Shakespeare's most violent and gory play, Titus Andronicus was
written in 1592, and represents the dramatist's first foray into the
popular genre of revenge tragedy (many editors argue with at least one
other collaborator). The result was spectacular, including scenes of
murder, human sacrifice, rape, bodily mutilation and cannibalism. Set in
late-imperial Rome, the action begins with the Roman general Titus
Andronicus and his triumphant return from wars with the Goths. Leading
Queen Tamora and her sons as prisoners, Titus stumbles into a power
struggle between Saturninus and his brother Bassianus. Titus fatally
backs Saturninus, who rapidly turns on the old general and marries
Tamora. The implications for the Andronicus family are disastrous. More
of Titus' sons are killed, his daughter Lavinia is brutally raped by
Tamora's sons, and as Titus begins his descent into madness and despair
he even has his own hand cut off in an act of awful trickery. As Titus
plots his bloody revenge, he reflects that "Rome is but a wilderness of
tigers". The ending is one of the most gruesome conclusions to any
dramatic tragedy, and leaves Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs
looking quite restrained. Although the play has put audiences off for
centuries due to its apparently gratuitous violence, more recently
critics have discerned something more to it than pure shock, but that
might say more about us than the Elizabethans
