SOURCE: "Going by the Book: Classical Allusions in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus," in Studies in Philology, Vol. LXXIX, No. 1, Winter, 1982, pp. 62-77.

In the following excerpt, West considers the discrepancy between violent action and lyrical language in Titus Andronicus as a means of conveying the characters' dependence on literary precedents and the limitations of literature as a source of moral and ethical guidance.

Although it has recently found some guarded approval, Titus Andronicus is still generally considered Shakespeare's worst play. There is a connection between the modern reader's dislike of the play and the presence of an exceptional number of classical allusions. Allusions make up a significant part of the play's highly rhetorical language, contributing to an overall tone which one scholar has aptly termed "cool and cultured" [M. C. Bradbrook, Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy, 1935] and another, just as aptly, "irrepressibly witty" [Albert H. Tricomi, Shakespeare Survey...