SOURCE: Introduction to Titus Andronicus, by William Shakespeare, edited by Alan Hughes, Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 1-47.

In the excerpt below, Hughes surveys the various critical controversies surrounding Titus Andronicus, including the debates over the date of composition, sources, and authorship. Hughes also reviews the issues of greatest concern among twentieth-century critics, noting that the violence in the play receives a considerable amount of attention from modern scholars.

Date

The earliest reliable reference to Titus Andronicus comes from the Diary of the Elizabethan entrepreneur Philip Henslowe, proprietor of the Rose playhouse on Bankside. The Diary is really an account-book which records the share of the players' receipts which was the ‘rent’ Henslowe charged companies performing in his playhouses.¹ According to the Diary, the Earl of Sussex's Men played a season from 26 December 1593 to 6 February 1594, probably at the Rose. On 23 January the play was ‘titus & ondronicus’; in the margin...