page_title: Themes in Titus Andronicus
section_title: Revenge
hierarchical_section_title: Themes in Titus Andronicus / Revenge
caption_attribution_description: Titus Andronicus: Act II, Scene 3: Tamora's cruelty to Lavinia
context_page_description: Although traditionally Titus Andronicus has been seen as one of Shakespeare's least respected plays, its fortunes have changed somewhat in the latter half of the twentieth century, with numerous scholars arguing that the play is more accomplished than has hitherto been allowed for. In particular, scholars have argued that the play is far more thematically complex than has traditionally been thought, and features profound insights into ancient Rome, Elizabethan society, and the human condition. Such scholars tend to argue that these previously unacknowledged insights have only become apparent during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as only now has the ultraviolent content of the play achieved a sense of relevance. For example, in his 1987 edition of the play for the Contemporary Shakespeare series, A.L. Rowse writes; "in the civilised Victorian age the play could not be performed because it could not be believed. Such is the horror of our own age, with the appalling barbarities of prison camps and resistance movements paralleling the torture and mutilation and feeding on human flesh of the play, that it has ceased to be improbable."
context_section_description: Perhaps the most obvious theme is that of revenge. The story of Procne and Philomela is mentioned several times, and just as they are driven by a desire for revenge, so too are the characters in Titus; the entire narrative from midway through Act 1 is built around the plotting of revenge. According to Hereward Thimbleby Price, Shakespeare "is writing a Senecan play according to the rules, that is to say, a play in which the hero is a man who inexorably pursues revenge and who dies in the act of taking it." Bill Alexander, who directed a Royal Shakespeare Company production in 2003, argues that
  the play is largely about revenge and the desire to take revenge. I think that everyone understands on some level that revenge is something you might feel from time to time. The play asks the question "At what point is it right for an individual to take revenge because there is no other way of redressing wrongs?" One of the great things about Shakespeare is that he never attempts to answer such questions, he simply poses them. Titus Andronicus poses the question of revenge, so it can't not be relevant. Everyone has an opinion about when revenge becomes justified and whether the nature of being civilised and human demands that something like revenge is excluded, or must be excluded, from the imagination ... In a sense the play is there to evoke our humanity and our sense of pity about what human beings can do to each other and about what revenge does to human souls. Revenge can drive people mad, and madness can drive people to revenge."
  The theme of revenge is introduced very early in the play. In the opening scene, we learn that some of Titus' sons have been killed during the war with the Goths, and as a result, Titus feels compelled to sacrifice Tamora's son, Alarbus. Here revenge takes on a religious duty as Titus claims of his dead sons, "Religiously they ask a sacrifice" (l.124). The sacrifice of Alarbus, however, prompts a desire for revenge in his family. As Demetrius tells Tamora immediately after the sacrifice;
  The selfsame gods that armed the Queen of Troy
  
  With opportunity of sharp revenge
  
  Upon the Thracian tryant in his tent
  
  May favour Tamora, the Queen of Goths
  
  (When Goths were Goths and Tamora was Queen),
  
  To quit the bloody wrongs upon her foes.
  1.1.136-141
  This ultimately leads to Tamora ordering her sons to rape Lavinia, which in turn leads directly to Titus killing and then cooking Chiron and Demetrius, his eventual murder of both Lavinia and Tamora, his own death at the hands of Saturninus, and Saturninus' death at the hands of Lucius. Revenge runs through the play from beginning to end; Coppélia Kahn argues that the basic trajectory of the plot is "Titus' transformation from Roman hero to revenge hero."
  After the sacrifice of Alarbus, when Saturninus has taken Tamora as his bride, she asks him to pardon Titus for what Saturninus sees as dishonourable conduct. Incredulous, Saturninus asks, "What, madam, be dishonoured openly,/And basely put it up without revenge" (1.1.432–433); any infraction or insult must be reciprocated. Later, Aaron tells Tamora that he too is preoccupied with revenge; "Blood and revenge are hammering in my head" (2.3.39). Ordering her sons to rape Lavinia, Tamora says "This vengeance on me had they executed./Revenge it, as you love your mother's life" (2.3.114–115). Then, prior to the rape, Tamora responds to Lavinia's pleas for mercy by outlining how important her revenge is, only Lavinia's pain can satiate it;
  Hadst thou in person ne'er offended me,
  
  Even for [Alarbus'] sake am I pitiless.
  
  Remember, boys, I poured forth tears in vain
  
  To save your brother from the sacrifice,
  
  But fierce Andronicus would not relent.
  
  Therefore away with her, and use her as you will;
  
  The worse of her, the better loved of me.
  2.3.161-167
  As Chiron and Demetrius drag Lavinia into the forest, Tamora vows "Ne'er let my heart know merry cheer indeed/Till all the Andronici be made away" (2.3.187–188). Tamora will literally not be happy until she has avenged herself on the whole family.
  Later in the play, Titus
caption: Tamora concerned only with revenge; Samuel Woodforde illustration, engraved by Anker Smith (1793)
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