The “Maruelous” Play of Marcus’s Rhetorical Artifice in Titus Andronicus

Modern critics have long considered Shakespeare’s earliest tragedy Titus Andronicus as his worst by an immature playwright. Often lamented is Shakespeare’s curious style of treating the plot’s undue violence and gore with highly rhetorical formalism. One way to approach the heart of such practice is to view it in relation to the artistic possibilities Shakespeare and his fellow dramatists envisioned. Aided by our contemporary micro-historians’ analytical approach, a close reading of Act 2, Scene 4 - often cited as illustrating Shakespeare’s immaturity - is instructive of his self-conscious and self-regarding artifice. In it is the scene’s action enacted in a formalized lament while encapsulating this play’s tragic matters. It in turn allows Shakespeare to make his larger moral and aesthetic ascent. Importantly, this play presages his later achievements in tragedy.