SOURCE: Green, Douglas E. “Interpreting ‘her martyr'd signs’: Gender and Tragedy in Titus Andronicus.” Shakespeare Quarterly 40, no. 3 (fall 1989): 317-26.

In the following essay, Green suggests that the female characters in Titus Andronicus are reflections of the protagonist and that his revenge mirrors theirs, even as it obscures their suffering and distress. Green maintains that both Tamora and Lavinia represent a threat to patriarchal power: Tamora, because the murder of her son gives her just cause to seek retribution; and Lavinia, because if she could speak she would tell of her domination by male authority, in the persons of her kinsmen as well as her rapists.

Today we are questioning the cultural definitions of sexual identity we have inherited. I believe Shakespeare questioned them too, that he was critically aware of the masculine fantasies and fears that shaped his world, and of how they falsified both men and women...