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A better head her glorious body fits
Than his that shakes for age and feebleness.
What, should I don this robe and trouble you?
Be chosen with proclamations today,
Tomorrow yield up rule, resign my life,
And set abroad new business for you all?
Rome, I have been thy soldier forty years,
And led my country’s strength successfully,
And buried one and twenty valiant sons,
Knighted in field, slain manfully in arms,
In right and service of their noble country.
Give me a staff of honor for mine age,
But not a scepter to control the world.
Upright he held it, lords, that held it last.
Shortly after Titus makes his triumphant return to Rome having defeated the Goth army and captured its queen, his brother Marcus approaches him and presents him with a white robe. He then invites Titus to become a candidatus—literally, someone dressed in a white robe—and “help to set a head on headless Rome” (1.1.186). The passage quoted above is Titus’s response. Crucially, the language of the “head” references the notion of the body politic, which was an important concept in Renaissance political theory. This theory held that any state, kingdom, or empire could be construed as a metaphorical body, the “head” of which was represented by the supreme ruler, whether monarch or emperor. The rest of the body was constituted by the other individuals and institutions who keep the state functioning. When Marcus, representing the will of ordinary Romans, offers Titus an opportunity to become the figurative “head,” he is quick to reply that his own head is too shaky and feeble to be up to the task. He is a military man, not a politician, and he can’t conceive of himself as someone who would, as he puts it, “resign my life” to “control the world.”
Titus’s refusal is eloquent and demonstrates all the humility necessitated by the Roman demand for honor. Even so, it’s also a key element in his eventual downfall. Tension immediately erupts as Saturninus, not to be spurned, calls on his supporters to draw their swords and help ensure that he inherits what he believes is rightfully his. Titus calms Saturninus by giving him his endorsement, but the political waters are again troubled when Saturninus attempts to marry Lavinia, thereby stealing his brother’s betrothed. This act entwines Titus in affairs of the state as his sons defend their sister against the emperor’s will. In this tense moment, Titus chooses loyalty to the empire over his own family and slays one of his sons. In doing so, he symbolically seals his fate. He refused to become the head of state, but in attempting to show his unswerving loyalty to the new emperor, he dooms his family. The gruesome irony of this twist will become particularly clear in act 3, when two of Titus’s remaining sons literally lose their heads for their alleged crimes against the emperor.
Then all too late I bring this fatal writ,
The complot of this timeless tragedy,
And wonder greatly that man’s face can fold
In pleasing smiles such murderous tyranny. (2.3.265–68)
In act 2, Tamora makes the first key moves of her revenge plot against the Andronicus family. She does so with the help Aaron, whom Lucius will later refer to as the “chief architect and plotter” (5.3.123) of the woes to come. The initial plot is a complex one that is gradually revealed over the course of act 2, scene 3, during a hunt in the forest. The scene opens with Aaron planting a bag of gold near a deep pit he’s dug. The plan is to kill Bassianus and toss his corpse in the pit, then deliver a forged letter to Saturninus that incriminates two of Titus’s remaining sons, Martius and Quintius, for the murder. The lines quoted above are spoken by Tamora as she hands Saturninus the forged letter. Since she has not informed her husband of the nature of her revenge plot, Saturninus has no idea that she’s acting a part in drama she herself has helped to author.
In addition to showing how Tamora thrives in her villainy, this quote also underscores an important motif related to plotting. Shakespeare is well known for the way he often uses theatrical metaphors in his plays. Perhaps most famous of all is Jaques’s speech in As You Like It, where he proclaims: “All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players” (2.7.146–47). To be sure, Tamora is playing a role here; she’s dissembling in a way that foreshadows an even more theatrical role she’ll play when, in act 5, she disguises herself as “Revenge.” In Titus Andronicus, however, the main theatrical metaphor isn’t related to acting. Rather, it’s about the art of plotting. Tamora deviously fashions herself as something of a playwright, having co-authored “the complot of this timeless tragedy.” Similar references to plotting occur frequently in the play, underscoring the sheer theatricality of the unfolding drama, with its numerous conflicting plots and counterplots.
Worthy Andronicus, ill art thou repaid
For that good hand thou sent’st the Emperor.
Here are the heads of thy two noble sons,
And here’s thy hand in scorn to thee sent back.
Thy grief their sports, thy resolution mocked,
That woe is me to think upon thy woes
More than remembrance of my father’s death. (3.1.239–45)
These words are delivered by an unnamed messenger who appears before Titus at the climax of his family’s tragedy. At this point in the scene, Titus has just duped by Aaron to chop off his own hand to spare the lives of his condemned sons, Martius and Quintius. Of course, there was never a chance that his sons would be spared. And now a messenger shows up with their heads in tow, along with the very same hand Titus has just severed. This moment marks a crux in the drama, one that is infused with the play’s excess. As if it weren’t enough to add insult to injury, the tableau that immediately follows these lines features Marcus and Titus each carrying a head and Lavinia gripping her father’s hand in her teeth. The height of tragedy is matched by the peak of absurdity.
The absurdity and excess represented by this moment can, importantly, be heard in the very cadences of the messenger’s speech. In a swift seven lines, the messenger manages to greet Titus, offer condolences regarding the insult he’s been sent to communicate, describe the violent indignities Titus is now forced to confront, explain how his humiliation is a matter of the emperor’s “sports,” and express further condolences. The efficiency of the messenger’s delivery captures something of the play’s own relentless pacing, and certainly of the pacing of this scene in which so much tragedy has accumulated so rapidly. Yet for all this woe, it’s also key that the messenger is not a spiteful figure. On the contrary, he bookends his speech with apologies to Titus, and he concludes with a moving expression of fellow feeling. For the messenger, Titus’s fate has compelled a greater sense of mourning than the loss of his own father. Although the powers that be may have moved against Titus and his family, the ordinary citizens of Rome still seem to honor him. This attitude offers a glimmer of hope amid such misery.
Look you draw home enough and ’tis there straight.—
Terras Astraea reliquit.
Be you remembered, Marcus, she’s gone, she’s fled.—
Sirs, take you to your tools. You, cousins, shall
Go sound the ocean and cast your nets;
Happily you may catch her in the sea;
Yet there’s as little justice as at land.
No; Publius and Sempronius, you must do it.
’Tis you must dig with mattock and with spade,
And pierce the inmost center of the Earth.
Then, when you come to Pluto’s region,
I pray you, deliver him this petition.
Tell him it is for justice and for aid,
And that it comes from old Andronicus,
Shaken with sorrows in ungrateful Rome. (4.3.3–17)
Titus addresses these lines to Marcus and his kinsmen as they embark on a smear campaign against Saturninus. Crucially, though, and as with the first revenge plot that unfolded in the second act, the details of the plan aren’t initially clear. In fact, in this case, it seems to Titus’s supporters that their leader may in fact be going mad. Suggestions to this effect began to appear in act 3, when Titus seemed more inclined to wallow in grief than take action. However, now that he is taking action, it isn’t clear how that action will result in the desired vengeance against Tamora and her consort. One issue is that the strategy Titus is suggesting is couched in the language of justice rather than revenge. The Latin phrase, “Terras Astraea reliquit,” comes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and means, “Astraea has left the earth”—Astraea being the goddess of justice. Titus initially seems to invoke Astraea’s name as a rhetorical device meant to convey the injustice done to him. However, as the passage continues and he instructs his people to seek out justice in the ocean and in the earth, the confusion begins to mount.
The confusion grows further as the scene progresses from here and Titus distributes written messages addressed to each of the gods in the Roman pantheon. Handing them to his kinsmen, he now instructs them to take up bow and arrow and shoot them into the sky so they will reach the gods. When his supporters seem at a loss, Marcus makes a practical suggestion: “Kinsmen, shoot all your shafts into the court. / We will afflict the Emperor in his pride” (4.3.63–64). With this line, we get the first indication that a legitimate plan is afoot. And in the next scene we find out what the plan is. The messages turn out to be part of a smear campaign that reveals the crimes committed by Saturninus and his consort. These arrows have been shot all over Rome and thus have put the emperor’s crimes on the public record. But even as the messages infuriate Saturninus, Tamora notes how Titus has addressed them to the gods, which she is quick to interpret as a sign of his madness. However, as we will realize retrospectively in act 5, this was merely a rhetorical feint on Titus’s part, one that succeeds in getting Tamora to lower her guard.
You know your mother means to feast with me,
And calls herself Revenge, and thinks me mad.
Hark, villains, I will grind your bones to dust,
And with your blood and it I’ll make a paste,
And of the paste a coffin I will rear,
And make two pasties of your shameful heads,
And bid that strumpet, your unhallowed dam,
Like to the earth swallow her own increase.
This is the feast that I have bid her to,
And this the banquet she shall surfeit on;
For worse than Philomel you used my daughter,
And worse than Procne I will be revenged.
And now prepare your throats.—Lavinia, come,
Receive the blood. (5.2.188–201)
These lines mark a new dramatic height for Titus, and they show him at the very peak of his vengefulness. In the second scene of act 5, Tamora and her sons go to Titus’s house. Believing he is mad, they disguise themselves as embodiments of abstract concepts—Tamora plays the part of “Revenge,” while Chiron and Demetrius become “Rape” and “Murder.” Tamora knows that Titus’s exiled son, Lucius, has gathered the Goth army against Rome. She wants Titus to invite him to a feast at his house, which will leave the Goths vulnerable to attack. But as it turns out, Titus remains in full possession of his reason. He sees through Tamora’s ruse, but he continues to let her believe he’s mad so that she’ll agree to leave her sons behind to continue plotting with him. And when she leaves, he reveals his bluff to Chiron and Demetrius as he has them tied up and prepared for execution. But before he slits their throats, he delivers these remarkable lines. Perhaps no image in the play is more disturbingly powerful as the one in which Tamora, like the Mother Earth herself, is made to “swallow her own increase.”
The poetry of woe Titus had mastered in act 3 has now transmuted into the violent language of vengeance. As such, it also conveys a desire for the excess associated with revenge—revenge always being in excess of justice. Titus touches on this sense of excess when he pledges to avenge Lavinia in a worse way than Procne avenged Philomela (anglicized by Shakespeare as “Philomel”). According to the story as it’s recounted by Ovid in the Metamorphoses, Philomela is raped by King Tereus, who is the husband of her sister, Procne. To ensure that Philomela can’t incriminate him, Tereus cuts out her tongue. However, Philomela cunningly uses embroidery to inform Procne, who takes revenge on Tereus by killing his son, baking him into a pie, and feeding him to his father. If Titus’s revenge exceeds that of Procne, it’s because he’s about to kill not one but two sons. It’s also arguably worse for him to feed the sons to their mother than to their father, since it completes a gruesome circle where, having originally come from her body, they now reenter it. In this way, Titus delivers on his earlier promise to “o’erreach [Tamora and her sons] in their own devices” (5.2.146).
