SOURCE: "Titus Andronicus: Models of Textuality and Authorship," in Cahiers Élisabéthains, No. 41, April, 1992, pp. 17-32.

In the following essay, Kerr studies the role of the feminine in Titus Andronicus as both author and text, and investigates the play 's symbolic representation of violation and the "quest for textual and patriarchal authority. "

Titus Andronicus, the much lamented neo-Senecan tragedy of the Shakespearean stage, is receiving again the attentions of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Deborah Warner's production has been to Paris where critics have linked the play, not surprisingly, to Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty and called it "a superb lesson in theatre".¹ There is the prospect of "a Channel 4 film".²Indeed, despite its equivocal canonical status, the play promises to trace a familiar pattern for the Shakespearean text in the twentieth century. Dispersed across a variety of textual forms (print, performance, sound recording, film), "Shakespeare" occupies a primary position...