Titus Andronicus has a plot so revolting to modern readers that many critics like to follow the seventeenth-century tradition, which tells, according to a writer who wanted to justify his own tinkering, that Shakespeare added "some master-touches to one or two of the principal characters," and nothing more. But unfortunately not only the phraseology and the meter, but the more important external evidences point to Shakespeare, and, however we might wish it, we cannot find grounds to dismiss the theory that Shakespeare was at least responsible for the rewriting of an older play.
No play better deserves the type name of 'tragedy of blood.' The crimes which disfigure its scenes seem to us unnecessarily wanton. Briefly, the struggle is between Titus, conqueror of the Goths, and Tamora, their captive queen, who marries the Roman emperor, and who would revenge Titus's sacrifice of her son to the shades of his own slain sons. From the first five minutes, during which a noble Goth is hacked to pieces—off stage, mercifully—to the last minute of carnage, when the entire company go hands all round in murder, fifteen persons are slain, and other crimes no less horrible perpetrated. Every one at some time gets his revenge; and the play is entirely made up of plotting, killing, gloating, and counterplotting. The inhumanly brutal Aaron, the blackamoor lover of Tamora, is arch villain in all this; but the ungovernable passions of Titus render him scarcely more attractive.
The pity of it is that the young Shakespeare apparently wasted upon this slaughtering much genuine poetic art, and no little elaboration of plot. But he was writing what the public of that day enjoyed. Developed by such real artists as Kyd, the tragedy of blood, like the modern "thriller," had about 1590 an enormous success. It is well for us to remember, too, that out of one of these tragedies of revenge and blood sprang the great tragedy of Hamlet.
Date.—The most recent authorities put the play as written not long before the publication of the First Quarto, 1594. The Stationers' Register records it on February 6, 1593-4. Second and Third Quartos followed in 1600 and 1611. None of these ascribe the play to Shakespeare. It is, however, included in the First Folio.
Authorship and Source.—Richard Henslowe, the manager, recorded in his Diary, April 11, 1591, the performance of a new play Tittus and Vespacia. In a German version, Tito Andronico, printed in a collection of 1620, Lucius is called Vespasian; and thus we have a slight ground for belief that the entry of Henslowe refers to an early play about our Titus. A Dutch version, Aran en Titus, appeared in 1641. This appears to have been based on another relation of the story, earlier and cruder than Shakespeare's. The Shakespearean version probably came from these two earlier plays, with considerable additions in plot.
The two latest students of the play, Dr. Fuller and Mr. Robertson, differ as far as they well can on the question of authorship. The former believes Shakespeare wrote every line of the present play; the latter that he wrote none of it, and that Greene and Peele had their full share. Kyd and Marlowe are assigned as authors by others. One fact stands clear, that in the face of the evidence of the First Folio and of Meres, no conclusive internal evidence has disposed of the theory of Shakespearean authorship. The play was enormously popular, if we may judge by contemporary references to it, and a mistake in attribution by Meres would therefore have been the more remarkable. Incredible, too, as it may seem, the earlier versions must have been more revolting than Shakespeare's; so that there is really a lift into higher drama.
Romeo and Juliet stands out from the other great tragedies of Shakespeare, not only in point of time, but in its central theme. It deals with the power of nature in awaking youth to full manhood and womanhood through the sudden coming of pure and supreme love; with the danger which always attends the precipitate call of this awakening; and with the sudden storm which overcasts the brilliant day of passion. The enmity of the rival houses of Montague and Capulet, to which Romeo and Juliet belong, is but a concrete form of this danger that ever waits when nature prompts. Romeo's fancied love for another disappears like a drop of water on a stone in the sun, when his glance meets Juliet's at the Capulet's ball. Love takes equally sudden hold of her. Worldly and religious caution seek to stem the flood of passion, or at least to direct it. The lovers are married at Friar Laurence's cell; but in the sudden whirl of events that follow the friar's amiable schemes, one slight error on his part wastes all that glorious passion and youth have won. It was not his fault, after all; such is the eternal tragedy when Youth meets Love, and Nature leads them unrestrained to peril.
In perfection of dramatic technique parts of this play rank with the very best of Shakespeare's work. When to this is added the extraordinary beauty and fire of the poetry, and the brilliancy of color and stage picture afforded by the setting in old Verona, it is no wonder that to-day no mouthing of the words, no tawdriness of setting, and no wretchedness of acting can hinder the supreme appeal of this play to audiences all over the world. The chief characters are well contrasted by the dramatist. Romeo, affecting sadness, but in reality merry by nature, becomes grave when the realization of love comes upon him. Juliet, when love comes, rises gladly to meet its full claim. She is the one who plans and dares, and Romeo the one who listens. Contrasted with Romeo is his friend, Mercutio, gay and daring, loving and light-hearted; contrasted with Juliet is her old nurse, devoted, like the family cat, but unscrupulous, vain, and worldly,—a great comic figure.
Date.—There is throughout the play, but chiefly in the rimed passages in the earlier parts, a great deal of verbal conceit and playing upon words, which mark immaturity. The use of sonnets in two places, and the abundance of rime, point also to early work; but the dramatic technique and the development of character equal the work of later periods.
The First Quarto is a garbled copy taken down in the theater. It was printed in 1597. Its title claims that "it hath been often (with great applause) plaid publiquely, by the right Honourable the L. of Hunsdon his servants." The company in which Shakespeare acted was so called from July, 1596, to April, 1597. The Second Quarto, "newly corrected, augmented, and amended," appeared in 1599, and is the basis of all later texts. Three others followed—1609, one undated, and 1637.