Isaac Asimov - Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

—Act IV, scene iv, lines 66-69

Coriolanus was a legendary figure in early Roman history who, out of revenge for what he considered mistreatment, raised an enemy army, placed himself at its head, and laid siege to Rome. Fifteen years after Shakespeare wrote Titus Andronicus he wrote Coriolanus about the earlier event (see page I-245).

Tamora, however, promises to make Lucius into a Coriolanus indeed. Coriolanus withdrew without taking Rome because his mother begged him to (see page I-250). Now Tamora intends to try to persuade Titus to beg his son to withdraw. (She is not aware that Titus has discovered the full extent of the villainy of her sons.)

The scene shifts to the outskirts of Rome, where Lucius is leading the Gothic army to the city's walls. A Goth has captured Aaron, who has been trying to find a place of safety for his baby. Lucius, when Aaron is brought to him, threatens to hang father and child, and, to save the baby, Aaron confesses all.

Meanwhile, Tamora has worked out her plan to persuade Titus to call off his son. She proposes to take advantage of his madness by disguising herself as Revenge and her two sons as Rape and Murder (that is, as spirits specifically designed to avenge those two crimes).

In her guise as Revenge, Tamora promises to make mad Titus quits with all his enemies and asks him, in turn, to send for his son, Lucius, to attend a feast which Titus will give. It will then be Revenge's part (supposedly) to bring in the Emperor, the Empress, and the Empress' sons for Titus to wreak vengeance upon. (Actually, it is Tamora's plan, once she has Lucius with Titus, to have both killed, and then somehow to arrange to have the leaderless Goths dispersed.)

Titus pretends to fall in with this plan and sends Marcus to invite Lucius to the feast.

But then, when Revenge turns to leave, Titus insists on keeping Rape and Murder. Otherwise, he says, he will call back Marcus and leave things as they were. Tamora orders her sons to humor him and leaves by herself.

Once Tamora is gone, Titus instantly calls his friends and orders Rape and Murder tied up. They announce themselves to be the Empress' sons, hoping this will awe their assailants, but Titus merely orders them gagged. He then tells them what he intends to do by way of revenge, saying:

—Act V, scene ii, lines 195-96

When Procne discovered what her husband, Tereus, had done to Philomela, she took a horrible revenge. She killed Itys, the young son of Tereus and herself, boiled his flesh, and fed it to Tereus.

This Titus intended to surpass. They had cut off not only the tongue but the hands of Lavinia. In return, Titus intended to have their mother feed on not one, but two sons.

With that, he cuts the throats of Chiron and Demetrius, catching the blood in a basin held by Lavinia.

The feast begins now. All are present (even Aaron and his baby). Titus, dressed as a cook, poses the Emperor a question:

—Act V, scene iii, lines 36-38

Virginius was a plebeian soldier who, according to legend, lived about 450 b.c. (a generation after Coriolanus). His beautiful daughter, Virginia, attracted the attention of Appius Claudius, a patrician who was then the most powerful man in Rome. Appius Claudius planned to seize the girl by having false witnesses testify that the girl was actually the daughter of one of his slaves and was therefore also his slave.

The distracted Virginius, seeing no way of stopping Appius Claudius, suddenly stabbed his daughter to death in the midst of the trial, proclaiming that only through death could he save her honor.

Titus Andronicus states the situation erroneously, by the way. Virginius' daughter was not "enforced, stained, and deflow'red." She was merely threatened with that.

Saturninus says that Virginius was justified in his action, whereupon Titus promptly stabs Lavinia to death. When Saturninus angrily demands the reason for that action, Titus says she has been raped by Chiron and Demetrius, and that they in turn have been killed and baked into a pie which the Empress is at that moment eating.

Titus then stabs and kills Tamora; at which the Emperor Saturninus stabs and kills Titus; at which Lucius stabs and kills Saturninus.

A Roman Lord now asks Lucius what has brought Rome to this civil war and assassination:

—Act V, scene iii, lines 85-87

Sinon is the Greek who persuaded the Trojans to allow entry to the wooden horse ("the fatal engine") and made the final sack of the city possible (see page I-210).

Lucius and Marcus, between them, now tell all the wrongs done the Andronici by the Emperor, the Empress, her sons, and Aaron. They even show Aaron's baby as proof of another kind of wickedness.

The appalled Romans hail Lucius as the new Emperor and call in Aaron for punishment. Lucius orders that he be buried breast-deep in the earth and allowed to starve to death.

Even now, Aaron refuses to crawl, and one can't help but feel a kind of sneaking admiration for his defiance. He says, ferociously, after having heard his doom:

—Act V, scene iii, lines 185-90

It is a fitly grisly speech to end a grisly play that opens with:

(1) the dead body of one of Titus' sons, then continues with

(2) the sacrifice of Tamora's son, Alarbus, by Lucius,

(3) the stabbing of Mutius by his father, Titus,

(4) the stabbing of Bassianus by Chiron and Demetrius,

(5) the rape and mutilation of Lavinia by Chiron and Demetrius,

(6) the mutilation of Titus by Aaron,

(7) the execution of Martius and

(8) Quintus, by order of the Emperor,

(9) the stabbing of the Nurse by Aaron,

(10) the hanging of a Clown for small offense by Saturninus' order,

(11) the throat-cutting of Chiron and

(12) Demetrius by Titus,

(13) the unwitting cannibalism of Tamora,

(14) the stabbing of Lavinia by Titus,

(15) the stabbing of Tamora by Titus,

(16) the stabbing of Titus by Saturninus,

(17) the stabbing of Saturninus by Lucius, and finally,

(18) the projected death by slow starvation of Aaron.

There are fifteen of Shakespeare's plays which deal with English history or English legend. If I adhered to strict chronological sequence, these would follow here. If I did that, however, the division between the two volumes of this book would fall inconveniently in the middle of those plays. I am consequently leaving the fifteen English plays to make up in toto the second volume.

We will conclude this first volume then with a dozen romances which are placed in Renaissance Italy and surrounding regions, and which are, for Shakespeare, contemporary. There is no clear historical background and even where some reference can be pinpointed to this or that year, this is not significant and will not do as a method of deciding the order in which the plays should be presented.