Tarquin's Everlasting Banishment: Republicanism and Constitutionalism in The Rape of Lucrece and Titus Andronicus

Tarquin's Everlasting Banishment: Republicanism and Constitutionalism in The Rape ofLucrece and Titus Andronicus Andrew Hadfield It has become something of a cliche that Shakespeare was a conservative writer, keen to support the forces of law and order against what he saw as the flood tide of anarchy sparked off by riot and rebellion. Numerous passages from Shakespeare's works have been cited to support this view of his political leanings, none more frequently than Ulysses' speech on 'degree' in Troilus and Cressida, 1,3. It is arguable that Shakespeare was reasonably satisfied with the status quo under James I, but there is substantial evidence to suggest that, like many other writers in the 1590s, he was hostile to the regime of the ageing queen, and, like his patron, dabbled with republican ideas. SeeE. M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 197 rpt. of 1943), pp. 17-9, passim; Robin Headlam Wells, Shakespeare, Politics and the St (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986), pp. 34-6. See also Margot Heinemann, 'How Brechtread Shakespeare', in Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield, eds, Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism (Manchester : Manchester University Press, 1985), p 226-54, at pp. 226-7. M y thanks to the anonymous readers for Parergon who made 2 numerous helpful suggestions as to how the article might be improved. On the political climate in the 1590s, see John Guy, ed., The Reign ofElizabeth I: Cour and Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), introduction, pp. 6-7; Paul E. J. Hammer, The Polarisation ofElizabethan Politics: Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585-1597 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 78 Andrew Hadfield In this essay I want to make the case that Shakespeare's treatment of R o m a n material in his early work shows distinct evidence ofrepublican leanings. Taken together, The Rape ofLucrece and Titus Andronicus argue forcefully that hereditary monarchy may be an undesirable form of government. Both represent tyrants w h o are conspicuously less virtuous and competent as rulers than other prominent R o m a n citizens, implying that England might also suffer from equally bad rule. Both works are also quite clear that alternative forms of government, which would either involve dispensing with or curbing the power of the head of state, are possible and desirable for R o m e . While Lucrece alludes to the ways of reading a well-known and frequently represented story that was a central motif in European culture, Titus, a play with no antecedents or direct sources, provides a much more sustained and detailed analysis ofpolitical institutions and problems. Therefore m y discussion concentrates far more on the latter than the former work. I In the summer of 1592 a riot in Southwark began after the parties involved had 4 'assembled themselves by occasion & pretence of their meeting at a play'. The Privy Council subsequently shut down the theatres. Although they re-opened at the end of December, they were closed again at the end of January because of an outbreak of the plague and fear of its spread. They remained closed for nearly a year, re-opening after Christmas in 1593. Shakespeare's career as a dramatist in London was halted almost as soon as it had begun with - possibly - only three co-written plays having been performed, Henry VI, Parts 1-3. Shakespeare evidently turned to writing poetry as one means of supplementing his lost income and produced two works based on R o m a n subjects, Venus and Adonis (published This article is part of a larger examination of Shakespeare's politics. I pla the history plays written in the 1590s are also sceptical of the legitimacy and usefulness 4 ofhereditary monarchy and adopt an implicitly republican position. Cited in E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols. (Oxford, Oxford University Pr 1923), TV, p. 310. 6 Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, TV, p. 313. For arguments that Shakespeare's dramatic career may have begun earlier than is often assumed, see E. A. J. Honigmann, Shakespeare: The 'Lost Years' (Manchester: Manch University Press, 2nd ed, 1998); Katherine Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare: Scen From his Life (London: Arden...