Titus Andronicus is a five-act play by the English dramatist William Shakespeare. It is probably the first tragedy that he ever wrote, perhaps dating from 1590. It was first published in 1594.
The play is possibly based in part on The History of Titus Andronicus, a story by an unknown English author. But critics have identified other sources that Shakespeare may have used in constructing the plot of the drama. They include Hecuba, by the ancient Greek playwright Euripides, and Thyestes and Troades, two plays by the Roman statesman and dramatist Seneca.
This play is a type of violent melodrama that was popular in Elizabethan theater. The action takes place in and around ancient Rome, though none of the characters and events have any historical basis. Titus Andronicus involves a series of brutal acts of revenge. In the first half of the play, Tamora, the queen of the Goths, has been captured by the victorious Roman general Titus Andronicus. She vows to destroy him. After becoming the wife of the Roman emperor Saturninus, Tamora and her lover Aaron the Moor ensure hostility between Saturninus and Titus by engineering the death of Bassianus, the brother of Saturninus. Bassianus has already angered Titus by kidnapping his daughter Lavinia. He is now murdered by Tamora’s sons Chiron and Demetrius. Chiron and Demetrius also rape Lavinia and cut off her hands and tongue. The second half of the play continues the cycle of revenge, with Titus taking violent measures against those who raped his daughter and plotted his own destruction. At the end of the play, with his enemies dead, Titus becomes emperor.
Shakespeare only occasionally lightened the play’s bloody sensationalism with effective poetry and characterization. The evil plots of Aaron the Moor provide most of the interest in an otherwise continuous parade of horror and brutality.
