Titus Andronicus Acts IV & V “…There is enough written upon this earth To stir a mutiny in the mildest thoughts… “

Titus Andronicus Acts IV & V

“…There is enough written upon this earth

To stir a mutiny in the mildest thoughts… “

Whoever said that Shakespeare doesn’t give actors much direction should read the directions given in Act IV of “Titus Andronicus’:

Lavinia takes the staff in her mouth, and guides it with her stumps, and writes the names of her attackers in the sand.

The action, murders and revelations run mercilessly like floodwaters throughout the play. Lavinia reveals the names of her attackers and Titus forges revenge. Meanwhile, Tamora has given birth to a son whose father is Aaron, the Moorish slave. Aaron takes his son with him away from Rome. Paternal instinct seems alive and well. There is a sense that Aaron’s evil acts come from the seat of revenge whose seed is the racism that he has suffered. He proudly decries that:

"Coal-black is better than another hue

In that it scorns to bear another hue."

With justice conveniently and symbolically sidelined, Titus makes Marcus, Young Lucius and Caius et al shoot arrows at the constellations (and Saturninus’ house) pleading to the Gods and announcing to all, Saturninus’ crimes. Needless to say, Saturninus is angry and, never hearing of the saying “Don’t shoot the messenger”, kills Titus’ messenger, a poor clown whose comic purpose is strengthened by his departure.

It is obvious that Tamora didn’t play dress-up and go to a Drama club when she was younger, since her attempt to disguise herself as Revenge, and her sons as Rape and Murder to taunt Titus whom they think has been driven mad, falls flat when Titus “o'erreaches them in their own devices". Tamora leaves her sons with Titus who then bleeds them slowly (with Lavinia holding the bowl that catches their blood), kills them and tells us of how he will use their blood and bones in a culinary 'invention' task that I have never seen on Masterchef or any other cooking challenge program.

I am sure the Tiber River runs totally red by the end of the play. In Act V, the corpse count rises to epic proportions. Titus stabs and kills his own daughter Lavinia. Titus reveals (and punctuates in a rhyming couplet) that Tamora’s son’s have been served to her in a pie.

“Why, there they are both, baked in that pie;


Whereof their mother daintily hath fed,


Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred.”

Titus, Saturninus and Tamora are all killed. Marcus and Lucius seem to escape the swinging blades of revenge and Rome will live on as the cathartic waters of the Tiber wash Revenge’s crimson colours into the sea at Ostia.

Tamora 6

Titus 5

Shakespeare returns to the War of the Roses in ‘Richard III’…