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.
