peror / Sends thee this word” and that “the king” “will send thee hither both
thy sons alive” ( 3. 1. 151 – 52 , 155 – 56 ). Without hesitation, the Andronici take
him at his word as the conduit for the emperor’s authority and voice. Titus
praises the “gracious emperor” and “gentle Aaron” in one breath, unaware that
his own expression of relief—that the “raven” now “sing[s] so like a lark”
( 3. 1. 158 – 59 )—associates Aaron rather with Tamora, the “raven” whom Lavinia
has invoked in the face of her rapist Chiron, as one that “does not hatch a
lark” ( 2. 2. 149 ). As well, the Andronici sons compete with each other over
whose hand is best to “serve the turn” proposed, they assume, by the emperor,
and instead of doubting Aaron’s connection to the court, they unwittingly in-
gest the very idiom he has used to prompt Chiron and Demetrius to “serve
their turns” on Lavinia. This ironic circulation of language emphasizes how
readily, if also blindly, the Andronici accept the Moor’s channeling of the em-
peror, with Titus ultimately enlisting Aaron to undo himself, to chop off his
own hand, and to “deceive” his own sons ( 3. 1. 187 ). Even when a messenger re-
turns thereafter with only the heads of Titus’s “two noble sons” ( 3. 1. 237 ), the
Andronici do not suspect Aaron of deceiving them. In the face of this horrific
betrayal, Marcus rails against the abstract, Titus goes mad, and Lucius goes
“to the Goths” to “raise a power, / To be revenged on Rome and Saturnine”
( 3. 1. 300 – 301 )—notably not on the Moor.
But whose plot is it really? The play exposes as tragically naive the An-
dronici’s trust in Aaron’s claims to speak for Saturninus. And Aaron himself,
in an address to the audience, claims the deception as his own. Taking the
words right out of Titus’s mouth, he promises that if what Titus does “be
called deceit, I will be honest / And never whilst I live deceive men so. / But
I’ll deceive...in another sort” ( 3. 1. 189 – 91 ). The aside lends the Moor a
unique authority, an ability to step outside the dramatic fiction, to speak ex-
clusively to the spectators, and to enforce his “I” and his “will.” When his own
head is metaphorically on the block at the end of the play, he not only con-
fesses to the plot, insisting that he “played the cheater” for Titus’s “hand”
( 5. 1. 111 ); he also exaggerates his role, and his pleasure, by presenting himself as
the sole spectator, enjoying with self-authorizing abandon the frisson of vil-
lainy. Blocking (with sets, props, and gestures) a performance we never see, he
reports that he “drew [himself ] apart,” “pried [himself ] through the crevice
of a wall,” and, when Titus “had his two sons’ heads, / Beheld his tears and
laughed so heartily / That both mine eyes were rainy like to his” ( 5. 1. 112 – 17 ).
Aaron further admits using “this sport” in erotic play with the empress, elic-
iting from her a slight swoon and “twenty kisses” ( 5. 1. 118 , 120 ).
86 chapter three