Titus Andronicus
Titus
Andronicus is a tragedy
by William Shakespeare,
believed to have been written between 1588 and 1593, probably in collaboration
with George Peele.
It is thought to be Shakespeare's first tragedy and is often seen as his
attempt to emulate the violent and bloody revenge
plays of his contemporaries, which were
extremely popular with audiences throughout the 16th century.
The
play is set during the latter days of the Roman
Empire and tells the fictional story of Titus, a general
in the Roman army,
who is engaged in a cycle of revenge with Tamora, Queen of the Goths. It is Shakespeare's bloodiest and most violent work. It
has traditionally been one of his least respected plays. Though extremely
popular in its day, it had fallen out of favor by the later 17th century. The Victorian
era disapproved of it largely because
of what was regarded as its distasteful graphic
violence. However, beginning around the
middle of the 20th century, its reputation began to improve.
Characters
- Titus Andronicus – renowned Roman general
- Lucius – Titus's eldest son
- Quintus – Titus's son
- Martius – Titus's son
- Mutius – Titus's son
- Young Lucius – Lucius's son and Titus's grandson
- Lavinia – Titus's daughter
- Marcus Andronicus – Titus's brother and tribune to the people of Rome
- Publius – Marcus's son
- Saturninus – Son of the late Emperor of Rome; afterwards declared Emperor
- Bassianus – Saturninus's brother; in love with Lavinia
- Sempronius, Caius and Valentine – Titus's kinsman
- Æmilius – Roman noble
- Tamora – Queen of the Goths; afterwards Empress of Rome
- Demetrius – Tamora's son
- Chiron – Tamora's son
- Alarbus – Tamora's son (non-speaking role)
- Aaron – a Moor; involved in a sexual relationship with Tamora
- Nurse
- Clown
- Messenger
- Roman Captain
- First Goth
- Second Goth
- Senators, Tribunes, Soldiers, Plebeians, Goths etc.
Synopsis
The
play begins shortly after the death of the Roman emperor, with his two sons,
Saturninus and Bassianus, squabbling over who will succeed
him. Their conflict seems set to boil over into violence until a tribune, Marcus Andronicus, announces that the people's choice for
the new emperor is Marcus's brother, Titus, who will shortly return to Rome
from a victorious ten-year campaign against the Goths. Titus subsequently arrives to much fanfare, bearing with him as prisoners the Queen of the Goths
(Tamora), her three sons (Alarbus, Chiron, and Demetrius), and Aaron the Moor (her secret lover). Despite Tamora's desperate pleas, Titus
sacrifices
her eldest son, Alarbus, to avenge the deaths of his own sons during the war.
Distraught, Tamora and her two surviving sons vow to obtain revenge on Titus
and his family.
Meanwhile,
Titus refuses the offer of the throne, arguing that he is not fit to rule and
instead supporting the claim of Saturninus, who then is duly elected.
Saturninus tells Titus that for his first act as emperor, he will marry Titus's
daughter Lavinia. Titus agrees, although Lavinia is already betrothed to Saturninus's brother, Bassianus, who refuses to give her
up. Titus's sons tell Titus that Bassianus is in the right under Roman
law, but Titus refuses to listen,
accusing them all of treason.
A scuffle breaks out, during which Titus kills his own son, Mutius. Saturninus
then denounces the Andronici family for their effrontery and shocks Titus by
marrying Tamora. Putting into motion her plan for revenge, Tamora advises
Saturninus to pardon
Bassianus and the Andronici family, which he reluctantly does.
During
a royal hunt the following day, Aaron persuades Demetrius and Chiron to
kill Bassianus, so they may rape Lavinia. They do so, throwing Bassianus's body
into a pit and dragging Lavinia deep into the forest before violently raping
her. To keep her from revealing what has happened, they cut out her tongue and
cut off her hands. Meanwhile, Aaron writes a forged
letter, which frames Titus's sons Martius and Quintus for the murder of
Bassianus. Horrified at the death of his brother, Saturninus arrests Martius
and Quintus, and sentences them to death.
Some
time later, Marcus discovers the mutilated Lavinia and takes her to her father,
who is still shocked at the accusations levelled at his sons, and upon seeing
Lavinia, he is overcome with grief. Aaron then visits Titus and falsely tells
him that Saturninus will spare Martius and Quintus if either Titus, Marcus, or
Titus's remaining son, Lucius, cuts off one of their hands and sends it to him.
Titus has Aaron cut off his (Titus's) left hand and sends it to the emperor
but, in return, a messenger brings Titus Martius and Quintus's severed heads,
along with Titus's own severed hand. Desperate for revenge, Titus orders Lucius
to flee Rome and raise an army among their former enemy, the Goths.
Later,
Lavinia writes the names of her attackers in the dirt, using a stick held with
her mouth and between her mutilated arms. Meanwhile, Tamora secretly gives
birth to a mixed-race
child, fathered by Aaron. Aaron kills the nurse to keep the child's race a
secret and flees with the baby to save it from Saturninus' inevitable wrath.
Thereafter, Lucius, marching on Rome with an army, captures Aaron and threatens
to hang the infant. In order to save the baby, Aaron reveals the entire revenge
plot to Lucius.
Back
in Rome, Titus's behaviour suggests he might be deranged. Convinced of his madness, Tamora, Chiron, and Demetrius
approach him, dressed as the spirits of Revenge, Murder, and Rape. Tamora (as Revenge) tells Titus that she
will grant him revenge on all of his enemies if he can convince Lucius to
postpone the imminent attack on Rome. Titus agrees and sends Marcus to invite
Lucius to a reconciliatory feast. Revenge then offers to invite the Emperor and
Tamora as well, and is about to leave when Titus insists that Rape and Murder
(Chiron and Demetrius, respectively) stay with him. When Tamora is gone, Titus
has them restrained, cuts their throats and drains their blood into a basin
held by Lavinia. Titus morbidly tells Lavinia that he plans to "play the
cook", grind the bones of Demetrius and Chiron into powder, and bake their
heads.
The
next day, during the feast at his house, Titus asks Saturninus if
a father should kill his daughter when she has been raped. When Saturninus answers that he should, Titus kills
Lavinia and tells Saturninus of the rape. When the Emperor calls for Chiron and
Demetrius, Titus reveals that they have been baked in the pie Tamora has just
been eating. Titus then kills Tamora and is immediately killed by Saturninus,
who is subsequently killed by Lucius to avenge his father's death. Lucius is
then proclaimed Emperor. He orders that Titus and Lavinia be laid in their
family tomb, that Saturninus be given a state burial, that Tamora's body be
thrown to the wild beasts outside the city, and that Aaron be buried chest-deep
and left to die of thirst
and starvation. Aaron, however, is unrepentant to the end, regretting only
that he had not done more evil in his life.
Setting and sources
Setting
The
story of Titus Andronicus is fictional, not historical, unlike
Shakespeare's other Roman plays, Julius Caesar,
Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus, all of which are based on real historical events and people.
Even the time in which Titus is set may not be based on a real
historical period. According to the prose version of the play (see below), the
events are "set in the time of Theodosius", who ruled from 379 to 395. On the other hand, the
general setting appears to be what Clifford Huffman describes as
"late-Imperial Christian Rome", possibly during the reign of Justinian
I (527–565). Also favouring a later
date, Grace Starry West argues, "the Rome of Titus Andronicus is
Rome after Brutus,
after Caesar,
and after Ovid. We know it is a later Rome because the emperor is
routinely called Caesar; because the characters are constantly alluding to Tarquin, Lucretia,
and Brutus, suggesting that they learned about Brutus' new
founding of Rome from the same literary sources we
do, Livy and Plutarch."[5] Others are less certain of a specific setting, however. For
example, Jonathan Bate
has pointed out that the play begins with Titus returning from a successful
ten-year campaign against the Goths, as if at the height of the Roman Empire,
but ends with Goths invading Rome, as if at its death.[6] Similarly, T. J. B. Spencer argues that "the play does
not assume a political situation known to Roman history; it is, rather a
summary of Roman politics. It is not so much that any particular set of
political institutions is assumed in Titus, but rather that it includes all
the political institutions that Rome ever had."
Sources
In
his efforts to fashion general history into a specific fictional story,
Shakespeare may have consulted the Gesta
Romanorum, a well known thirteenth-century
collection of tales, legends, myths, and anecdotes written in Latin, which took figures and events from history and spun
fictional tales around them. In Shakespeare's lifetime, a writer known for
doing likewise was Matteo
Bandello, who based his work on that of
writers such as Giovanni Boccaccio
and Geoffrey Chaucer,
and who could have served as an indirect source for Shakespeare. So, too, could
the first major English author to write in this style, William Painter, who borrowed from, amongst others, Herodotus, Plutarch, Aulus
Gellius, Claudius
Aelianus, Livy, Tacitus, Giovanni Battista Giraldi, and Bandello himself.
However,
it is also possible to determine more specific sources for the play. The
primary source for the rape and mutilation of Lavinia, as well as Titus'
subsequent revenge, is Ovid's Metamorphoses (c. AD 8), which is featured in the play itself when
Lavinia uses it to help explain to Titus and Marcus what happened to her during
the attack. In the sixth book of Metamorphoses, Ovid tells the story of
the rape of Philomela,
daughter of Pandion I,
King of Athens. Despite ill omens,
Philomela's sister, Procne,
marries Tereus of Thrace
and has a son for him, Itys. After five years in Thrace, Procne yearns to see
her sister again, so she persuades Tereus to travel to Athens and accompany
Philomela back to Thrace. Tereus does so, but he soon begins to lust after
Philomela. When she refuses his advances, he drags her into a forest and rapes
her. He then cuts out her tongue to prevent her from telling anyone of the
incident and returns to Procne, telling her that Philomela is dead. However,
Philomela weaves a tapestry,
in which she names Tereus as her assailant, and has it sent to Procne. The
sisters meet in the forest and together plot their revenge. They kill Itys and
cook his body in a pie, which Procne then serves to Tereus. During the meal,
Philomela reveals herself, showing Itys' head to Tereus and telling him what
they have done.
For
the scene where Lavinia reveals her rapists by writing in the sand, Shakespeare
may have used a story from the first book of Metamorphoses; the tale of
the rape of Io
by Zeus, where, to prevent her from divulging the story, he turns
her into a cow. Upon encountering her
father, she attempts to tell him who she
is but is unable to do so until she thinks to scratch her name in the dirt
using her hoof.
Titus'
revenge may also have been influenced by Seneca's
play Thyestes,
written in the first century AD. In the mythology of Thyestes, which is the
basis for Seneca's play, Thyestes,
son of Pelops, King of Pisa, who, along with his brother Atreus, was exiled by Pelops for the murder of their half-brother,
Chrysippus.
They take up refuge in Mycenae
and soon ascend to co-inhabit the throne. However, each becomes jealous of the
other, and Thyestes tricks Atreus into electing him as the sole king.
Determined to re-attain the throne, Atreus enlists the aid of Zeus and Hermes, and has Thyestes banished from Mycenae. Atreus
subsequently discovers that his wife, Aerope, had been having an affair with Thyestes, and he vows
revenge. He asks Thyestes to return to Mycenae with his family, telling him
that all past animosities are forgotten. However, when Thyestes returns, Atreus
secretly kills Thyestes' sons, Pelopia and Aegisthus. He cuts off their hands
and heads, and cooks the rest of their bodies in a pie. At a reconciliatory
feast, Atreus serves Thyestes the pie in which his sons have been baked. As
Thyestes finishes his meal, Atreus produces the hands and heads, revealing to
the horrified Thyestes what he has done.
Another
specific source for the final scene is discernible when Titus asks Saturninus
if a father should kill his daughter when she has been raped. This is a reference
to the story of Verginia
from Livy's Ab urbe condita (c. 26 BC). Around 451 BC, a decemvir of the Roman Republic, Appius Claudius Crassus, begins to lust after Verginia, a plebeian girl betrothed
to a former tribune, Lucius
Icilius. She rejects Claudius' advances,
enraging him, and he has her abducted. However, both Icilius and Verginia's
father, famed centurion Lucius Verginius, are respected figures and Claudius is
forced to legally defend his right to hold Verginia. At the Forum, Claudius threatens the assembly with violence, and Verginius'
supporters flee. Seeing that defeat is imminent, Verginius asks Claudius if he
may speak to his daughter alone, to which Claudius agrees. However, Verginius
stabs Verginia, determining that her death is the only way he can secure her
freedom.
For
the scene where Aaron tricks Titus into cutting off one of his hands, the
primary source was probably an unnamed popular tale about a Moor's vengeance,
published in various languages throughout the sixteenth century (an English
version entered into the Stationers' Register in 1569 has not survived). In the story, a married noble
man with two children chastises his Moorish servant, who vows revenge. The
servant goes to the moated
tower where the man's wife and children live, and rapes the wife. Her screams
bring her husband, but the Moor pulls up the drawbridge before the nobleman can gain entry. The Moor then kills
both children on the battlements
in full view of the man. The nobleman pleads with the Moor that he will do
anything to save his wife, and the Moor demands he cut off his nose. The man
does so, but the Moor kills the wife anyway, and the nobleman dies of shock.
The Moor then flings himself from the battlements to avoid punishment.
Shakespeare
also drew on various sources for the names of many of his characters. For
example, Titus could have been named after the Emperor Titus Flavius
Vespasianus, who ruled Rome from 79 to 81.
Jonathan Bate speculates that the name Andronicus could have come from Andronicus V Palaeologus, co-emperor of Byzantium from 1403 to 1407, but, since there is no reason to suppose
that Shakespeare might have come across these emperors, it is more likely that
he took the name from the story "Andronicus and the lion" in Antonio de Guevara's
Epistolas familiares. That story involves a sadistic emperor named Titus who
amused himself by throwing slaves to wild animals and watching them be
slaughtered. However, when a slave called Andronicus is thrown to a lion, the
lion lies down and embraces the man. The emperor demands to know what has
happened, and Andronicus explains that he had once helped the lion by removing
a thorn from its foot. Bate speculates that this story, with one character
called Titus and another called Andronicus, could be why several contemporary
references to the play are in the form Titus & ondronicus.
Geoffrey
Bullough argues that Lucius' character arc (estrangement from his father,
followed by banishment, followed by a glorious return to avenge his family
honour) was probably based on Plutarch's Life of Coriolanus. As for Lucius' name, Frances
Yates speculates that he may be named
after Saint Lucius,
who introduced Christianity
into Britain. On the other hand, Jonathan Bate hypothesises that Lucius could
be named after Lucius Junius Brutus, founder of the Roman
Republic, arguing that "the man who led
the people in their uprising was Lucius Junius Brutus. This is the role that
Lucius fulfills in the play."
The
name of Lavinia was probably taken from the mythological figure of Lavinia, daughter of Latinus, King of Latium, who, in Virgil's Aeneid,
courts Aeneas as he attempts to settle his people in Latium. A. C.
Hamilton speculates that the name of Tamora could have been based upon the
historical figure of Tomyris,
a violent and uncompromising Massagetae queen. Eugene M. Waith suggests that the name of Tamora's
son, Alarbus, could have come from George
Puttenham's The Arte of English Poesie
(1589), which contains the line "the Roman prince did daunt/Wild Africans
and the lawless Alarbes." G. K. Hunter has suggested Shakespeare may have
taken Saturninus' name from Herodian's History of the Empire from the Death of Marcus,
which features a jealous and violent tribune named Saturninus. On the other
hand, Waith speculates that Shakespeare may have been thinking of an astrological theory which he could have seen in Guy
Marchant's The Kalendayr of the shyppars
(1503), which states that Saturnine men (i.e. men born under the influence of Saturn)
are "false, envious and malicious."
Shakespeare
most likely took the names of Caius, Demetrius, Marcus, Martius, Quintus,
Æmilius, and Sempronius from Plutarch's Life of Scipio
Africanus. Bassianus' name probably came from
Lucius
Septimius Bassianus, better known as Caracalla, who,
like Bassianus in the play, fights with his brother over succession, one appealing
to primogeniture
and the other to popularity.
Ballad, prose history, and source debate
Any
discussion of the sources of Titus Andronicus is complicated by the
existence of two other versions of the story; a prose
history and a ballad (both of which are anonymous and undated).
The
first definite reference to the ballad "Titus Andronicus'
Complaint" is an entry in the Stationers'
Register by the printer John Danter on 6 February 1594, where the entry "A
booke intitled a Noble Roman Historye of Tytus Andronicus" is immediately
followed by "Entred also vnto him, the ballad thereof". The earliest
surviving copy of the ballad is in Richard Johnson's The Golden Garland of Princely Pleasures and Delicate
Delights (1620), but the date of its composition is unknown.
The
prose was first published in chapbook form some time between 1736 and 1764 by Cluer
Dicey under the title The History of
Titus Andronicus, the Renowned Roman General (the ballad was also included
in the chapbook), however it is believed to be much older than that. The copyright records from the Stationers' Register in Shakespeare's own
lifetime provide some tenuous evidence regarding the dating of the prose. On 19
April 1602, the publisher Thomas Millington sold his share in the copyright of "A booke intitled a
Noble Roman Historye of Tytus Andronicus" (which Danter had initially
entered into the Register in 1594) to Thomas
Pavier. The orthodox belief is that this
entry refers to the play. However, the next version of the play to be published
was for Edward White, in 1611, printed by Edward
Allde, thus prompting the question of why
Pavier never published the play despite owning the copyright for nine years. Joseph Quincy Adams, Jr. believes that the original Danter entry in 1594 is not a
reference to the play but to the prose, and the subsequent transferrals of
copyright relate to the prose, not the play, thus explaining why Pavier never
published the play. Similarly, W.
W. Greg believes that all copyright to the
play lapsed upon Danter's death in 1600, hence the 1602 transferral from
Millington to Pavier was illegitimate unless it refers to something other than
the play; i.e. the prose. Both scholars conclude that the evidence seems to
imply the prose existed by early 1594 at the latest.
However,
even if the prose was in existence by 1594, there is no solid evidence to
suggest the order in which the play, ballad and prose were written and which
served as source for which. Traditionally, the prose has been seen as the
original, with the play derived from it, and the ballad derived from both play
and prose. Adams Jr., for example, firmly believed in this order (prose-play-ballad)
as did John Dover Wilson
and Geoffrey Bullough. This theory is by no means universally accepted however.
For example, Ralph M. Sargent agrees with Adams and Bullough that the prose was
the source of the play, but he argues that the poem was also a source of the
play (prose-ballad-play). On the other hand, Marco
Mincoff rejects both theories, arguing
instead that the play came first, and served as a source for both the ballad
and the prose (play-ballad-prose). G. Harold Metz felt that
Mincoff was incorrect and reasserted the primacy of the prose-play-ballad
sequence. G.K. Hunter however, believes that Adams, Dover Wilson, Bullough,
Sargent, Mincoff and Metz were all wrong, and the play was the source
for the prose, with both serving as sources for the ballad (play-prose-ballad).
In his 1984 edition of the play for The Oxford Shakespeare, Eugene M. Waith rejects Hunter's theory and supports the
original prose-play-ballad sequence. On the other hand, in his 1995 edition for
the Arden Shakespeare 3rd Series, Jonathan Bate favours Mincoff's theory of
play-ballad-prose. In the introduction to the 2001 edition of the play for the Penguin
Shakespeare (edited by Sonia Massai), Jacques Berthoud agrees with Waith
and settles on the initial prose-play-ballad sequence. In his 2006 revised
edition for the New Cambridge Shakespeare, Alan Hughes also argues for the original prose-play-ballad
theory, but hypothesizes that the source for the ballad was exclusively the
prose, not the play.
Ultimately,
there is no overriding critical consensus on the issue of the order in which the
play, prose and ballad were written, with the only tentative agreement being
that all three were probably in existence by 1594 at the latest.
Date and text
Date
The
earliest known record of Titus Andronicus is found in Philip
Henslowe's diary on 24 January 1594, where
Henslowe recorded a performance by Sussex's
Men of "Titus & ondronicus",
probably at The Rose.
Henslowe marked the play as "ne", which most critics take to mean
"new". There were subsequent performances on 29 January and 6
February. Also on 6 February, the printer John Danter entered into the Stationers'
Register "A booke intitled a Noble Roman Historye of Tytus
Andronicus". Later in 1594, Danter published the play in quarto under the title The Most Lamentable Romaine Tragedie
of Titus Andronicus (referred to by scholars as Q1) for the booksellers
Edward White and Thomas Millington, making it the first of Shakespeare's plays
to be printed. This evidence establishes that the latest possible date of
composition is late 1593.
There
is evidence, however, that the play may have been written some years earlier
than this. Perhaps the most famous such evidence relates to a comment made in
1614 by Ben Jonson
in Bartholomew Fair. In the preface, Jonson wrote "He that will swear, Jeronimo or Andronicus are the best plays, yet shall pass
unexcepted at, here, as a man whose judgement shows it is constant, and hath
stood still these five and twenty, or thirty years." The success and
popularity of Thomas Kyd's
The Spanish Tragedy, to which Jonson alludes, is attested by many contemporary
documents, so by placing Titus alongside it, Jonson is saying that Titus
too must have been extremely popular in its day, but by 1614, both plays had
come to be seen as old fashioned. If Jonson is taken literally, for the play to
have been between 25 and 30 years old in 1614, it must have been written
between 1584 and 1589, a theory which not all scholars reject out of hand. For
example, in his 1953 edition of the play for the Arden Shakespeare 2nd
Series, J.C. Maxwell argues for a date of late 1589. Similarly, E.A.J.
Honigmann, in his 'early start' theory of 1982, suggests that Shakespeare wrote
the play several years before coming to London c. 1590, and that Titus
was actually his first play, written c. 1586. In his Cambridge Shakespeare
edition of 1994 and again in 2006, Alan Hughes makes a similar argument,
believing the play was written very early in Shakespeare's career, before he
came to London, possibly c. 1588.
However,
the majority of scholars tend to favour a post-1590 date, and one of the
primary arguments for this is that the title page of Q1 assigns the play to
three different playing companies;
Derby's Men,
Pembroke's Men
and Sussex's Men ("As it was Plaide by the Right Honourable the Earle of
Darbie, Earle of Pembrooke, and Earle of Suſſex their Seruants"). This is
highly unusual in copies of Elizabethan plays, which usually refer to one company only, if any. If the
order of the listing is chronological, as Eugene M. Waith and Jacques Berthoud,
for example, believe it is, it means that Sussex's Men were the last to perform
the play, suggesting it had been on stage quite some time prior to 24 January
1594. Waith hypothesises that the play originally belonged to Derby's Men, but
after the closure of the London theatres on 23 June 1592 due to an outbreak of plague,
Derby's Men sold the play to Pembroke's Men, who were going on a regional tour
to Bath
and Ludlow. The tour was a financial failure, and the company returned
to London on 28 September, financially ruined. At that point, they sold the
play to Sussex's Men, who would go on to perform it on 24 January 1594 at The
Rose. If one accepts this theory, it suggests a date of composition as some
time in early to mid-1592. However, Jonathan Bate and Alan Hughes have argued
that there is no evidence that the listing is chronological, and no precedent
on other title pages for making that assumption. Additionally, a later edition
of the play gives a different order of acting companies – Pembroke's Men,
Derby's Men, Sussex' Men and Lord Chamberlain's Men, suggesting the order is random and cannot be used to help
date the play.
As
such, even amongst scholars who favour a post-1590 date, 1592 is by no means
universally accepted. Jacques Berthoud, for example, argues that Shakespeare
had close associations with Derby's Men and "it would seem that Titus
Andronicus must already have entered the repertoire of Derby's Men by the
end of 1591 or the start of 1592 at the latest." Berthoud believes this
places the date of composition some time in 1591. Another theory is provided by
Jonathan Bate, who finds it significant that Q1 lacks the "sundry
times" comment found on virtually every sixteenth-century play; the claim
on a title page that a play had been performed "sundry times" was an
attempt by publishers to emphasise its popularity, and its absence on Q1
indicates that the play was so new, it hadn't been performed anywhere. Bate
also finds significance in the fact that prior to the rape of Lavinia, Chiron
and Demetrius vow to use Bassianus' body as a pillow. Bate believes this
connects the play to Thomas Nashe's
The Unfortunate Traveller, which was completed on 27 June 1593. Verbal similarities
between Titus and George Peele's poem The
Honour of the Garter are also
important for Bate. The poem was written to celebrate the installation of Henry Percy, 9th
Earl of Northumberland as a Knight of the Garter on 26 June 1593. Bate takes these three pieces of evidence
to suggest a timeline which sees Shakespeare complete his Henry VI
trilogy prior to the closing of the theatres in June 1592. At this time, he
turns to classical antiquity to aid him in his poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. Then, towards the end of 1593, with the prospect of the
theatres being reopened, and with the classical material still fresh in his
mind, he wrote Titus as his first tragedy, shortly after reading Nashe's
novel and Peele's poem, all of which suggests a date of composition of late
1593.
Other
critics have attempted to use more scientific methods to determine the date of
the play. For example, Gary Taylor
has employed stylometry,
particularly the study of contractions,
colloquialisms,
rare words and function words.
Taylor concludes that the entire play except Act 3, Scene 2 was written just
after Henry VI, Part 2 and Henry
VI, Part 3, which he assigns to late 1591 or
early 1592. As such, Taylor settles on a date of mid-1592 for Titus. He
also argues that 3.2, which is only found in the 1623 Folio text, was written
contemporaneously with Romeo
and Juliet, in late 1593.
However,
if the play was written and performed by 1588 (Hughes), 1589 (Maxwell), 1591
(Berthoud), 1592 (Waith and Taylor), or 1593 (Bate), why did Henslowe refer to
it as "ne" in 1594? R.A.
Foakes and R.T. Rickert, modern editors of
Henslowe's Diary, argue that "ne" could refer to a newly
licensed play, which would make sense if one accepts Waith's argument that
Pembroke's Men had sold the rights to Sussex's Men upon returning from their
failed tour of the provinces. Foakes and Rickert also point out that
"ne" could refer to a newly revised play, suggesting editing on
Shakespeare's part some time in late 1593. Waith sees this suggestion as
especially important insofar as John Dover Wilson and Gary Taylor have shown
that the text as it exists in Q1 does seem to indicate editing. However,
that "ne" does actually stand for "new" is not fully
accepted; in 1991, Winifred Frazer argued that "ne" is actually an
abbreviation for "Newington Butts".
Brian Vickers, amongst others, finds Frazer's arguments convincing, which
renders interpretation of Henslow's entry even more complex.
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