TiTus andronicus - Stratford Festival

his hand, the Emperor Saturninus will pardon the
lives of Titus’s two sons, condemned for murder.
This pointless sacrifice, typical of the play’s cruelty
– of what benefit could an amputated hand be
to the Emperor? – is nonetheless clutched at by
the Andronici. Titus’s son, Lucius, and his brother,
Marcus, exit the stage to get an axe, each vying
to use it. Titus, however, enlists Aaron’s help to
prevent them: “Lend me thy hand, and I will give
thee mine.” The bald stage direction that follows,
“He cuts off Titus’ hand,” can’t do justice to the
effect of seeing this moment in performance.
The revelation that comes shortly after, that the
amputation was for nothing, marks the play’s
turning point, finally transforming Titus into the
socially alienated revenger who finds he has “much
to do.” Describing Rome as “a wilderness of tigers,”
Titus abandons allegiance to the Roman empire in
order to avenge the family he cannot protect.
Significantly, especially in light of the moral
complexities associated with revenge drama,
spectators witnessed a very similar motivation to
revenge much earlier in the action. Tamora, Queen
of the Goths, vainly pleads with the triumphant
warrior in the opening scene for her eldest son’s
life. Titus, however, is immovable. His own sons
have, at least to his mind, justly asked for a human
sacrifice to the Roman gods, and he has granted
them “the noblest that survives, / The eldest son
of this distressed queen.” Tamora and her two
surviving sons, left onstage as Alarbus is taken off
to his death, describe this ritual as an irreligious,
barbarous piety. Like Titus, Tamora is unable to
protect her family, and like Titus, she vows revenge.
From the very outset of the action, then,
Shakespeare presents the “just” action as an
uncertain, or at least contested, thing, with the
Roman citizens, no less than the foreign Goths they
bring home as prisoners, described as barbaric. Is
Titus’s sacrifice of Alarbus a justifiable motivation
for revenge on Tamora’s part? And what constitutes
the “just” revenge? By locating the origin of the
play’s revenge cycle with a potential crime, or at
least cruelty, committed by Titus, Shakespeare
renders problematic his audience’s moral stance
on the atrocities that follow, whether committed by
Goth or Roman.
Margaret Jane Kidnie is a professor of English at
the University of Western Ontario.
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