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Hail Rome, victorious in thy mourning weeds!
Lo, as the bark that hath discharged his fraught
Returns with precious lading to the bay
From whence at first she weighed her anchorage,
Cometh Andronicus, bound with laurel boughs,
To resalute his country with his tears,
Tears of true joy for his return to Rome. (1.1.70–76)
These are the first words Titus speaks in the play, as he makes his victorious return to Rome. These lines follow an introduction by his brother Marcus, who announces Titus’s arrival by stating: “A nobler man, a braver warrior, / Lives not this day within the city walls” (1.1.25–26). Marcus also gives the necessary context that Titus has taken part in five military campaigns, and each time “he hath returned / Bleeding to Rome, bearing his valiant sons / In coffins from the field” (1.1.33–35). This all establishes the Andronicus family’s honorable reputation as defenders of Rome. Titus is fully aware of this reputation, as indicated in the triumphal tone of these lines. Yet the evident pride he takes in his own loyalty to the realm will soon come under threat.
Hear me, grave fathers; noble tribunes, stay.
For pity of mine age, whose youth was spent
In dangerous wars whilst you securely slept;
For all my blood in Rome’s great quarrel shed,
For all the frosty nights that I have watched,
And for these bitter tears which now you see,
Filling the agèd wrinkles in my cheeks,
Be pitiful to my condemnèd sons,
Whose souls is not corrupted as ’tis thought.
For two-and-twenty sons I never wept
Because they died in honor’s lofty bed. (3.1.1–11)
Titus opens act 3 with these lines, which present a woeful plea to the tribunes to spare the lives of his sons Martius and Quintius, who have been sentenced to death for the alleged murder of Bassianus. Titus’s plea recalls that of Tamora in the opening act. And just as Titus responded to her cries for mercy with cold formality, the tribunes now file past Titus in stony silence. Yet in contrast to Tamora, Titus is poised to lose much more than a son. As this scene unfolds, he will learn that Lucius has been exiled, and that Lavinia has been horrifically mutilated. Aaron will also dupe him into chopping off his own hand to save his sons, only to learn that they’ve been executed anyway. The pageant of atrocities has therefore barely begun.
I knew them all, though they supposed me mad,
And will o’erreach them in their own devices—
A pair of cursèd hellhounds and their dam! (5.2.145–46)
Titus speaks these words as an aside near the end of an exchange with Tamora, who has shown up to his house disguised as “Revenge,” with her son in tow as “Rape” and “Murder.” This is a key scene in the play where Titus reveals that, contrary to what Tamora believes, he isn’t crazy. Rather, his apparent madness has been feigned as part of a larger revenge plot. Essentially, he’s lured Tamora into believing he’s lost his reason so that she would let her guard down and become overconfident. Thus, in this scene, even as Tamora believes she’s manipulating Titus, Titus is manipulating her. He is beating her at her own game—and not only that: he’ll “o’erreach them in their own devices” by killing her sons and trick her into eating them at the cannibal banquet to come.
