follow the Moor to the “loathsome pit” where, he insists, a “panther” (really,
the newly made corpse of Bassianus) lies ( 2. 2. 193 – 94 ). Neither we nor they
have to wait for Freud in order to understand that a “subtle hole” “covered with
rude-growing briers” is a foreboding and “fatal place” ( 2. 2. 198 – 99, 202), any
more than Hamlet has to wait for Freud in order to accost his mother Oedi-
pally.^51 The Andronici notice that their “sight is very dull,” a term implying ap-
prehension, and when Martius falls into the pit, Quintus is “surprised with an
uncouth fear,” “a chilling sweat,” and “trembling joints” ( 2. 2. 195 , 211 – 12 ).^52
Even so, both continue to turn to Aaron for guidance, even after he has exited
the scene—we might think, as they apparently do not, inauspiciously.
More remarkably, as the plot plays out, the Roman emperor not only fol-
lows Aaron’s lead but further builds his own authority upon it. After
“fetch[ing] the king,” Aaron encourages him toward a “likely guess” that the
entrapped Andronici, both now in the pit, “were they that made away his
brother,” Bassianus ( 2. 2. 206 – 8 ). When Saturninus comes upon the scene, it
takes only the bodies in the pit, a letter crafted by Aaron and conveyed by Ta-
mora, and a bag of gold produced by Aaron to lead him to the conclusion that
Quintus and Martius are guilty and deserve “some never-heard-of torturing
pain,” which he means to devise ( 2. 2. 285 ). Although the emperor plays easily
into Aaron’s play-within-the-play, this is not Hamlet setting a public mouse-
trap for Claudius, or Don John producing a pornographic spectacle for Clau-
dio. In an immediate reversal, Saturninus re-presents the act of following the
Moor into an act of leading. Approaching the scene of the crime, he orders,
“Along with me! I’ll see what hole is here” ( 2. 2. 246 ). In his anxious attempts
to get the w/hole story, he makes no acknowledgment of Aaron’s part in the
discovery. When Aaron brings forward the bag of gold (uttering his only line
here, “My gracious lord, here is the bag of gold”), Saturninus turns instead,
and not necessarily consequently, to Titus, at that point pronouncing the An-
dronici’s guilt ( 2. 2. 280 ). And when Titus then hints at the prematurity of such
sentencing (begging a favor “if the fault be proved in them”), in order to re-
confirm his own case Saturninus defers to Tamora and to the anonymous let-
ter, not to the Moor or the gold, seeking to know, once and for all, “who
found this letter?”—as if knowing that is to know the truth ( 2. 2. 291 , 293 ).
We could read this eclipse of Aaron’s interventions simply as a sign of his
subordination within the court, but to do so is to overlook the indeterminacy
that surrounds the crucial prop here, the “fatal writ” which Saturninus him-
self takes as the clincher, the sign that the Andronici’s “guilt is plain” ( 2. 2. 264 ,
301 ). For the letter not only carries Aaron’s imprint; it simultaneously enlists
84 chapter three