SOURCE: Giddens, E. Eugene. “The Genesis of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus.” Literature and Theology: An International Journal of Religion, Theory and Culture 12, no. 4 (December 1998): 341-49.

In the following essay, Giddens traces Old Testament biblical allusions in Titus Andronicus and draws parallels between the numerous primitive, ritualistic episodes in Shakespeare's drama and the mythic ritual paradigms of Genesis.

From its first human sacrifice, Alarbus, to its last, Lavinia, Titus Andronicus's action is explicitly pagan. Non-Christian, over-determined rituals have subjected the play to centuries of critical denigration. Recently, however, less-condemnatory critical inquiry focuses on them.¹ Some critics even suggest specific origins for the rituals of Titus. William W. E. Slights puts forward René Girard's theory of sacrificial purification.² Also from an Girardian perspective, Stephen X. Mead sees in Titus ‘a crisis of community-binding ritual.’³ William H. Desmonde argues for a ritual origin in ‘the ancient Greek myths of Pelops and...