Spectacle in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus

One may presume with utmost certainty that the final bloodbath of Shakespeare's first revenge tragedy elicited a lusty response from his audience; after all, the members of the audience paid good money to see the play, and according to editor Jonathan Bate, it "was hugely successful in its own time." The question remains however as to why it was so very popular; was it simply a delight in the violent spectacle the audience expected to see? Or was the audience more engrossed and rewarded by the justice of the multiple murders and their consequences for Rome? When placing Titus Andronicus within the context of Elizabethan society, it is clear that it was both the justice and the spectacle that gratified audiences.

While the rape, mutilation, execution, live burial, and cannibalism within the play may seem shocking at first to a modern audience (especially when read along with comedic narration), it is no more graphic than many films and television shows popular in contemporary society. What made these disturbing acts so powerful in Shakespeare's time persists in various forms of entertainment today. Likewise, audiences similarly feel a sense of satisfaction in seeing justice come to those who they deem "deserve it."

Audiences of the play must have felt some recompense for the display of private justice and revenge which revealed the inadequacies of the law; a legal system which at the time punished any murderer alike, even an avenger. For a society in which taking justice into one's own hands was forbidden, it would have been exhilarating to live vicariously through Shakespeare's characters. No doubt that there was wonderful gratification felt when Lucius spoke "Can the son's eye behold his father bleed?/ There's meed for meed, death for a deadly deed," (V. III. 64-65) before killing his father's murderer.

However it appears that Elizabethan audiences enjoyed the spectacle of the gratuitous violence just as much as the justice rendered. Playgoers were familiar with the ritualistic murders acceptable at the time, especially public executions, which were sometimes almost as gory and theatrical as the ones seen on the stages of playhouses.

In contrast to these public displays of capital punishments, the spectacle of the revenge tragedy was heightened by the release allowed by comedic prose that Shakespeare intertwined with his most tragic scenes. This is embodied rather gruesomely in Titus' lines to Tamora after he has fed her a pie made of her two rapist sons: "Why, there they are, both baked in this pie,/ Whereof their mother daintily hath fed,/ Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred" (V. III. 59-61).

Male audiences were most likely gratified and justified by the bloody punishments and deaths of the play's two female characters. In a society which feared female sexuality, audience members would have felt much satisfaction in the revolting end to the brazen Tamora. Similarly, Lavinia's murder seems bizarrely justifiable after Titus explains that she was "stained and deflowered" (V. III. 88), which, after all, would have made her worthless in Elizabethan society.

Contemporary critics may never know the exact motives of Elizabethan audiences and the reasons for their strong reactions to revenge tragedy. Yet in the zeitgeist of Shakespeare's London, it seems as if both justice and spectacle alike gratified and included audiences of Titus Andronicus.