Titus Andronicus (1926) Yale/Appendix B
APPENDIX B
The History of the Play
The earliest known mention of a work with the title of Titus Andronicus is contained in an entry in the Stationers' Register on February 6, 1593–4: 'John Danter. A booke entitled A noble Roman historye of Tytus Andronicus.' Philip Henslowe's Diary, under the dates of January 23 and 28, and February 6 of the same year, records a new play, 'titus & ondronicus,' as having been acted by 'the earle of susex his men.' Two later entries, made on June 5 and June 12, 1594, note the performance of a play called 'andronicous' by the Lord Admiral's and the Lord Chamberlain's men. Finally, in this same year, there was printed at London a quarto edition[1] of the play now known as Titus Andronicus, bearing the following title-page: '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 Servants. . . . London, Printed by Iohn Danter . . . 1594.'
A second quarto, based on the 1594 edition, was published in 1600, and contains only slight changes in the text. One passage of six lines is omitted from the first scene of the 1600 edition, and another of five lines is omitted from the last scene of the play (cf. notes on I. i. 85 and V. iii. 165), while the last four lines of the 1600 edition are not found in the First Quarto. On the title-page of the Second Quarto the name of the Lord Chamberlain's company is added to those of the three companies mentioned on the title-page of the First Quarto.
A third quarto, of which the 1600 edition was the original, was printed in 1611. Fourteen copies of the Third Quarto are known, one of which is in the Elizabethan Club at Yale.
The text of the First Folio of 1623 was printed from the Third Quarto with MS. additions, and contains one scene (III. ii.) which does not appear in any of the Quartos.
The history of Titus and Aaron on the stage falls into two general divisions: the period of about a quarter of a century after its composition until the death of Shakespeare, and the three centuries since that time. During the first three decades of its existence, Titus was one of the most popular of all the plays attributed to Shakespeare; for the last three hundred years it has had almost the scantiest stage-history of them all. The First Quarto bears the motto, Aut nunc aut nunquam, and never was a more appropriate motto affixed to a play. There was only one period in the history of the English stage when Titus Andronicus ever could have been popular, and popular it was then beyond all precedent.
The title-page of the Third Quarto assures us that the tragedy had 'sundry times beene plaide by the Kings Majesties Servants,' and from the other title-pages and Henslowe's Diary we learn that three different companies continued to play it, two of which changed their names at two different periods of their career; but under whatever name or sovereign, they continued to play Titus. The play is entered in Henslowe's Diary no less than fifteen times, if we may assume that all the Titus and Andronicus plays which he records are identical. Numerous other contemporary allusions also attest its popularity. The events with which the first act of Titus concerns itself were familiar enough to furnish a simile for the author of the play, A Merry Knack to Know a Knave, which was published anonymously in 1594:
'Osrick. My gracious lord, as welcome shall you be,
To me, my daughter, and my son-in-law,
As Titus was unto the Roman senators,
When he had made a conquest on the Goths;
That, in requital of his service done,
Did offer him the imperial diadem.
As they in Titus, we in your grace, still find
The perfect figure of a princely mind.' [2]
In 1614, twenty years after the First Quarto, Ben Jonson takes occasion in the Induction to his Bartholomew Fair to censure those (of whom there were presumably a goodly number) who still 'swear that Jeronimo or Andronicus are the best plays yet.' Whether Jonson is referring to our Titus Andronicus or not, the vogue of Titus would thus seem to have passed by this time with men of Jonson's tastes, but the contemptuous tone of his statement testifies that there were those to whom such blood-and-thunder plays still appealed. The Shakspere Allusion-Book records other references to the play from time to time. At the middle of the century strands of its gory locks were still in evidence. In 1648 an anonymous writer, J. S., issued a compilation of 'wise and learned sentences and phrases' from favorite authors under the title, Wit's Labyrinth. Of the half-dozen or more Shakespearean plays from which the compiler culled his phrases, only Titus Andronicus is honored by having as many as three sentences quoted.
As the century wore on, however, the performances of Titus grew fewer and fewer. In 1678, 'about the time of the Popish-plot,' says Gerard Langbaine, the play was 'revived' and refurbished to suit the tastes and exigencies of the stage, and produced by Edward Ravenscroft. This revised version of the tragedy was published in 1687 with the following title: Titus Andronicus or the Rape of Lavinia. Acted at the Theatre Royall, A Tragedy Alter'd from Mr. Shakespear's Works. In his introduction, Ravenscroft speaks of the success which had matched the labor of revising the play, a process which left Titus with 'the language not only refin'd, but many scenes entirely new: besides most of the principal characters heighten'd and the plot much encreas'd.' It is instructive to see in what manner the characters were 'heightened.' As if the original play were not horrible enough, Ravenscroft adds infanticide to Tamora's crimes, and has Aaron offer to eat his dead child's body. The Moor is tortured and finally burned to death on the stage.
Ravenscroft's revision was still the accepted version at the close of the century, according to the list of Shakespeare's plays given by Charles Gildon in 1698 in his continuation of Langbaine's work, previously mentioned. After the turn of the century we first hear definitely of a performance of Titus in 1717. There were at least three performances, on August 13, 20, and 23, of that year, at Drury Lane. The advertisement in the Daily Courant of the 20th states that the play had been given 'but twice these fifteen years.' The most interesting fact recorded in the notice is that the part of Aaron was taken by the celebrated James Quin, who repeated the performance again in 1720 and 1721, at Lincoln's Inn Fields. The version of Ravenscroft still obtained, the play being announced in all cases as 'Titus Andronicus with the Rape of Lavinia, alter'd from Shakspeare.'
A century and a quarter elapsed before Titus and Aaron again walked the boards. Another much-altered version of the text was used, prepared for the occasion by C. A. Somerset, the author of Shakespeare's Early Days, a popular work of the time. The play was performed at the Britannia Theatre in London, the opening performance taking place on March 15, 1852. In this new version, the tragedy was given intermittently for some five years, with performances both in London and Dublin. The rôle of Aaron was taken by the famous negro tragedian, Ira Aldridge, 'the African Roscius.' Into the version employed by Aldridge there was incorporated a scene from a play called Zaraffa, the Slave King, which had been written especially for Aldridge.
It is significant with regard to the tastes of the audiences of the times that both in 1717 and in 1852 the producers of Titus felt it necessary to follow the performance of the tragedy with a farce. In 1717, 'by the desire of some Persons of Quality,' so the stage-bill informs us, Farquhar's one-act farce, The Stage-Coach, was added. In 1852 Aldridge offered a farce entitled 'Mummy' and some negro songs which he had brought from his native Maryland.
After 1857 it was sixty-six years before any producer had the desire or the hardihood to present the lamentable Roman tragedy. Under the management of Miss Lilian Baylis, the entire cycle of Shakespeare's plays was given between 1914 and 1924 at the Old Vic Theatre on the Surrey side of the Thames, an achievement which had not been accomplished since the days of Shakespeare. Titus Andronicus was produced here by Mr. Robert Atkins on October 8, 1923, the thirty-fifth of the cycle of Shakespeare's thirty-seven plays. That Titus should have been included in the repertory is due, of course, not to any inherent virtues in the play itself, but to Miss Baylis's ambition to make the Shakespearean wheel, for once at least, come full circle. A large audience was drawn to the Old Vic through curiosity, and the comments of the spectators and the newspapers were at one in declaring the play impossibly bad. The Times mentioned among the qualities which make it tolerable at all the swiftness and firmness of the telling, and the extraordinary dexterity with which the plot moves from death to death. 'It could never have appealed to the cultured classes,' said the Morning Post, 'but had all the elements of popular success. . . . It is very repulsive, but workmanlike.' The text used was the original version of the First Folio, with one noteworthy and very effective emendation: a laughing-scene for Aaron was introduced in Act III just before his exit, after he has cut off Titus's hand. The Moor's satanic laughter is not specifically referred to in the text, but is justified by his remarks. (Cf. V. i. 111–113.) A very fine stage-setting by Hubert Hine was used in the production at the Old Vic.
Titus has been produced only once in America. It was performed by the Yale Chapter of the Fraternity of Alpha Delta Phi, in New Haven, on April 14 and 15, 1924, under the direction of Mr. E. M. Woolley and Professor J. M. Berdan. The production was the annual performance of a series of Elizabethan plays, given in the Elizabethan manner, with the original text.
The Prinzregententheater in Munich was the scene of the latest performance of Titus, on October 15, 1924. The German version used was the translation of Nicolaus Delius, and very elaborate scenery by Eugen Keller was employed.
Titus Andronicus is the only play of the Shakespearean canon that has not been performed at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford.
- ↑ The 1594 Quarto of Titus was recorded by Gerard Langbaine in 1691 in the list of Shakespeare's plays in his Account of the English Dramatick Poets, but no copy of the edition seems to have been known during the next two hundred years, and Langbaine's testimony was generally discredited. At last, in 1904, a copy was discovered in Lund, Sweden, vindicating Langbaine, and settling various disputes.
- ↑ Dodsley's Old English Plays, ed. Hazlitt, 1874, 6. 572.