In the excerpt below, Hughes surveys the various critical controversies surrounding Titus Andronicus, including the debates over the date of composition, sources, and authorship. Hughes also reviews the issues of greatest concern among twentieth-century critics, noting that the violence in the play receives a considerable amount of attention from modern scholars.

In the following essay, Moschovakis interprets Titus Andronicus as a potentially revolutionary critique of cultural violence sanctioned by religion.

In the following essay, Miola considers the Roman setting, themes, and sources of Titus Andronicus.

In the following essay, Rowe comments on the symbolic significance of dismembered hands in Titus Andronicus as images of "lost agency" and failed political action.

In the following essay, Royster analyzes the representation of black and while racial extremes in Titus Andronicus with reference to the characters Aaron and Tamora.

In the following excerpted introduction, Bate surveys the structure, language, and critical reception of Titus Andronicus, and studies the drama's themes of revenge, passion, grief, and rape.

Sid Ray, Pace University Scholars cannot resist the temptation to analyze the startling and eerie succession of hand severings in Titus Andronicus.1 What distinguishes the current study from others is its focus not solely on the hands but on the combined impact of Lavinia's injuries—her rape and the amputation of her hands and tongue—and how they figure within the political context of the play and within early modern ideologies of marriage and monarchy. Only after Lavinia pag...

In the following excerpt, Little concentrates on the figure of Lavinia in Titus Andronicus, observing her resemblance to the classical model of Lucrece, viewing her rape as a symbolic sacrifice for Rome, and examining the racial overtones of the her attack.

In the following essay, Willbern surveys Shakespeare 's imagery of sadistic sexuality and revenge in Titus Andronicus.

In the following essay, Harris focuses on Lavinia’s role as the currency used in the play's political exchanges, observing that the treatment of her body serves as a means of identifying the source of authority in Titus Andronicus.

In the following essay, Liebler maintains that while much of Titus Andronicus is fictitious and without identifiable sources, Shakespeare's portrayal of Rome was influenced by Herodian's History.

In the following essay, Eaton suggests that through Lavinia, Shakespeare dramatized contemporary social tensions concerned with the value of humanist education. In particular, Eaton contends, Lavinia embodies the upper-class, humanist-educated woman who is perceived as a societal threat and who must consequently be silenced.

In the following excerpt, Wynne-Davies examines the roles of Lavinia and Tamora in light of late sixteenth-century concepts of women's identity.

In the following excerpted introduction to Titus Andronicus, Berthoud considers the drama's depiction of a culture disrupted by violent internal conflict.

In the following excerpt, Brooke argues that Titus Andronicus displays a greater formal and thematic unity than has previously been perceived.

In the following excerpt, Bartels discusses the figure of the racial "Other" in Titus Andronicus—the Moor, Aaron.

In the following essay, Palmer takes issue with the conventional view of Titus Andronicus as structurally formless or poorly constructed, arguing instead that the drama is a “highly-ordered and elaborately-designed work.”

In the following essay, Kerr studies the role of the feminine in Titus Andronicus as both author and text, and investigates the play 's symbolic representation of violation and the "quest for textual and patriarchal authority. "

In the following essay, Pikli explores Shakespeare's grotesque blending of violent tragedy and comic farce in Titus Andronicus.

In the following essay, Detmer-Goebel concentrates on the rape and silencing of Lavinia as it depicts the male repression of women's authority in Titus Andronicus.

In the following essay, Mead investigates the relationship between ritual and the cycle of violence depicted in Titus Andronicus.

In the following essay, Mead contends that the ritual slaying of Alarbus in Titus Andronicus, intended as a means of appeasing the dead Andronici and forestalling further violence, instead initiates a cycle of retaliatory bloodletting.

In his book The Origins of Shakespeare, Jones studies the relationship between Shakespeare's Tudor plays and the cultural milieu in which they emerged. In the following excerpt, he presents evidence that several plays of Euripides were widely known and admired in sixteenth-century England, and notes structural and textual similarities between Titus Andronicus and Euripides' play Hecuba.

In the following essay, Rudd traces the pervasiveness of classical Roman themes, contexts, and allusions—drawn from the writings of Virgil, Ovid, Plutarch, Livy, Horace, Seneca, and others—in Titus Andronicus.

In the following essay, Hunter finds that despite the lack of indisputable evidence regarding the sources for Titus Andronicus, the influences of Livy and Herodian can clearly be seen in the play.

In the following essay, Stamm explores Lavinia's role in Titus Andronicus, viewing her as a “stimulus” for the expressions of violence performed by her relatives. Finding that Shakespeare endowed Lavinia with individuality, Stamm further demonstrates that Shakespeare used Lavinia to refine his theatrical techniques, specifically the non-verbal portrayal of emotion.

In the following essay, Danson contends that as in the great Elizabethan dramas that followed it, the supreme tragic action in Titus Andronicus is not revenge but the formalization of death.

In the following essay, Danson examines the thematic balance of ineffective expression, imprisoning rhetoric, and madness with action and revenge in Titus Andronicus.

In the following essay, Hamilton examines Ovidian influences on Titus Andronicus, and calls the play the archetype of Shakespeare's later tragedies.

In the following essay, Fawcett discusses the relationship between language and the body, especially a violated or mutilated body, in Titus Andronicus.

In the following essay, Smith offers a theoretical approach to the play's juxtaposition of philosophical categories, particularly the Self-Other dichotomy, and studies the ways in which such oppositions symbolically collapse over the course of Titus Andronicus.

In the following essay, Cunningham explores the interpretive implications of Lavinia 's role as a literal victim of violence and "as the site of political rivalry" in Titus Andronicus.

In the following essay, Huffman compares Titus Andronicus with Ovid's Metamorphoses, emphasizing the theme of destruction and renewal in both works.

In the following essay, Marshall claims that Titus Andronicus offers a profoundly misogynistic view of male-female relations through its presentation of women as estranged, alienated, and silenced.

In the following excerpt, Hunt examines the tendency of characters in Titus Andronicus to use literary models as patterns for behavior and explores the relationship between art and divine providence in the play.

In the following essay, Andrews challenges the notion that Shakespeare's plays adhere to orthodox religious and ethical precepts that condemn the pursuit of personal revenge. Using Titus Andronicus as his chief example, the critic maintains that Elizabethan audiences might have responded sympathetically to revenge figures if their cause was just and that Shakespeare himself withheld moral judgment in the case of at least some of his blood revengers.

In the following excerpt, Danson explores Shakespeare's concern in Titus Andronicus with the possibilities and limitations of language as a means of expressing identity and experience.

In the following essay, Hiles centers on the rhetoric of Titus Andronicus and its relation to the play's theme of revenge.

In the following essay, Cohen investigates the politics of male violence in Titus Andronicus.

In the following review, Lindroth assesses Julie Taymor's film Titus and examines the way her film molds Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus into a twenty-first century idiom.

In the following excerpt, Ettin suggests that in Titus Andronicus Shakespeare uses his Roman setting and sources to explore the limitations of received artistic and intellectual ideas.

In the following essay, Slights studies the role and nature of the cycle of revenge that commences when the boundaries between sacred violence and vengeful violence are blurred in Titus Andronicus.

In the following essay, Smith probes the significance of the juxtaposition of blackness and barbarity imposed on the character of Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus.

(In the following excerpt, James suggests that Shakespeare employs Vergilian and Ovidian models in Titus Andronicus to perform a critique of Roman traditions and values.

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.

In the following essay, Miola probes Shakespeare's thematic appropriation of two Ovidian myths—the rape of Philomela and the story of the world's four stages—in Titus Andronicus.

In the following essay, Green suggests that the female characters in Titus Andronicus are reflections of the protagonist and that his revenge mirrors theirs, even as it obscures their suffering and distress. Green maintains that both Tamora and Lavinia represent a threat to patriarchal power: Tamora, because the murder of her son gives her just cause to seek retribution; and Lavinia, because if she could speak she would tell of her domination by male authority, in the persons of her kinsmen as well as her ...

In the following essay, Green examines the intertwined workings of gender, revenge, and victimization in Titus Andronicus.

In the following essay, Cutts argues that the theme of false shadows mistaken for real substance provides aesthetic and structural unity in Titus Andronicus.

In the following excerpt, West considers the discrepancy between violent action and lyrical language in Titus Andronicus as a means of conveying the characters' dependence on literary precedents and the limitations of literature as a source of moral and ethical guidance.

In the following excerpt, Brucher suggests that much of the violence in Titus Andronicus is darkly comical in nature and serves to expose unpleasant truths about human nature and the limits of social codes of conduct.

In the following excerpt, Tricomi remarks on the close relationship between metaphor and action in the play and suggests that Titus Andronicus represents an experiment in unifying poetic language and dramatic action.

In the following excerpt, Hulse suggests that in Titus Andronicus Shakespeare dramatizes the inability of rhetoric to communicate passionate emotion, which can find adequate expression only in a "language of action."

In the following interview, De Luca and Lindroth record Julie Taymor's thoughts on her film adaptation of Titus Andronicus, including her awareness of significant differences between Titus and stage representations of the drama, and her feelings about the role of violence in the film.

In the following excerpt, Waith examines the use of ceremonial gestures in Titus Andronicus to dramatize conflicts between opposing sets of values and to present differing perspectives on the actions of the characters.

In the essay that follows, Reese maintains that the violence in Titus Andronicus is subdued through various techniques, such as the use of characters resembling classical “types,” ironic repetition of themes and motifs, and the stylization of physically violent acts.

In the following essay, Carducci focuses on the language of Titus Andronicus, and maintains that the play demonstrates "the failure of the Roman masculine ideal. "

In the following essay, Giddens traces Old Testament biblical allusions in Titus Andronicus and draws parallels between the numerous primitive, ritualistic episodes in Shakespeare's drama and the mythic ritual paradigms of Genesis.

In the essay below, originally published in 1981, Marienstras demonstrates the way in which Titus Andronicus uses the violence that occurs in the name of hunting and sacrifice to explore the dichotomy between “civilized” Rome and the “wildness” of nature.

In the following excerpt, Broude relates Shakespeare's depiction of Romans and Goths in Titus Andronicus to Elizabethan perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of the two cultures. The alliance of Romans and Goths that restores order to Rome, he suggests, represents a providential joining of the virtues of both cultures.

In the following essay, Johnson evaluates the ambivalent attitude toward classical Rome presented in Titus Andronicus, and considers affinities between the drama and Shakespeare's later Roman plays.

In the following excerpt, Barkan probes the influence of Ovid's Metamorphoses on Titus Andronicus.

In the following review of Titus, Nochimson highlights the cinematic innovations of director Julie Taymor's anachronistic adaptation of Titus Andronicus, and praises the individual performances of Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange, and Harry Lennix in the film.

In the following excepted review of James Edmondson's 2002 Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of Titus Andronicus, Berlin notes that Edmondson severely blunted the comic potentially of the drama in favor of monstrous horror and brutal retribution.

In the following review of Bill Alexander's 2003 Royal Shakespeare Company staging of Titus Andronicus, Duncan-Jones finds the production lacking in plausibility, pacing, lyricism, and interpretive coherence.

In the following review of Julie Taymor's 2000 film adaptation of Titus Andronicus, Welsh and Tibbets encapsulate the plot of Shakespeare's “cruelest and crudest” play, praise the film's outstanding cast, and find Taymor's interpretation perhaps too effective in conveying the grotesque excesses of the original drama.

In the following review, Marks admires director Terrence O'Brien's 1999 production of Titus Andronicus at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival for its innovative, stylized depiction of the play's shocking violence.