“Titus Andronicus” or the Dramatization of Wildness

Abstract

There is a tradition of regarding Shakespeare’s talent and work in terms of the opposition between the wild and the cultivated. In the Preface to his edition of Shakespeare’s plays, S. Johnson evokes the platitudinous metaphor likening the Bard’s ouvre to a wild forest where the flora of poetry grows unrestrainedly: the composition o f Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend their branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diversity. Milton’s couplet from L ’Allegro (11. 133-4), with the metaphor of the unpremeditated Muse-nightingale, gives a finishing touch to the image: “sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child, / Warble[s] his native wood-notes wild”. However, as there is more than one meaning to the word “wild,” there is also another side of Shakespeare’s wildness, a more virulent and derogatory one for a change. Titus Andronicus is the play that has long passed for a wild affair in any meaning the word can carry.