Avenge seeks Revenge: Madness, an offspring

Abstract

Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus follows the Senecan model of revenge tragedy. The revenge motif becomes the driving element of the play. Victorious Titus has forfeited his twenty-one sons vanquishing the Rome’s enemies. At the beginning of the play, Titus has conquered Goths and brought Tamora, the queen of Goths, her three sons and Aaron the Moor as captives. As an act of avenge, for dead Titus’ sons, the first-born son of Tamora is killed for sacrifice. This stirs the revenge motive in Tamora, who in turn kindles the libido of her sons Chiron and Demetrius and ultimately Lavinia becomes the victim. Lavinia’s hands and tongue had been ripped off to conceal the identity of the person who had done her the deed. When the truth is revealed, the enraged father takes revenge over Tamora’s sons. Things would not have been of much interest if Shakespeare had made Titus to kill Tamora’s sons by normal means- strangle or hang or stab to death. Titus goes beyond those means. He acts insane. His sign of madness is revealed when he slits the throat of the rapists, grinds their bones to dust, makes a paste of it with their blood and bakes it into a pie and serves it to their mother Tamora at the banquet. The mental aberration of Titus may have resulted to such a cruelty. And this paper tries to justify madness as an offspring of revenge motifs.