The liaison between the queen of Goths and the Roman emperor, of
course, proves to be hideously malignant. Yet nonetheless, the play suggests,
it has an important political advantage, giving Saturninus leverage to distance
himself from the confining provincialism that Titus would otherwise impose
on him and on Rome. Skirting on impropriety, Saturninus’s unorthodox
praise for the Gothic queen’s “goodly hue” immediately follows and publicly
belies Titus’s prescriptive prediction that the emperor will use her “nobly.”
Moreover, his admittedly “sudden” embrace of Tamora coincides meaning-
fully with his explicit rejection of Titus’s dominance. Just before turning to
her, Saturninus accuses the Andronici of mocking him and excoriates Titus
for voicing the “proud brag.../That saidst I begged the empire at thy hands”
( 1. 1. 311 – 12 ). In Act Four, he will reiterate these charges and present Titus as a
“sly frantic wretch that holp’st to make me great / In hope thyself should gov-
ern Rome and me” ( 4. 4. 58 – 59 ). Whatever the validity of these indictments
and the veracity of Saturninus’s desire, it seems no coincidence that his em-
brace of Tamora follows on his rejection of Titus, opening the possibility that
these actions are of a piece. We might compare his public staging of his union
with the Gothic queen to Edward II’s similarly public staging of his reunion
with Gaveston in Marlowe’s Edward II(ca. 1590 ), the latter serving Edward as
a means to contest the oppressive control of the nobility, however sincere his
sexual desire.^44 In any case, by installing Tamora as his empress, Saturninus
not only marks his distance from Titus, and Titus’s Rome, but also institutes
a new Roman and a new kind of Romanness, which is culturally mixed in-
stead of pure. He sets Tamora beside Phoebe (i.e., Diana) and “the gallant’st
dames of Rome” whom she “overshine[s]” ( 1. 1. 322 ), distinguishing the Gothic
queen through a resonantly “Roman” term (“overshines”) from The Aeneid.^45
In addition, he swears “by all the Roman gods,” and, recycling Titus’s words,
vows not to “resalutethe streets of Rome” until he and Tamora have married
( 1. 1. 327 , 331 ). Now it is union with the Goths, in lieu of conquest over them,
that ushers in a return to Rome—improvised across cultural boundaries in re-
sponse to political challenge and change. The immediate result is not anarchy,
but effective, if temporary, accommodation.
In fact, until the moment, deep in the opening scene, when Tamora di-
rects Saturninus to “be ruled by me” and vows to “find a day to massacre” all
the Andronici, the Roman/Gothic bond appears to provide an acceptable and
accepted alternative to Titus’s stagnant and insular nationalism ( 1. 1. 447 , 455 ).
In seeking to remedy their own alienation, the Andronici themselves welcome
the mediation of the Gothic queen, who stages and directs a performance of
78 chapter three