Titus Andronicus & Timon of Athens Read Online Free PDF Page A

and revised the later acts much more thoroughly than the first one. Francis Meres in 1598 and the 1623 Folio editors had no hesitation in attributing the play to Shakespeare.
    MAJOR PARTS: (
with percentage of lines/number of speeches/scenes on stage
) Titus Andronicus (28%/117/9), Aaron the Moor (14%/57/6), Marcus Andronicus (12%/63/9), Tamora (10%/49/5), Saturninus (8%/49/5), Lucius (7%/51/4), Demetrius (4%/39/7), Bassianus (3%/14/3), Lavinia (2%/15/3), Chiron (2%/30/6), Young Lucius (2%/11/4).
    LINGUISTIC MEDIUM: 98% verse, 2% prose.
    DATE: 1591/92, perhaps revised 1594? Performed at the Rose in January 1594 and marked by the theater manager as “ne,” possibly meaning “new.” Title page of first published edition, also 1594, seems to imply performance by three successive companies (see “Text,” below), suggesting staging before theaters were closed due to the plague for the second half of 1592 and nearly all of 1593. Perhaps the first two companies performed an old version by Peele and the 1594 performance and text were newly revised by Shakespeare.
    SOURCES: The story is not historical. An anonymous chapbook narrative, once thought to be the source, is almost certain to be a derivative text rather than a source, so it must be assumed either that there is a lost source or that the plot is freely invented, while drawing on a range of Roman materials, both historical and poetic—most notably the tragedies of Seneca and Ovid’s story of Progne’s revenge on the tyrant Tereus for the rape of her sister Philomel (
Metamorphoses
book 6, used as a prop and plot device in Act 4 Scene 1). There is also a strong influence from other tragedies of the period, notably Thomas Kyd’s
Spanish Tragedy
(c.1589, especially for the revenger as a self-consciously theatrical performer) and Christopher Marlowe’s
The Jew of Malta
(c.1591, for Aaron’s delight in his own villainy).
    TEXT: published in Quarto as
The Most Lamentable Romaine Tragedie of Titus Andronicus: As it was Plaide by the Right Honourable the Earle of Darbie, Earle of Pembrooke, and Earle of Sussex their Seruants
(1594, reprinted 1600 and 1611). A good-quality text, perhaps printed from Shakespeare’s manuscript, though with one or two signs of revision in the process of composition (some false starts and the possibility that the killing of both Alarbus and Mutius in the first act were late additions—could these be Shakespearean revisions to Peele’s original?). The Second Quarto, which included some good corrections, was printed from a damaged copy of the First Quarto, resulting in some changes to the wording of the final scene and the addition of four new lines at the very end of the play. The Folio text was printed from a copy of the Third Quarto, incorporating both corrections and errors from the Second and Third Quartos; it introduced many new errors of its own, because it was mostly typeset by “Compositor E,” the one genuinely incompetent agent in the creation of the First Folio. The principal value of the Folio text is that it introduces stage directions, presumably derived from the theatrical promptbook, and adds one complete new scene (Act 3 Scene 2, the fly-killing banquet). Most modern editions are based on the First Quarto, but with the banquet inserted from Folio. In accordance with our practice of beginning from Folio and avoiding the conflation of discrete texts, we depart from this tradition and edit the Folio text, though with frequent emendation in places where the text is erroneous, principally as a result of the shoddy work of “Compositor E.” Since they appear in the Folio, the Second Quarto’s extra four lines at the end are included, but they are marked with curly brackets to indicate that they are an addition that seems to derive from the printing shop rather than the playhouse.

TITUS ADRONICUS AND TIMON OF ATHENS

Act 3 [Scene 1]
    running scene 4
    Enter the Judges and Senators with Titus’ two sons
[
Martius and