SOURCE: “The Construction of Barbarism in Titus Andronicus,” in Race, Ethnicity, and Power in the Renaissance, edited by Joyce Green MacDonald, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997, pp. 165-180.

In the essay below, Vaughan analyzes the way in which the Romans of Titus Andronicus—who commit barbarous acts—are compared with the barbarians they have conquered. Vaughan contends that the play reveals the anxieties of Shakespeare's time regarding England's own role as a colonizer.

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Marcus chides his brother in the opening scene of Titus Andronicus for refusing to bury his son Mutius inside the family tomb:

Thou art a Roman; be not barbarous: The Greeks upon advice did bury Ajax That slew himself; and wise Laertes' son Did graciously plead for his funeral. Let not young Mutius then, that was thy joy, Be barr'd his entrance here. 

(1.1.378-83)¹

Marcus's words establish a binary opposition that seems to run through the...