he puts the burden of wrong on Tamora, that “most insatiate and luxurious
woman,” denouncing her for choosing the Moor, not Aaron for undoing her
( 5. 1. 88 ). Lucius simultaneously advertises the baby as “the base fruit” of Ta-
mora’s, not Aaron’s, “burning lust,” ordering that the child be hanged because
it is a “growing image of [Aaron’s] fiend-like face” anda “fruit of bastardy”
( 5. 1. 43 , 45 , 48 ). Notably too, he puts Aaron’s punishment on hold in order not
only to devise a more brutal means of death but also to bring the Moor “unto
the empress’ face / For testimony of her foul proceedings” ( 5. 3. 7 – 8 ). Although
Lucius is willing to save the child (at least for the moment) in exchange for
Aaron’s confession—which, Aaron promises, “highly may advantage” the
would-be emperor ( 5. 1. 56 )—his castigation of Tamora’s “foul proceedings” is,
it seems, not negotiable.
The baby’s fate, of course, is never revealed. But if that loose end signals
the insidiousness of a spreading blackness, it also suggests the relative insignif-
icance of that “issue” at this moment in the play. The scene is interrupted by
the approach of a messenger, who calls “Lord Lucius” and the “princes of the
Goths” to a “parley” at Titus’s house, on the emperor’s behalf ( 5. 1. 156 , 159 ).
The conflict of rule comes to a head and a crisis there, during a surreal ban-
quet which Titus has cooked up, as it were, to enact his revenge against the
Goths, themselves allegorically disguised as Murder, Rape, and Revenge. The
scene is overloaded with carnage: Titus kills and cooks Tamora’s sons, kills
their feted mother, and kills his ruined daughter; in response Saturninus kills
Titus, and Lucius kills Saturninus. Because of the parodic edges of this re-
venge plot, which engages allegory and strains reality, we may not notice the
very serious political transgression contained within it—may not notice, that
is, that a usurper (Lucius), accompanied by the once-enemy Goths, has killed
Rome’s sitting and legitimate emperor, Saturninus. Neither may we notice
that this action causes what editors have called a “great tumult” ( 5. 3. 65 SD),
the “sad-faced men, people and sons of Rome” becoming, as Marcus notes,
“by uproars severed” ( 5. 3. 67 ). A Roman lord laments that Rome has now be-
come a “bane unto herself,” that “she whom mighty kingdoms curtsy to” now
does “shameful execution on herself ” ( 5. 3. 72 – 73 , 75 ). As the play works its
way to closure, that “shameful execution” takes priority over the Moor as the
urgent center of concern. While Aaron waits in the wings, not yet fully ac-
counted for, in house but offstage, the Andronici are called to account—to
explain as Aeneas did to “lovesick Dido” “what Sinon hath bewitched our
ears, / Or who hath brought the fatal engine in / That gives our Troy, our
Rome, the civil wound” ( 5. 3. 81 , 84 – 86 ).^70
94 chapter three