Shakespeare and the Early Modern Self 143
son executed for too eagerly anticipating an order to close on the
enemy; and Appius Claudius, who murdered his dau gh ter when
her honor was undermined (Greenblatt, Norton Shakespeare, 372).
Perhaps the best- known example of such action, though, is Lucius
Junius Brutus, who killed his sons for siding with Tarquin. (Lucius
turns up in Book VI of The Aeneid, where Virgil calls him “infelix.”)
When Titus kills his son for defying the emperor’s wish, he is fol-
lowing in a long line of distinguished Romans, following their
version of the code of honor.
After the fi rst scenes, the play consists in the humiliation, the de-
basement, and fi nally the destruction of Titus. By the close of the
tragedy, the once valiant, noble Roman is as depraved as the human
fi ends who torment him. His dau gh ter is raped. She has her tongue
cut out. Her hands are sawed off. The corrupt emperor arrests Titus’
oldest remaining son. Aaron the Moor, an enemy of Titus with con-
nections at court, informs Titus that if he will cut off his own hand
and send it to the emperor, the emperor might spare his son. Titus
severs the hand and sends it as a gift. The emperor laughs and kills
his son anyway. By the end of the play, Titus is a mad, disfi gured
animal. He kills the two men who have raped and mutilated his
dau gh ter and bakes them in a pie and invites their mo ther to eat it.
She does. Then Titus kills Lavinia to spare her further shame, or so
he says. Titus dies a self- justifi ed but ruined man, his body maimed,
his spirit destroyed.
Titus’ loyalty to the emperor and to the values of republican
Rome doesn’t elevate him, not in the least. It debases him. In his
own terms, Titus does virtually nothing wrong. But the play shows
us time after time that everything Titus does, from murdering his
own son to taking bloody revenge on Tamora to sawing his hand
off in hopes of saving his son is completely, almost insanely, wrong.
When the heroic code collides with the harsh exigencies of life, the
result is more absurd than it is tragic. Titus dies not only debased,