SOURCE: Cutts, John P. “Shadow and Substance: Structural Unity in Titus Andronicus.” Comparative Drama 2, no. 3 (fall 1968): 161-72.

In the following essay, Cutts argues that the theme of false shadows mistaken for real substance provides aesthetic and structural unity in Titus Andronicus.

If in our discussion of Titus Andronicus we may put aside the vexed authorship question—and to do so is certainly fraught with great difficulties since even the champions of Shakespeare's authorship in the main are reluctant to dismiss in particular the shades of Peele—then there is, it seems to me, a dramatic pattern established which tends to belie the theories of co-authorship. As this pattern emerges, it will become evident that it is based on the renaissance topos which frequently finds representation in iconography: the mistaking of the shadow for the substance. This topos was frequently drawn upon by Shakespeare throughout his career.¹ I should...