Having convinced (and assigned) students to read Titus Andronicus by establishing that this is not the Bard they know from high school, I am very strategic in the discussions that follow. After all, I have assured them I will help them make sense of this crazypants play.

Defining the revenge tragedy

Before we discuss the play in earnest, it’s important to review the generic constructions of early modern drama: comedies, tragedies, histories, and romances. Many students come into my classroom already understanding the distinctions of the genres, but it is not often that they’ve dug deeper into how these narrative structures generate meaning in the play.

This is why students need to understand that a revenge tragedy like Titus is all about agency: who is able to act and who is denied. Revengers become agents of action instead of objects acted upon. For example, we’ll often discuss how Tamora’s sexuality, like her desire for revenge, transforms her from an object of the state into a subject of force. We’ll also discuss and examine how Lavinia’s rape and mutilation make literal the way she is objectified by everyone in this Roman society, including her father, as Titus sees her as his handmaiden for revenge.

Aaron the Moor and the construction of racial difference

Once we’ve discussed how the narrative structure forces the question of agency in the play, I like to ask the students why Aaron, as a character, is in the play.

First, we talk about the early modern conceptions of Moors, and why, if the play is inherently interested in the nature of action and agency, Shakespeare would have included a Moor. There was a great deal of confusion in early modern England about what a Moor was and what Blackness signified. I begin by offering students the OED definition:

A native or inhabitant of ancient Mauretania, a region of North Africa corresponding to parts of present-day Morocco and Algeria. Later usually: a member of a Muslim people of mixed Berber and Arab descent inhabiting North-Western Africa (now mainly present-day Mauritania), who in the 8th century conquered Spain. In the Middle Ages, and as late as the 17th century, the Moors were widely supposed to be mostly black or very dark-skinned, although the existence of “white Moors” was recognized. Thus, the term was often used, even into the 20th century, with the sense “Black person.”

Additionally, according to Anthony Barthelemy, “The only certainty a reader has when he sees the word is that the person referred to is not a [white] Christian.” Students need to remember, however, that the performance of Blackness in premodern England was often associated with representations of the devil. In medieval morality plays, for example, the devil was often performed in blackface.

In 1577, George Best wrote that racial differences stem from the biblical story of Noah. When Noah and his family were saved from the flood, they were told to “abstain from carnal copulation with their wives.” Noah’s son Cham (also known as Ham or Shem), however, disobeyed, and God punished him:

For the which wicked and detestable fact, as an example for contempt of Almighty God, and disobedience of parents, God would a son should be born whose name was Chus, who not only in self, but all his posterity after him should be so black and loathsome, that it might remain a spectacle of disobedience to all the world. And of this black and cursed Chus came all black Moors which are in Africa, for after the water was vanished from off the face of the earth, and that the land was dry…, Africa remained for Cham and his black son Chus… being perhaps a cursed, dry, sandy, and unfruitful ground, fit for such a generation to inhabit it.

The early modern construction of racial difference was evolving, changing, and adapting from the influence of travel narratives like Best’s. In the end, whatever version or conflation of the story, this “curse” of Ham mythology solidified the belief that Black people were, by divine decree, inferior and associated with evil.

Aaron’s silence

It’s important to remind students that Aaron the Moor is (probably) onstage for the entire first act, but he does not say anything. He is brought in as a slave with the Gothic prisoners of war.

Aaron’s silence in the first act is significant because it can be interpreted in different ways. And this is an ideal place for conversation with students. I ask them to consider how Aaron’s Blackness is present on stage, especially in comparison to the Goths, and what function his visual presence serves. Why is Aaron here?

This is also a moment where I might discuss early modern staging practices and the likelihood of Aaron being played by a white actor in racial prosthetics (probably a wig, arm and leg coverings, and blackface). This explicit and constructed racial difference has an agenda—how is it affecting our understanding of this first act?

When Aaron does speak, it is in a long soliloquy, which is a marker of interiority. We read act 2 scene 1 aloud, noting that Aaron’s language is unlike any other characters in the play: he has a linguistic dexterity that is awe-inspiring. He is able to plot schemes to control the people around him: he controls Chiron, Demetrius (and by extension Lavinia), Titus, and Tamora (and by extension Saturninus and the Roman state).

Aaron’s awareness of stereotypes

I ask my students: is Aaron, the character, aware of the stereotypes and mythologies that are thrust onto him? We read act 4 scene 2 aloud while considering this question.

Aaron does not make references to his color or race until after characters like Lavinia, Bassianus, Titus, and the Nurse keep maligning him because of his Blackness. After these repeated comments, however, Aaron attempts to turn notions of color prejudice on their heads. Aaron condemns whiteness for being inconstant. He praises Blackness for its constancy and for its proof of paternity.

Shakespeare seems to be testing the audience’s conceptions of Blackness by having Aaron be the only parent who actually protects his offspring (both Titus and Tamora are willing to kill their own children to protect their positions in the state). By the end of the play, however, Aaron’s language changes significantly, and he becomes the cursing devil instead of the punning trickster. We read act 5 scenes 1 and 3 aloud to experience the shift in Aaron’s diction. It is clear that Aaron’s fate at the end of the play is to fulfill the devil.

A will of their own?

Titus Andronicus replicates the revenge tragedy genre, but it is also bizarrely self-conscious in its use of allusions to literary devices and models for cruelty, suffering, and revenge (Ovid, Horace, Homer, etc). It is almost as if the characters feel that there is no original way to experience their own lives. They seem to express a notion that everything has been scripted for them. Examples I point out include:

• Chiron and Demetrius on rape (2.3.1ff/2.4.1ff)
• Marcus on suffering (2.3.38ff/2.4.38ff)
• Titus’s scrolls to the gods (4.2.18ff)
• Lavinia’s use of Ovid (4.1.40ff)

Titus Andronicus, then, seems to be deeply engaged with an interrogation of the force and power of societal constructions of identity. Although Aaron, Tamora, and Lavinia all begin the play with identities that are unique and original, they all succumb to the crushing pressure of the society’s expectations. “As the saying is” becomes a way to plot these figures, and ultimately it becomes a way to deny them agency also.