterization: Saturninus does not need much persuading to blame Martius and Quintus. His initial confusion when they reveal that Bassianus’s body is in the pit is brief, as the anonymous letter quickly moves him to an absolute conviction of their guilt. He dismisses any suggestion that the evidence is inconclusive: “If it be proved? You see it is apparent” (2.2.292). Tamora uses comedic irony to highlight this: “O wondrous thing! / How easily murder is discovered” (2.2.287). She notes the happy coincidence of catching the murderers at the scene, when this was engineered by her and Aaron; her double meaning implies incredulous joy at how easy he was to convince. This highlights Saturninus’s gullibility, pride, and insecurity about Titus; it also suggests the human propensity to seek a scapegoat in a moment of injury or pain, tying into the play’s overarching concern with revenge.

This plot point is important in finally removing any cordiality between Saturninus and Titus, fully entrenching the Andronici camp against Saturninus, Tamora, and her companions. The situation problematizes The Paradigm of “Civilized” Rome against “Barbarian” Other, drawing allegiances along personal lines instead. Titus, the exemplary Roman general, is now in opposition to the conjoined forces of the Emperor, the Queen of the Goths, her children, and her Moorish lover: the Roman state and its alleged enemies. The crisis point also invokes the theme of Order Versus Chaos, as in this confused context, Aaron can pursue his own goal of inflicting maximum harm for fun.

Shakespeare uses the cursory nature of the plot—maneuvering Martius and Quintus into the pit with Bassianus’s body—to play with tone, as the scene has comedic or farcical physical elements. These battle-hardened warriors both accidentally fall into a pit, one trying to help the other out. Quintus, who in the previous Act barely bats an eyelid at his father killing his brother, is terrified of the hole to the point he can’t move, prompting Martius to ask why he’s not comforting him and helping him out. This forces them to have a conversation between the pit and the surface. Bassianus’s body is hidden, so Martius’s description of the light shining on his face through the darkness takes on the quality of a ghoulish story. Shakespeare uses the tone of this scene to highlight that Martius and Quintus are in a world in which everyone around them is plotting; they literally stumble into a trap. These tonal shifts reflect the violent chaos of the play as a whole and of this specific situation, which subverts their normal role—these warriors are now afraid and helpless.

The moment also marks a significant tonal shift from the previous scene’s explicit brutality. Following Bassianus’s abrupt murder, Demetrius and Chiron decide to rape Lavinia on his body. They don’t actually do this, but the line increases the shock value, heightening the taboo nature of the violence they are about to inflict on her, and the cruelty of their characters. Both scenes emphasize that in this world, The Value of a Human is low: Death can be brutal, or even comedic, and Demetrius and Chiron actively seek to dehumanize Lavinia. This tonal shift between one scene and the next also serves as a plot twist or an unreliable narrator, destabilizing the narrative continuity and creating an experience of chaos in the telling of the story.

Shakespeare also explores The Complications of Female Expression in this Act. Lavinia’s attempt at using rhetoric, scrambling for persuasive language, is juxtaposed against her attackers’ absolute lack of interest in what she has to say. Tamora repeatedly says she doesn’t want to hear her and doesn’t understand her, asking her sons to get on with it. Ultimately, they simply prevent her from speaking, forcibly cutting her off mid-sentence. Their silencing of her speech foreshadows her fate, but also reflects her general voicelessness in the play as an archetype of feminine virtue, speaking only when prompted to acquiesce by men or to assert the ideal of chastity. To Lavinia, an existence outside of this archetype is unthinkable, as reflected in the devastating nature of her mutilation following her rape, and in her desire to die instead. She asks Tamora to put her body where no man can ever see it, encapsulating her virtuous modesty, but also the danger men pose to her.

Lavinia’s desire to hide from the male gaze contrasts with the events of 2.3. Demetrius and Chiron taunt her about her wounds and her rape, dehumanizing her and creating an atmosphere of shame: She is exposed physically and metaphorically. When Marcus finds her, he forces her to show herself when she tries to hide, then delivers a long poetic monologue about the awfulness of what he sees. He then brings her to show her to Titus, whom he says will be blinded by the sight. Her shame and pain are expressed in the sight of her physical body, as interpreted by the men around her, both her attackers and her family.