Props and Prostheses: Lavinia the “speechless complainer”

Abstract

This article examines Lavinia’s use of props and prostheses in William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, Act iv. The author argues that Lavinia’s mutilation and subsequent attempts to communicate embody the deindividuating effects of rhetorical imitation. In addition to investigating Shakespeare’s use of Ovidian references, this article investigates Shakespeare’s sources for the untranslated Latin word “stuprum”. A Roman legal term for sexual violation and disgrace, stuprum has no equivalent in English: the word collapses the semantic boundaries between rape, seduction, and adultery, as well as virgin and widow, male and female. This article thus examines how imitation, citation, and the untranslated Latin work together to depersonalize Lavinia’s expressive abilities, even as they represent her only outlets for communication.