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Figures from Myth and History
One notable feature of Titus Andronicus is the sheer density of references to figures from classical myth and history. Hardly a page goes by in this play without at least one mythological or historical allusion that links local events to stories from other times and places. While characters do reference the gods of the Roman pantheon, more important are the numerous references to mortals. Many of the references refer to ancient heroes known from Homer’s Iliad as well as Virgil’s Aeneid. Others come from the annals of the Roman Empire, alluding to kings, emperors, and nobility. But perhaps most consequential for the play are the numerous references to mythic stories of transformation recounted in Ovid’s Metamorphoses—and particularly the story of Philomela. In this story, Philomela is brutally raped by her sister’s husband, King Tereus. To ensure that Philomela can’t incriminate him, Tereus cuts out her tongue. However, Philomela finds a way to use embroidery to inform her sister, Procne, of what happened. The two women then conspire the murder Tereus’s son, bake him into a pie, and serve it to his father. The events of Titus Andronicus literalize the events of this story, bringing them gruesomely to life.
Body Parts
Titus Andronicus is a play that features an unsettling amount dismembered body parts. When Tamora’s eldest son is ritually slain, his “limbs are lopped” (1.1.143) and his entrails dumped into a pyre. When Chiron and Demetrius rape Lavinia, they cut away her tongue and amputate her hands. When Aaron comes with an opportunity to save the lives of Quintius and Martius, Titus willingly chops off his own hand. And when his sons are executed anyway, a messenger is sent to deliver their severed heads, along with Titus’s own freshly hacked off limb. The repeated dismemberment of the flesh in this play is more than just a matter of revenge-driven blood sport. It is also a resonant symbol of the dismemberment of Rome itself. Perhaps the most potent example of this relates to Titus’s hand. This hand has fought in many victorious campaigns against Rome’s enemies. It is, therefore, a symbolic embodiment of the hand that virtuously defends Rome. So, when Titus lops it off, it’s as if Rome is cutting away its own honor. In a similar way, the other body parts that accumulate in the play symbolize breakdown of the body politic.
Animal Metaphors
Animal metaphors are among the key rhetorical motifs characters in the play use to describe each other, almost always in terms that signal disdain or else portend violence. Titus signals the general importance of animal metaphors when he makes his well-known proclamation that “Rome is but a wilderness of tigers” (3.1.55). The “tigers” referred to here are Tamora and Aaron, both of whom are called tigers at various points in the play. For instance, when Lavinia sees that Tamora is as ravenous for blood as her sons, she asks: “When did the tiger’s young ones teach the dam?” (2.3.142). At several other points Tamora will be called a “dam,” which references the female parent of a nonhuman animal. Clearly, though she’s a fierce protector of her “bearwhelps” (4.1.97), Tamora is too cruel to be considered a human mother. Aaron’s cruelty likewise casts him as a “ravenous tiger” (5.3.5). By contrast, Lavinia’s vulnerability consistently results in her being equated with a “dainty doe.” Aaron calls her this when encouraging Chiron and Demetrius to hunt her down (2.1.124), and the brothers use this phrase later to signal their sexual excitement (2.3.29). The dead Bassianus, meanwhile, is “like to a slaughtered lamb” (2.3.224).
