payment page
Summary
Young Lucius flees from his aunt Lavinia, fearing that she is crazed. In fact, she merely wants to get to the book he is carrying, Ovid’s Metamorphoses. She turns through its pages until she reaches the story of Philomela (anglicized as “Philomel”), which tells of how she is raped by her brother-in-law, Tereus, who then cuts off her tongue so she can’t reveal the crime. Titus correctly interprets the story as a version of what happened to Lavinia. Marcus then urges her to use a staff to draw the name of her molesters in the sand. Holding the staff with her mouth and guiding it with her stumps, she writes, “Stuprum. [Latin for rape] Chiron, Demetrius” (4.1.79). They all kneel and take a vow to not rest until the treacherous Goths have been made to pay with their blood.
On Titus’s orders, Young Lucius delivers weapons from his armory to Chiron and Demetrius, along with a scroll bearing a quotation of Horace, which states, in translation from the Latin: “He who is of upright life and free of crime does not need the javelins or bow of the Moor.” The underlying message is lost on the young Goths, but Aaron understands that Titus has identified Chiron and Demetrius and Lavinia’s rapists.
Then a nurse enters carrying the child Tamora has just delivered. The child’s skin is dark in color, marking it as the bastard son of Tamora and Aaron. The nurse communicates Tamora’s orders for him to kill the child before it brings shame on her. Aaron roars to the defense of his son, and he claims that black is the best color because it does not deign to take on any other colors. He kills the nurse to keep the secret of the child safe, then dispatches Chiron and Demetrius to find a fair-skinned child as a replacement. As they depart, Aaron decides to return to the Goths so that he may protect his son.
Analysis
The first two scenes of act 4 both reveal how words may be used as tools and weapons. In scene 1, the revelation of Lavinia’s rapists plays out in relation to poetry. The only way she finds to communicate what happened to her is to open a copy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and point to the story of Philomela. The connection to this tragic literary figure, and thereafter to the story of King Tarquin’s rape of Lucretia, further develops the motif equating Lavinia’s body with a text. It’s appropriate, then, that after the nature of her ravishment is confirmed, she should reveal the identities of her rapists through an act of inscription. Taking Marcus’s staff between her stumps and steadying it with her mouth, she names Chiron and Demetrius in writing. This series of texts furnishes the information that will enable Titus to commence with his revenge plot. This plot begins with the transmission of another text—this time, a couplet from an ode written by the Roman poet Horace. Though Tamora’s sons fail to read between the lines, the cunning Aaron rightly interprets their deeper meaning. He knows what Titus knows, and as such, he's aware that a revenge plot is afoot.
Scene 2 represents an important moment in Aaron’s arc. Up to this point in the play, his role has been one of unadulterated villainy. He has proven himself to be a cunning plotter of revenge, and he seems to have relished every drop of blood he’s helped to shed. He’s even seemed to affirm the stereotypes that others in the play have voiced about his dark skin being a sign of inherent monstrousness. Here, however, faced as he is with the birth of his son, he takes on the protective role of a loving father. Refusing to let his son be slain, Aaron uses his wit to manipulate the situation so that he can escape. In the process, he mounts a defense of his dark-skinned child in which he revalues blackness. As he puts it: “Coal-black is better than another hue / In that it scorns to bear another hue” (4.2.103–104). Blackness, in other words, exhibits the virtue of always being itself. Even if Aaron is indeed a manifestation of pure evil, he has the advantage of not dissimulating. Where other characters in the play disguise their feelings and shift alliances in secret, Aaron remains loyal to his own villainy.
Curiously, Aaron’s paternal turn in this scene places him in contrast to both Tamora and Titus. For one thing, whereas both Tamora and Titus have allowed their devotion to their children fuel their revenge plots, Aaron knows well that vengeance quickly spirals out of control. Thus, now that he’s a proud father, he chooses to opt out. He’s taken his share of pleasure in the havoc he’s helped wreak, but now that he has someone he truly cares about, he wants to leave. It’s also significant that Tamora should be so eager to have Aaron’s love child slain. Even if the child would reveal her betrayal of Saturninus, it’s still her child. As a woman who has elsewhere been likened to a “dam”—a mother bear who is fiercely protective of her “bearwhelps” (4.1.97)—how could she order one of her own to death? Adding to the horrific irony here is the recollection that all the blood spilled in acts 2 and 3 happened in retaliation for the death of her eldest son. In this moment, Tamora shows herself as barbarous as Titus was when he stabbed his own son Mutius for his defiance. Aaron, by contrast, seems like he could be poised for rehabilitation.
