Allusion and Sacrifice in Titus Andronicus

This essay defends Shakespeare’s character Titus Andronicus against recent criticism by arguing that the calamitous events in Titus Andronicus are not caused by Titus behaving badly but by the construction of the play around a textual tradition that offers only sacrifice as an alternative to war. By demonstrating how Titus’s actions might be read plausibly as the best possible reactions to an already bad situation, I argue that the greatest force of violence in the play is misreading and that the play’s ultimate question is how a peaceful future can grow out of a bloody past.