‘Have we done aught amiss?’: Transgression, Indirection and Audience Reception in Titus Andronicus

Abstract

Storytelling is a form of life as old as language. Our stories describe, express and reflect or, if you prefer, construct, shape and inform our lives. Stories, in other words, perform various functions in our culture; curiously, however, they withhold explanations of themselves — unlike statements or accounts, they are not mere vehicles for the communication of information; they are non-pragmatic.¹ When it comes to Shakespeare’s oeuvre, Titus Andronicus is a particularly fascinating play that has long divided its readers on how to interpret its disturbing series of ‘murders, rapes and massacres, / Acts of black night, abominable deeds, / Complots of mischief, treasons, [and] villainies’ (5.1.63-5),² for it does not directly say or teach anything about such transgressions. Moreover, to identify transgression, variously practised, as a, or even the key theme or pattern of the play text does not explain it completely or close down its wider and deeper range of meaning; so we can say, for instance, that Titus is about revenge, and thereby say something true or useful, but be nowhere near to exhausting the meaning of the play, no closer to its putative definitive explanation. Rather, Titus remains perennially open to deep re-reading and performative iterability, generated by the diverse and various impressions it makes on its readers, including directors, actors and audiences.³ In this essay, two principal questions will be tackled: what does it mean to stage a transgressive act; and what, for its day, is the most trans-gressive act or moment in Titus?