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Titus Andronicus and 'The Shearmen and Taylors' Play'
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
Titus andronicus has long been recognized as a play wherein Shakespeare, as novice playwright, manipulated numerous plots and stage devices into an integrated whole. In an eighteenth-century chapbook, for instance, both R. M. Sargeant and J. C. Maxwell see the possible source of the main story in the prose rendition ‘The History of Titus Andronicus.’ From Kyd, Shakespeare borrowed the revenge play feigned madness of Hieronimo, the Senecan gore, the passive-to-active protagonist. From the morality plays, he borrowed the figures of Revenge, Rapine, and Murder. From Seneca's Thyestes, he borrowed the revenge of Atreus and the mad banquet; from Ovid's Metamorphoses, the rape of Philomela; from Bandello's Novella, the cruel Moor; from North's Plutarch, the revolt of Coriolanus; from the Appius and Virginia story, the sacrifice of the dishonored daughter; from Seneca's Troades, the sacrifice of the innocent captive to the honor of the dead warriors.
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- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1969
References
1 Sargeant, Ralph M., ‘The Source of Titus Andronicus,’ SP, XLVI (1949), 171 Google Scholar; Maxwell, J. C., ‘Introduction’ to Titus Andronicus (Cambridge, 1953), xxvi.Google Scholar For the text of ‘The History of Titus Andronicus’ see Bullough, Geoffry, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, VI (New York, 1966), 34–44.Google Scholar
2 Talbert, Ernest William, Elizabethan Drama and Shakespeare's Early Plays (Chapel Hill, 1963), pp. 132–142.Google Scholar
3 Kittredge, George Lyman, ed., The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Boston, 1936), p. 972 Google Scholar. For a scene by scene tabulation of probable sources of Titus, see Law, Robert Adger, ‘The Roman Background of Titus Andronicus,’ SP, XL (1943), 152–153.Google Scholar
4 Of the Coventry cycle, two plays, The Weavers’ Play and The Shearmen and Taylors’ Play, are extant. The latter includes a prologue by Isaiah, the Annunciation to Mary, the Doubt of Joseph, the Journey to Bethlehem, the Nativity, the Visit of the Shepherds, a dialogue between two prophets, the Visit of the Magi, a Herod, and the Slaughter of the Innocents. Chief Pre-Shakespearian Dramas, ed. Joseph Quincey Adams (Cambridge, 1924), p. 158.
5 All references to the text of Titus Andronicus are based on Titus Andronicus, ed. J. C. Maxwell. References to the Shearmen and Taylors’ Play are based on the text of Chief Pre- Shakespearian Dramas.
6 In the ancient versions of the ‘Slaughter of the Innocents,’ the Freisung text shows one of Herod's soldiers urging him to order the murder of the male children; in the Norman play, Herod is aroused to the order by the insistence of soldiers and his son. Karl Young. The Drama of the Medieval Church, II (Oxford, 1933), 102-103. In both the Ludus Coventriae and the Chester cycles, Herod conceives his own mad plan; in the York and Townley cycles, however, Herod is persuaded to the deed by his counselors.
7 Talbert, p. 134.
8 Bullough, p. 26.
9 Construction in Shakespeare (Ann Arbor, 1951), p. 39.
10 For a summary of the prose history, see Sargeant, p. 174.
11 Maxwell, p. xxvi, and Bullough, p. 6.
12 Bullough, p. 35.
13 The Medieval Stage, II (London, 1903), 358-362.
14 Craig, Hardin, English Religious Drama of the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1955), p. 361.Google Scholar
15 P. 362.
16 Chambers, II, 361-362.
17 Adams, p. 158.
18 For a review of the dating question, see Maxwell, pp. xxiv-xxix.
19 Lines from A Knack to Know a Knave are based on the text of the Malone Society Reprints (Oxford, 1964). See also Bennett, P. E., ‘An Apparent Allusion to Titus Andronicus,’ N&Q, cc (1955), 422–424.Google Scholar
20 For a review of the authorship controversy, see Price, H. T., ‘The Authorship of “Titus Andronicus,” ‘ JEGP, XLII (1943), 55–81.Google Scholar
21 Ibid., p. 58.