Violence in the State in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus

The final scenes of Titus Andronicus produce a tragic bloodbath of a catharsis that leaves Rome in the hands of a new emperor, Lucius, who is offered by Shakespeare as the superior statesman of the play. The conflicts that mount throughout the earlier scenes are resolved in a manner that corresponds to the tragic genre of the play and ultimately define characters and articulate important themes about revenge, violence, and personal honor, namely that they should be pursued with caution and moderation. The feud between the Andronicus family and the Roman Empire, under the guise of Tamora and Aaron, heightens in intensity and depravity as the play progresses, producing festering grudges and heinous acts of vengeance leading to the climax. With violence acting as a sort of vehicle to establish dominance throughout the play, Shakespeare presents calculated acts of violence carried out with logic and a rational, objective viewpoint as the acts that carry the most worth in the state. Lucius best embodies this ideal by acting as both an amalgamation of Titus and Marcus and a foil to Aaron. When Lucius inherits Rome at the end of the play, it is clear that blind 'pious violence' and ruthless acts of vengeance are, in the end, futile, thus condemning the path of the characters Lucius exists in contrast to.

With Titus acting as the nexus carnal climax by giving in and committing his final acts of vengeance, is becomes clear that the revenge-based philosophy that drove his behavior, even at the beginning of the play while overseeing the murder of Alarbus (which was considered appropriate in the context of Roman law), was his true undoing. This desire for revenge that originates from tradition at the beginning of the play evolves into the desire for vengeance from a personal, moral standpoint, with Titus' dead children, deformed daughter, and surrendered hand as motivating factors. Titus may have feigned madness to capture Tamora's sons and head the final massacre of the play as he admits to being aware that he is projecting the exterior of insanity when he taunts Tamora's sons, observing that she "calls herself Revenge and thinks [him] mad" (5.2. 185), but his apparently genuine ravenous desire for revenge adds a dimension of ambiguity to his sanity. Titus compares his enemies to cunning to relentless animals when he proclaims that

Rome is but a wilderness of tigers [...]

Tigers must prey, and Rome affords no prey

But me and mine (3.1.54-56).

Where this becomes ironic is when Titus' own characterization is considered; by the conclusion of the play, Titus has descended to the very beastly, predatory moral level of his adversaries that he expresses contempt for when he uses trickery to butcher Chiron and Demetrious and bake them into pies. This brutality embodied by Titus makes up one extreme of Lucius' moral dynamic: the capacity to deploy cunning and commit acts of violence.

Marcus then represents the other end of Lucius' character spectrum: a more calculating, logical influence. A character who existed in the background of the play as a sort of mediator, Marcus must embody his role one final time, in the fashion of Hamlet's Horatio, and explain the chaos of vengeance and blind violence. When Marcus says:

You sad-faced men, people and sons of Rome,

By uproars severed as a flight of fowl

Scattered by winds and high tempestuous gusts,

O let me teach you how to knit again

This scattered corn into one mutual sheaf,

These broken limbs again into one body (5.3. 66-71).

He refers to the ongoing metaphor of a wounded, disheveled Rome and blames the revenge-based actions of Titus and his enemies for its current state of ruin. The "uproars" that scatter the "flight of fowl" and the "tempestuous gusts" that Marcus refers to are the conspiracies and murders that litter the play. This metaphor he invokes is one of nature as Titus's actions are compared to natural disasters that ruin and destroy indiscriminately. In Marcus's speech, Rome is the body whose limbs have been broken by these unthinking rampages. Within the dimensions of Marcus's nature-based metaphor, Titus is reduced to a brutal animalistic force while Marcus presents himself as a compassionate and humane force that will "knit" the corn (Rome) instead of "scatter" it; in other words, cultivate instead of destroy. Marcus proposes that he is capable of collecting the "scattered" Rome through his non-violent methodical actions. While Marcus may in fact be more rational that Titus and he escapes with his life upon the conclusion of the play, it is Lucius who inherits the empire. Lucius is able to harness the viciousness of Titus and apply Marcus's reason in appropriate, objective ways throughout the play and earns the position of Emperor upon end of the play articulating the necessity of objective, rational violence in the state; He achieves diplomacy with the Goths and he slays the corrupt Roman emperor.

The idea of 'rational violence' being a necessary branch of government is a re-visited theme in Shakespearian works. Like Marcus, Hamlet's closest friend Horatio never murders anyone throughout the play and abstains from conspiracies to enact revenge. The conclusion of the play parallels Titus in that all the key characters are dead except the rational brother figure that has stood by the protagonist without committing acts of violence. The play ends with Horatio's exclamation of:

And let me speak to th' yet unknowing world

How these things came about. So shall you hear?

Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,

Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,

Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,

And, in this upshot, purposes mistook

Fall'n on th' inventors' heads (5.2.380-386).

This parallels Marcus's closing promise to the people of Rome as it is addressed to the public of Denmark and articulates the danger of conspiring and invoking vengeance. The "carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts" Horatio refers to are the murders that took place as a result of Hamlet's attempt to avenge his father and the incest between Claudius and the Queen. By pointing out that they were "casual" and "accidental," acts of violence, he invokes Marcus's final speech that denounces crazed action and calls for logic to help avoid unneeded bloodshed. The mistaken deaths that occur at the conclusion of the play are the ones he names as "put on by cunning," thus denouncing and criticizing the brutal premeditated dimension of personal vengeance. The "purposes mistook" that fell onto the "inventors' heads" that Horatio speaks of are the plots that were rooted in malice and revenge that accomplished nothing in the way of justice, but rather, the death of bystanders; with the accidental murder of Polonius and Gertrude as the most obvious examples.

With Lucius extrapolating the best qualities from Titus and his uncle Marcus and embodying isolated, logical acts of violence to carry out his own agenda, a contrast can be found in Aaron the Moor, who exists as his complete foil. The reason Aaron earns the title of complete foil is because his characterization is, by definition, an exact opposite of Lucius'; Lucius calculates his few acts of violence to do what is right while Aaron commits multiple random acts of violence for no reason other than to do wrong. While Lucius applies himself in a positive manner in the name of justice, killing the emperor because of the obvious corruption of the state, and forming relations with the Goths, Aaron relishes his own evil, proclaiming "If one good deed in all my life I did/I do repent it from my very soul" (5.3.188-189). He clearly sees himself as an evil creature and forsakes any legitimate form of racial self-identification, using his skin color to invoke sinister imagery; truly, "Aaron will have his soul black like his face" (3.1.206). The foil relation between the two characters can be observed and applied to specific instances in the play as well, such as the deaths of the other sons of Titus. When Titus kills the innocent Mutius early in the play, Lucius exclaims "My lord, you are unjust, and more than so" (1.1.297) and strives to earn Mutius a respectable burial, while Aaron beholds the heads of Titus' dead sons whom he helped to murder and "laughed so heartily/That both [of his] eyes were rainy" (5.1.116-117). The play opens with the grizzly sacrifice Alarbus, the one arguably inappropriate act of violence perpetrated by Lucius, which he earns redemption for through his conduct during the remainder of the play. In contrast to this, the play concludes with Aaron voicing his regret for any single act of good he may have done. The final destinies of both men are polarized as well with Lucius' flourishing morality crowning him emperor of most of the world and Aaron reduced to a tiny seed of a man to be planted in the earth to first wither, and then die.