r-touches to one or two of the principal
characters," and nothing more. But unfortunately not only the
phraseology and the meter, but the more important external evidences
point to Shakespeare, and, however we might wish it, we cannot find
grounds to dismiss the theory that Shakespeare was at least responsible
for the rewriting of an older play.

No play better deserves the type name of 'tragedy of blood.' The
crimes which disfigure its scenes seem to us unnecessarily wanton.
Briefly, the struggle is between Titus, conqueror of the Goths, and
Tamora, their captive queen, who marries the Roman emperor, and who
would revenge Titus's sacrifice of her son to the shades of his own
slain sons. From the first five minutes, during which a noble Goth is
hacked to pieces--off stage, mercifully--to the last minute of carnage,
when the entire company go hands all round in murder, fifteen persons
are slain, and other crimes no less horrible perpetrated. Every one at
some time gets his revenge; and the play is entirely made up of
plotting, killing, gloating, and counterplotting. The inhumanly brutal
Aaron, the blackamoor lover of Tamora, is arch villain in all this; but
the ungovernable passions of Titus render him scarcely more attractive.

The pity of it is that the young Shakespeare apparently wasted upon
this slaughtering much genuine {142} poetic art, and no little
elaboration of plot. But he was writing what the public of that day
enjoyed. Developed by such real artists as Kyd, the tragedy of blood,
like the modern "thriller," had about 1590 an enormous success. It is
well for us to remember, too, that out of one of these tragedies of
revenge and blood sprang the great tragedy of _Hamlet_.

+Date+.--The most recent authorities put the play as written not long
before the publication of the First Quarto, 1594. The Stationers'
Register records it on February 6, 1593-4. Second and Third Quartos
followed in 1600 and 1611. None of these ascribe the play to
Shakespeare. It is, however, included in the First Folio.

+Authorship and Source+.--Richard Henslowe, the manager, recorded in
his Diary, April 11, 1591, the performance of a new play _Tittus and
Vespacia_. In a German version, _Tito Andronico_, printed in a
collection of 1620, Lucius is called Vespasian; and thus we have a
slight ground for belief that the entry of Henslowe refers to an early
play about our Titus. A Dutch version, _Aran en Titus_, appeared in