In Thyestes the family bond is destroyed in horrific fashion. The
shattering of ties provides the basis for Atreus’ vengeance. The lives of
children become subordinate to Man’s irrepressibly savage actions. In
spite of or because of these circumstances, the Chorus advocates adherence
to a bond whereby familial loyalties and duties might be acknowledged. In
words that echo Cicero’s De Finibis, the chorus insists that “bonds of
affection that animals recognise, we human beings ought to acknowledge.”
To Elizabethan as well as Roman audiences, the concept of the bond was
especially resonant and was connected with philosophical assumptions of
the period. It is important to recall here that much of the Elizabethan
outlook was determined by a belief system that accepted the significance
of cosmology. In his Backgrounds of Shakespeare’s Thought, Hankins
outlines the role of the elements in terms of their correspondence to
other qualities:
Earth Water Air Fire
Cold Cold Hot Hot
Dry Moist Moist Dry
The stability of the elements - and by implication of life in general -
depends on the equilibrium of these qualities. When Othello cries “chaos
is come again” he is alluding to a state of affairs in which the elements
are confused and at war with themselves.
Strife is avoided by love, which is seen as a harmonising influence on
the elements. It is important, then, to see love as providing the
foundation for a just and functional society. In The Symposium, Plato
insists on love as “a guiding principle in the operation of natural
things.” In adumbrating Plato’s argument, Ficino writes that from
“moderate love come pleasingly temperate air, fertility of lands,
tranquillity of waters, and health of animals; from immoderate love their
opposites.” We see evidence of Shakespeare’s treatment of these themes in
A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, where the argument between Titania and Oberon
occasions natural disorder. The warring couple of the agents of change in
their own lives but they are far from autonomous since their actions are
ultimately linked with the cosmic order of things:
spring, the summer,/ The chiding autumn, angry winter
Change/ Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world,/By Their increase,
now knows not which is which./ And this Same progeny of evils comes from
our debate… (II,I,111)
Orderly love assumes its most stable manifestation in the form of the
familial bond. We see evidence of this in countless plays from the period,
from Shakespeare to Kyd. Not only does love promote cosmic harmony; it
also leads to a greater understanding between humans in society at large,
functioning simultaneously on a microcosmic and macrocosmic level:
Again it is held by the stoics to be important to understand
That nature creates in parents an affection for their children;
And parental affection is the germ of that social community
to which we afterwards attain (Cicero; De Finibis)
It is the familial bond that Coriolanus shirks in his quest for
superhuman independence and which Macbeth obliterates with the slaughter
of Macduff’s family. As we shall see, great consequences attend on the
abuse of this bond.
In Titus Andronicus, the implications of kindred ties and duties are
everywhere prevalent. The bond has become enshrined in tradition and the
Roman way of life (Romanitas). Titus’ family tomb has been home to his
ancestors for half a millennium. The drama is also riddled with particular
lines and refrains (the word “mine” for example) which foreground the
intensity of familial concerns and obligations; concerns which extend to
Roman and barbarian alike. Even the otherwise monstrous Aaron dotes on his
baby son with the delicious lines “look how the black slave smiles upon
the father/ As who would say “Old lad. I am thine own.”” (IV,ii,121)
Titus’ observance of his duties as a father and his love for his own
children partially account for his great martial success and renown. His
services to the state have been enhanced by his fortunate domestic life,
based as it is on the “bond.”
It seems to me that the tragedy of Titus Andronicus, hinges on a
paradox. To be consistent with his duties as a patriarch, Titus must
requite his dead by sacrificing one of the captured Goths from his recent
campaign:
Give us the proudest prisoner of the Goths,/ That we may Hew
his limbs/..That so the shadows be not unappeased,/ Nor we disturbed
with prodigies on earth. (I,I,96-101)
Yet this act can only
be effected by the destruction of another family. Titus’ sacrifice of
Alarbus disregards Tamora’s desperate appeals for mercy whilst at the same
time propitiating the “shadows” of his own clan. A mother’s entreaties
reflect the double standards at work here:
And if thy sons were ever dear to thee/ O think my son is
Dear to thee/ O think my son is dear to me. (I,I,108)
Tamora
further acknowledges this breach of the bond when she chastises the
implacable, if apologetic, Titus for his “cruel irreligious piety”
(I,I,130). We see Tamora at her most human here: as a griefstricken mother
hopelessly trying to prevail upon Titus. The bloody seeds from which
Titus’ tragedy will burgeon are sown in this opening scene.
Titus’ deed in Act I is heinous: in MacAlindon’s view it transforms
this exemplar of integrity into his own opposite (the “violentest
contrariety” of Coriolanus). Certainly he has spurned mercy and embroiled
himself in revenge politics that will prove his undoing. I would argue,
however, that Titus’ act would not occasion the strife it does were it not
for a crucial political factor: that the state of Rome is hopelessly
decadent and thus prone to retributive violence that would otherwise be
inconceivable. Normally Tamora’s plans for revenge could never be
facilitated; yet in this play they are effected thanks to peculiarly
bizarre political circumstances. Unexpectedly this barbarian queen becomes
wife to the new and inadequate Emperor, Saturninus. Quite appropriately,
then, Charney describes Titus Andronicus as being a “struggle between
Roman values and barbarism.” That Tamora is a menace to the state is
recognised by her lover Aaron, for whom she is a “siren that will charm
Rome’s Saturnine/ And see his shipwrack and the commonweal’s (II,I,25).
Unfortunately for Titus and contrary to his expectations, the barbarians
are now in a position to effect their dead.
In the matter of Titus’ vengeance we are again confronted with a
paradox. Titus Andronicus is the first of Shakespeare’s plays to express
the destructiveness inherent in revenge. Tamora acts out of respect for
her family ties but her course of action can only precipitate outright
disaster for all concerned, destroying Titus’ family and ensuring the
destruction of her entire brood. The drama thus proceeds according to a
hideously vicious cycle of revenge from which annihilation is the sole
means of escape. In destroying the family of another, Tamora loses
whatever virtue she formerly displayed, spurning her “womanhood” by
ignoring Lavinia’s appeals for mercy, whilst sponsoring an entirely
unnatural act of cruelty. What we subsequently see is ma tragic and brutal
parody of the familial contract. The queen’s doltish sons attest to their
filial loyalty through an act of butchery and do so on their mother’s
orders (“the worse to her, the better loved of me”). In Titus’ camp the
mutilated Lavinia fulfils her duty to her father when she undertakes his
instruction to “bear thou my hand, sweet wench, between thy teeth
(III,ii,282)”. Finally of course Tamora unknowingly gorges herself on
herself on her own two sons in an echo of the banquet scene in Seneca’s
drama.
As I have suggested, such unnatural acts cannot occur without
occasioning disasters in society at large. Already dubious, the reign of
Saturninus becomes appalling, with a disregard for human life resulting
from the confused state of affairs. The social contract of which Romanitas
is a part is undone by the barabaric implications of Titus’ and Tamora’s
misdeeds. In the words of the latter, Rome is “but a wilderness of tiger
(where) tigers must prey and Rome affords no prey but me and mine
(III,ii,56).” Facile though it is, Saturninus’ complaint that there has
never been another emperor “used in such contempt (III,iv,4)” nonetheless
serves as a reflection of the prevailing mood within the society. Rome’s
leader hardly improves matters by displaying scant regard for social
proprieties
Go drag the villain by the hair:/Nor age nor honour shall
shape the privilege.
The relationship between the state and the individual is never more
emphatic than the portrayal of Lavinia after her mutilation. As early as
the first act, Titus’ daughter has been evoked as the microcosmic
representation of the Roman state 9”Rome’s royal mistress”). Titus also
serves to draw our attention to this parallel with his allusion to the
“glorious body” of the city. Clearly, then, the mutilation Lavinia endures
at the hands of the barbarian Goths is a personalised vision of Rome in
crisis. The natural unity from which the state derives its vigour is
symbolically devastated. The significance of the body as a reflection of
the political process is evinced elsewhere: in Titus’ amputation of the
hand which has won so many battles; and in the ultimate desecration of
Tamora’s corpse, by which the memory of the Goths is expunged.
What conclusions can we draw from the play and from its treatment of
the family in particular? Factors pertaining to the latter may be seen in
relation to the system of belief discussed in this essay. The tragedy of
Titus Andronicus is that a cruel and sanguinary feud is permitted to and
in a sense has to result from the violation of the family bond. Far more
than clannish honour is at stake in matters of kith and kin. This seems to
me to be the crux of the drama and one that informs subsequent plays.
Hamlet, for example, is driven by the recrudescence of domestic betrayal
and corruption. In the later play, as in Titus Andronicus, the crisis by
which a family is engulfed does not terminate in the divorce courts;
rather it influences the course fo events in society at large. The
microcosmic anticipates far broader themes. Similarly, King Lear documents
a time of strife stemming from the violation of familial ties.
Gloucester’s words are entirely apposite in the context of tragedy:
In cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces,
treason; and the bond cracked ‘twixt father and son/. This villain of
mine comes under the prediction, there’s son against father; the king
falls from bias of nature, there’s father against son. We have seen the
best of our times. (I.ii.104-109)
