SOURCE: “The Formalization of Horror in Titus Andronicus,” in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 1, Winter, 1970, pp. 77-84.

In the essay that follows, Reese maintains that the violence in Titus Andronicus is subdued through various techniques, such as the use of characters resembling classical “types,” ironic repetition of themes and motifs, and the stylization of physically violent acts.

Although Titus Andronicus was a splendid success in its own day,¹ it has been almost universally castigated since. As early as 1687, Ravenscroft called it “a heap of rubbish”;² Coleridge suggested that it was “obviously intended to excite vulgar audiences by its scenes of blood and horror”;³ and, in this century, Dover Wilson has said that it “seems to jolt and bump along like some broken down cart, laden with bleeding corpses from an Elizabethan scaffold, and driven by an executioner from Bedlam dressed in cap and bells.”⁴ Indeed, many critics, repelled by...