Titus Andronicus (1591-1592)

Titus Andronicus is perhaps best known for its extreme violence. It features at least five stabbings, two throat slittings, and one hand amputation—and this is only the violence that happens onstage. It does not include the rape and mutilation of Lavinia. The play was probably written in collaboration with George Peele, who is thought to be responsible mainly for the first act. It was undoubtedly influenced by theatrical fashion and may have recalled Peele’s The Battle of Alcazar (c.1591), in which severed heads appear in a banquet, or the hand-chopping scene in Selimus (c.1592), by Robert Greene and Thomas Lodge. The play’s violence has been called gratuitous—to the extent that critics used to deny that Shakespeare could have written it. However, violence has deeper political and cultural meanings.