SOURCE: Hiles, Jane. “A Margin for Error: Rhetorical Context in Titus Andronicus.” Style 21, no. 1 (spring 1987): 62-75.

In the following essay, Hiles centers on the rhetoric of Titus Andronicus and its relation to the play's theme of revenge.

Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus is a work whose plot turns on a series of rhetorical failures. The play abounds in rhetorical confrontations that dramatize the violent struggles for power occurring offstage, and Shakespeare's characters repeatedly fail to rise to these occasions. Tamora's plea for Alarbus's life, Lavinia's plea for mercy, and Titus's plea for the lives of his sons all fall wide of the mark. Consistently, these failures of language occur because characters mistake the context in which they are speaking, and it is axiomatic that discourse depends upon context.¹ Aristotle and Cicero expounded at length the means by which the particulars of an address could and should be matched to the...