TITUS ANDRONICUS.

TITUS ANDRONICUS.

As it is not only included in the folio of 1623, but mentioned as Shakespeare's by Meres in his Palladis Tamia, &c., 1598 (see the Memoir of Shakespeare), we are forbidden to assert-what internal evidence seems strongly to attest-that our author had no share in its composition.—“ On what principle the editors of the first complete edition of our poet's plays admitted this [Titus Andronicus] into their volume, cannot now be ascertained. The most probable reason that can be assigned, is, that he wrote a few lines in it, or gave some assist. ance to the author in revising it, or in some other way aided him in bringing it forward on the stage. The tradition mentioned by Ravenscroft in the time of King James II. warrants us in making one or other of these suppositions. 'I have been told' (says he in his Preface to an alteration of this play published in 1687) 'by some anciently conversant with the stage, that it was not originally his, but brought by a private author to be acted, and he only gave some master touches to one or two of the principal parts or characters.”” MALONE, Prelim. Remarks on Titus Andronicus.- "Titus Andronicus is now by common consent denied to be, in any sense, a production of Shakespeare; very few passages, I should think not one, resemble his manner.-Note. Notwithstanding this internal evidence, Meres, so early as 1598, enumerates Titus Andronicus among the plays of Shakespeare, and mentions no other but what is genuine. But, in criticism of all kinds, we must acquire a dogged habit of resisting testimony when res ipsa per se vociferatur to the contrary." HALLAM, Introd. to the Lit. of Europe, &c., vol. ii. p. 177, ed. 1843.-“ A. i, and the greater part, or rather the whole, of A. v., are the work of one writer, and that writer not Shakespeare. The Latinism both of the manner and the matter would be sufficient to prove this, did not the utter want of imagination in the author render all other arguments needless. The other three Actswith occasional exceptions, perhaps-bear the unmistakable stamp of another and more poetical mind; yet I feel all but certain that Shakespeare did not write a word of the play, except (possibly) one or two passages. To say nothing of the absence of his peculiar excellences, and the precipitous descent from Venus and Adonis and Tarquin and Lucrece to Titus Andronicus, I do not believe that he would have written on such a subject (and this, by the way, applies as well to the First Scene of Pericles, and the brothel scenes of A. iv.); still less that he could have revelled with such evident zest in details of outrage and unnatural cruelty. Perhaps the Last Scene of A. iv. was written by the author of Acts i. and v." WALKER, Crit. Exam. of the Text of Shakespeare, &c., vol. iii. p. 214.-Henslowe (Diary, p. 33, ed. Shakespeare Soc.) records that a play which had never been acted before, called "Titus and Ondronicus," was performed by the Earl of Sussex's men, Jan. 23d, 1593-4; and he also mentions (Diary, p. 35) that in June 1594, an Andronicous" was acted by the Lord Admiral's and the Lord Chamberlain's company.—It seems certain that an entry made by Danter in the Stationers' Registers Feb. 6th, 1593-4,

of "A booke entitled a noble Roman Historye of Tytus Andronicus" refers to the play attributed to Shakespeare; which, according to Langbaine (Account of Eng. Dram. Poets, p. 464), "was first printed 4° Lond. 1594," though at present no quarto earlier than that of 1600 is known to be extant.

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In a quarto volume just published (1865) by Mr. Albert Cohn, entitled Shakespeare in Germany in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, &c., is (both in German and English) the " Tragedy of Titus Andronicus, acted in · Germany, about the year 1600, by English Players, supposed to be an imitation of the old Titus Andronicus ;" and I now subjoin, without any remarks of my own, the greater portion of the account of it given by Mr. Cohn (from whom, by the by, I beg leave utterly to dissent when he declares that the Titus Andronicus attributed to Shakespeare "betrays numerous traces of his genius"). "In our German Lamentable Tragedy' we have the play, in all probability, in a form copied from the first design. But the coarse feeling, which was interested in the mere external action alone and not in the dramatic development, has prevailed in the treatment of this, as well as almost all the other pieces in the collection, for the principal object has evidently been to reduce the piece to the smallest possible compass. . . . . No notice has hitherto been taken of a circumstance in the German piece which enables us to fix with tolerable certainty the date of the English one. In the year 1591, a piece entitled 'Titus and Vespasian' was performed on the London stage. It must have been very popular, for from the 11th of April 1591 to the 15th of January 1593[-4] it is very frequently mentioned by Henslowe. In Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus' there is no Vespasian; no one therefore could ever imagine that the piece alluded to by Henslowe was the original form of the Shakesperian piece. . . . . But in our German Titus Andronicus' a Vespasian is one of the principal characters. It is a fictitious, and no historical personage. In the beginning of the piece he appears as the partizan of Titus Andronicus, for whom he claims the throne of Rome, but towards the end he is suddenly transformed into his son and avenger, who at the conclusion obtains the crown,-one of those instances of a confusion of characters to which we have already alluded, and which are strong evidence of the carelessness with which this German version of the piece was made. We may safely assume that this Vespasian, like all the other characters of the German piece, was taken from the original 'Titus Andronicus,' and thus we should have to acknowledge that 'Titus and Vespasian' as the original on which Shakespeare's play was founded. In his first mention of it, under the date of April 11, 1591, Henslowe designates it on the margin with ne, which, with him, always signifies a piece given for the first time. . . . On the 23rd of January 1593[-4], the piece is first mentioned under the name of 'Titus Andronicus,' and again with the addition ne; it is probably therefore the recast of the piece, as we have it in the folio of 1623." p. cxii.

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VOL VI

S

DRAMATIS PERSONE.

SATURNINUS, son to the late Emperor of Rome, and afterwards declared emperor.

BASSIANUS, brother to Saturninus; in love with Lavinia.

TITUS ANDRONICUS, a noble Roman, general against the Goths. MARCUS ANDRONICUS, tribune of the people, and brother to Titus. LUCIUS,

Senators, Tribunes, Officers, Soldiers, and Attendants.

SCENE-Rome and the country near it.