Titus Andronicus, hell and the elements

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the co-authored revenge tragedy Titus Andronicus (pub. 1594) as a subtly constructed space (as we read it on the page) that emphasizes its hellish torments and moral message through an oblique use of a graduated elemental scheme within it. The four elements are loosely clustered according to the act divisions of the play established in the First Folio. The play incorporates the elements according to a Virgilian–Aristotelian scheme, progressing naturally from earth to fire, and so demonstrates an intertwined dual framework of renaissance natural philosophy and religion reminiscent of classical and medieval purgatorial and hellish concepts. The elements thereby form a running and varying structural conceit that reinforces the “hellish” experience that an audience (or reader) might expect from a revenge tragedy, including George Peele’s Battle of Alcazar. When understood in this way, we see how the elemental scheme undergirding the play provides a structural moral and intellectual coherence relevant to all of us. The individual characters undergo horrendous torments and remarkable changes; they are, in a sense, writhing souls in communal suffering bound by the cosmic borders of the stage, which was commonly understood conceptually as a microcosm. The underlying elemental scheme reinforces the concept of the play as a virtual or parodic hell and/or purgatory: a play that begins amid earthly desires and burials ends with the destructive bonfires of the living hell that the characters thrust (and bake) themselves into.