SOURCE: “Getting It All Right: Titus Andronicus and Roman History,” in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 45, No. 3, Fall, 1994, pp. 263-78.

In the following essay, Liebler maintains that while much of Titus Andronicus is fictitious and without identifiable sources, Shakespeare's portrayal of Rome was influenced by Herodian's History.

Some thirty-five years ago, Terence Spencer proposed the context in which an Elizabethan audience would have received Titus Andronicus. Although he did not positively claim it as a source for the play, he referred in some detail to Antonio de Guevara's Decada, translated in 1577 by Edward Hellowes as A Chronicle, conteyning the liues of tenne Emperours of Rome and dedicated to Queen Elizabeth. Spencer noted that among the “lives,” an Elizabethan reader would have found

[A] blood-curdling life of a certain Emperor Bassianus, … one of almost unparalleled cruelty. … I will not say that it is a positive relief to pass from the life...