ing Chiron an “ass,” is sure that “the old man hath found [the brothers’]
guilt,” but not his own ( 4. 2. 25 – 26 ). The image of the weaponed Moor is
perhaps all the more insidious then because it circulates loosely within this
culture—and within foundational texts of England’s humanist schooling—to
give definition to the crime-free “man of upright life.”^57
Yet in Titus, the embeddedness of derogatory terms is not the same as
their pervasiveness, their availability not the same as their viability. If these
references prove discrimination possible, they do not necessarily prove it plau-
sible. To the contrary, Aaron’s case sets the possible against the plausible, re-
vealing the surety of the one to expose the uncertainty of the other. Titus
offers a radical experiment in representation, a Julie Taymor dream come true,
playing provocatively on the brink of parody, disenchantment, and disbelief
by yoking images and bodies violently together at the same time that it pulls
them violently apart. The Ovidian pre-text, for example, does not begin to tell
Lavinia’s story, does not begin to voice the horrors of the mutilated body on
stage. Nor can the dramatic embodiment of that pre-text give sustaining voice
or meaning to Lavinia’s body, “Rome’s rich ornament” and tragic “changing
piece,” which is abstractly more and physically less than the sum of its parts
( 1. 1. 55 , 314 ). In Aaron’s case, the relation between the figure, the prescriptive
discourse, and the presumptively signifying body is similarly strained. The
play certainly tempts us to draw a correlation, as Aaron does, between his
“black” skin and “black” deeds or soul. Yet here black skin does not automat-
ically incriminate any more than white skin exonerates or absolves; witness
the innocuous, presumably black Muly or the deadly white Gothic queen.
Even in a staged society where color prejudice finds expression, the feature
that ought to be patently “non-negotiable” is, it turns out, essentially un-
fixed.^58 For within this context of a conquering and culturally mixed Rome,
when discrimination against the Moor erupts, it appears at once marginal and
provisional, surprisingly limited to and precisely licensed by the mode and
moment of its articulation.
In fact, until the discovery of the baby, the most blatant excoriations of
the Moor happen outside the political center, where Aaron has some leverage.
During the conciliatory hunt, Bassianus and Lavinia come upon the Moor in
the forest, “wantoning” with the Gothic queen. There Bassianus insists that
Aaron’s “hue” colors Tamora’s implicitly white “honour,” making it “spotted,
detested and abominable” ( 2. 2. 73 – 74 ). He further declares her clandestine as-
sociation with a “swart Cimmerian” a readable sign of “foul desire,” loading
his condemnation with two synonyms (“swart,” which can mean “malignant,”
“Incorporate in Rome” 89