Titus Andronicus

Aaron is the next largest part after Titus. He is the primary villain, delivering self-aware monologues in which he expresses a nihilistic worldview. He is remorseless, saying he only wishes to cause harm in the world in any context, implying that he is immoral and cares for no one and nothing. However, he has some respect for Tamora, expressing his admiration and acting to protect her from the consequences of giving birth to his child, rather than merely absconding with him. He will also sacrifice anything for his baby, desiring to protect the child at any cost. His unconditional protective urge is juxtaposed against Titus’s murder of his own children for honor.

Aaron actively prompts and escalates violence by others and expresses cruel urges, but the violence associated with his character is primarily theoretical and threatened. He enacts no violence onstage himself, always operating through others (other than consensual amputation) and none is enacted on him onstage. His demise is teased as the Goths prepare to execute him, only for Lucius to halt proceedings, and through Lucius’s description of his intended execution. Aaron’s death, as with his presence, is used to build an atmosphere of tension and discomfort by constantly suggesting future violence.

Through Aaron, Shakespeare also explores Early Modern ideas of skin color and cultural differences. Aaron is at times treated by other characters and by himself as “other,” which is explicitly seen as frightening and dangerous. However, at other times he is welcomed, followed, respected, and referred to with deference or affection. These prejudices are thus shifting and flexible, reflecting the complexity of Early Modern popular discourse, both popular and formal.

Tamora assumes an antagonist role in the narrative alongside Aaron, though her destructive urges are presented as stemming from her hatred and dehumanization of the Andronici rather than inherent wickedness. She makes a genuine and impassioned plea for compassion in Act I, which Titus ignores. From that point on, almost nothing she says is sincere, as she plays the role of a temperate wife seeking conciliation merely to pursue her own goal of revenge. As a former queen, she is now a wife and a woman in the male-dominated arena of Rome, which associates action and assertion with masculinity. Limited in her ability to act in her own right, she uses her words to enact her aims, thereby confronting The Complications of Female Expression and employing gender roles consciously for her own purposes.

Shakespeare offers a brief glimpse of her as a human capable of softness, but after Alarbus’s death, she becomes unremittingly cruel and deceptive. She is hard-hearted when Lavinia pleads with her, instructing her sons to remember to silence her after they have raped her. Titus’s rejection of her humanity makes her incapable of recognizing the humanity of him and his family. She is eloquent, using poetic description, for example, in her speech about having sex with Aaron while everyone else hunts, and her story about the pit. These are further examples of her using her words to impact both the characters around her and the narrative atmosphere: She creates a sense of danger and deception by showing that the woodland can harbor illicit activity, and she creates a tone of horror and threat around the pit, foreshadowing the scene’s events.

Her speech drives the narrative more than her direct actions. However, she is not given any verbal response to the revelation that she is eating her sons in a pie— Shakespeare thus denies her a cathartic recognition of her own tragedy, which he has heightened to the point of absurdity. Her defeat both solidifies her status as a villain and ties into the nihilistic tone of the final scene. Her consumption of her sons suggests that she has allowed her quest for revenge to destroy her humanity and devour everything important to her.

Lavinia undergoes the greatest physical changes in the play, reflecting her shift from an archetype of chaste feminine beauty to a ruined woman, whose spiritual destruction, according to the play’s framework, is embodied in her physical mutilation. These extremes mean that her character is representative of these ideas; the degree to which she has full personhood is ambiguous.

Her character is heavily connected to classical literature, with the stories of Lucrece, Philomel, and Virgianus all invoked in reference to her. These tales actively impact her arc. Aaron mentions Lucrece before suggesting Chiron and Demetrius rape her. They decide to cut off her hands to prevent her from revealing their crimes through Philomel’s method; she nevertheless uses the story of Philomel to reveal what happened. Titus murders her based on the precedent of Virgianus. These meta-interactions between classical stories and her own story show that her life plays out within a pre-constructed framework, reflecting the impact of prescribed social roles and cultural ideas.

Lavinia is also important in Shakespeare’s exploration of The Value of Human Life. She is idealized and endowed with the highest possible value: Titus says that the fame of her virtue will immortalize her, and Marcus creates a poetic image of her perfection as she played the lute in his speech in 2.3. However, she is also dehumanized through this idealization, as she is an object of high value rather than a person, and her assault means she no longer retains this value according to the gender norms of her society. Her physical mutilation and her enforced silence dehumanize her within the narrative and the physical space, as she and other characters see her very body as an object of shame or fear. For example, she tries to hide from her uncle as she does not want to be seen; Young Lucius flees from her in fear; Titus veils her and then ultimately kills her.

Marcus is Titus’s brother and displays absolute loyalty to the Andronici clan; however, as a tribune he has a duty to represent the Roman people. At the beginning of the play, Shakespeare presents these goals as aligned since the people want to elect the war hero, Titus. Marcus is a peaceable and skilled diplomat, de-escalating the tension between Bassianus and Saturninus, and calming Titus after he attacks the fly. By the end of the play, he is tasked with restoring the Roman people’s faith in the Andronici family; on this occasion, he denies his usual eloquence and bids Lucius to recount events instead. His refusal is partly a rhetorical device—he claims to be unable to speak because of his tears, which also suggests that even Marcus cannot adequately verbalize the horrors that have taken place, suggesting they are almost beyond words.

Marcus is not an active agent himself, which enables him to maintain a relatively gentle character, one of the few characters who does not actively encourage or engage in acts of violence. Instead, he plays the role of an accompanying observer. He offers commentary, delivering long monologues in poetic blank verse, often referencing classical literature. His interaction with Lavinia after her attack is a primary example of this. His eloquence and use of rhetoric also reflect his political role, acting as a mediator and a representative.

Saturninus is a secondary character whose actions are central to the plot. Other characters like Titus, Tamora, and Aaron often act through him. Titus is behind his election to emperor at the start of the play, placing him in a position of great political power which Aaron and Tamora exploit through their manipulation of him. He is portrayed as proud, headstrong, and jealous rather than politically adroit. After he is made emperor on Titus’s recommendations, he repeatedly asserts that it has nothing to do with Titus and he owes him nothing; he then continues trying to coerce Titus even once he has promised his help.

Saturninus is lecherous, making lewd comments about Lavinia and Tamora. The moment he is gifted Tamora as a prisoner, he comments on her beauty and tells her to smile. This lechery combines with his gullibility to make him easy prey to Tamora’s manipulations: She and Aaron successfully convince him to execute Titus’s sons and swap their illegitimate baby out for another. During his reign Rome descends into violent chaos, resulting in the Goth army entering the city, and his own death. Saturninus illustrates the danger of power in the hands of a flawed individual. Shakespeare portrays the development of a power vacuum around a politician who believes that they are all-powerful.

Tamora’s two surviving sons are embodiments of wickedness, as illustrated in the meta-action of them presenting themselves as personifications of Rape and Murder. They do not have distinct characters as individuals, always appearing together and with the same aims: to serve their mother’s interests and to have sexual access to Lavinia. Although she is already “claimed” in marriage to Bassianus, they fight over her, threatening each other with violence. They are ruled by their violent and sexual urges regardless of law, custom, and their familial bond to each other.

Shakespeare presents them as animalistic and unsophisticated. They are easily led by Aaron and totally loyal to their mother. Their vicious assault of Lavinia is accentuated by their verbal humiliation of her afterward. Just as they see her as an object for consumption, so they become an object to be consumed when Titus murders them and serves them in pies to Tamora.

Of Titus’s surviving sons, Lucius is the only one to survive until the end of the play. He is the dominant leader of the group: He is their mouthpiece when they stand up to Saturninus, and becomes Titus’s right-hand man, accompanying him until his banishment. He takes up the Andronici cause and mantle, raising an army to lead against their enemies, and ultimately becomes emperor of Rome. Unlike Marcus, his character expresses himself primarily through action over words. He tries to rescue his brothers; he physically falls to the ground upon seeing the wounded Lavinia; he gathers an army; and he kills Saturninus.

Lucius represents an archetype of a young martial hero, but Shakespeare undercuts this archetype with complexities. His mercilessness is apparent when he tries to hang Aaron’s baby, and when he tells Titus he’ll only return Lavinia dead—he inherits Titus’s rigid understanding of Roman law and absolute certainty in his own interpretation of it. His actions for the Andronici cause involve joining with the enemies they have fought for 10 years; he invites the Goth army into the heart of Rome, and they protect him as he rises to imperial leadership. He is thus rigid in certain codes of honor, such as Bassianus’s possession of Lavinia, but flexible in others.

Young Lucius represents the next generation of Romans. The archetype of the child character often symbolizes hope for the future in tragedies. However, he has lost his innocence and is learning aggression: The adults encourage him to look at dead bodies, grieve violently, and join their sentiment of revenge. He flees in terror from the wounded Lavinia and expresses violent urges toward the family’s enemies. He is traumatized by what he has witnessed and is fully immersed in the bloody world of the adults.

These are the only three of Titus’s sons to have survived the 10 years of war, alongside Lucius. They are relatively flat characters who become side casualties of the plot, reflecting the treacherous, violent world they inhabit. Mutius’s name reflects his mutiny against his father. Martius’s name reflects their family’s martial tradition. Quintus’s name, which references the number 5, indicates the large number of sons Titus sent into battle, most of whom died.

Titus’s interactions with these sons demonstrate that his regard for his family is conditional. He murders Mutius for undermining Andronici honor and his own interpretation of Roman law, whereas he fights desperately to save the others, refusing to believe them guilty of murder and chopping off his hand to try to save them. Once they are dead, he obsessively seeks revenge and dedicates time and space to grief, even though they committed the same apparent slight as Mutius, who is never mentioned again. Titus experiences their loss completely differently depending on how they died, reflecting his values and his sense of ownership over his family.

Both the Nurse and the Clown are minor, flat characters who are not afforded names. They appear as side casualties of the plot, reflecting the low value of human life in this world. Shakespeare nonetheless creates pathos around their quick deaths through their assumptions that the primary characters they are serving will protect or even reward them, only to be killed without thought.