page_title: Themes in Titus Andronicus
section_title: Civilisation vs. Barbarism
hierarchical_section_title: Themes in Titus Andronicus / Civilisation vs. Barbarism
caption_attribution_description: English: Illustration of Act 3, Scene 1 from Titus Andronicus
context_page_description: Although traditionally Titus Andronicus has been seen as one of Shakespeare's least respected plays, its fortunes have changed somewhat in the latter half of the twentieth century, with numerous scholars arguing that the play is more accomplished than has hitherto been allowed for. In particular, scholars have argued that the play is far more thematically complex than has traditionally been thought, and features profound insights into ancient Rome, Elizabethan society, and the human condition. Such scholars tend to argue that these previously unacknowledged insights have only become apparent during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as only now has the ultraviolent content of the play achieved a sense of relevance. For example, in his 1987 edition of the play for the Contemporary Shakespeare series, A.L. Rowse writes; "in the civilised Victorian age the play could not be performed because it could not be believed. Such is the horror of our own age, with the appalling barbarities of prison camps and resistance movements paralleling the torture and mutilation and feeding on human flesh of the play, that it has ceased to be improbable."
context_section_description: Another theme mentioned numerous times throughout the play is the conflict between civilisation and barbarism. For many of the characters, Rome is the epitome of a civilised society, with everything outside Rome seen as barbarous. This concept is introduced when Marcus intervenes in the debate between Bassianus and Saturninus, which is threatening to boil over into violence;
  Let us entreat, by honour of [Titus'] name
  
  Whom worthily you would have now succeed,
  
  And in the Capitol and senate's right,
  
  Whom you pretend to honour and adore,
  
  That you withdraw you and abate your strength,
  
  Dismiss your followers, and, as suitors should,
  
  Plead your deserts in peace and humbleness.
  1.1.39-45
  Marcus feels that, as a civilised country, this is how Rome should act. He is also the great champion of civility when pleading with Titus to let Mutius be buried in the family tomb;
  Suffer thy brother Marcus to inter
  
  His noble nephew here in virtue's nest,
  
  That died in honour and Lavinia's cause.
  
  Thou art a Roman; be not barbarous:
  
  The Greeks upon advise did bury Ajax,
  
  That slew himself; and wise Laertes' son
  
  Did graciously plead for his funerals;
  
  Let not young Mutius then that was thy joy,
  
  Be barred his entrance here.
  1.1.377-384
  However, not all of the characters agree with the simple equation that Rome is civilised and everything else barbaric. When Titus refuses to spare the life of Alarbus, for example;
  TAMORA
  
  O cruel, irreligious piety!
  CHIRON
  
  Was never Scythia half so barbarous.
  DEMETRIUS
  
  Oppose not Scythia to ambitious Rome.
  1.1.130-132
  Aaron too sees Roman civility as laughable, but in a different way to Chiron and Demetrius; "I urge thy oath; for that I know/An idiot holds his bauble for a god,/And keeps the oath which by that god he swears." (5.1.78–80). Here, Aaron sees civilisation as nothing more than something foolish, peopled by idiots who keep their word. He returns to this theme in his final speech, glorying in his embracement of barbarism;
  Ah, why should wrath be mute, and fury dumb?
  
  I am no baby, I, that with base prayers
  
  I should repent the evils I have done;
  
  Ten thousand worse, than ever yet I did
  
  Would I perform, if I might have my will.
  
  If one good deed in all my life I did,
  
  I do repent it from my very soul.
  5.3.183-189
  However, the play itself is ambiguous in its depiction of civilised characters and barbaric ones. For example, it ends with the apparently civilised Romans joining forces with the apparently barbarous Goths. However, according to both Jonathan Bate and Jacques Berthoud, the Goths at the end of the play are not the same Goths who had been led by Tamora. Bate believes the play "begins with a Roman stigmatisation of the Goths as barbarians, but modulates towards a very different view. If the Second Goth is a barbarian, what is he doing gazing "upon a ruinous monastery"? For the Elizabethans, history had lessons to teach the present, so this anachronism is purposeful." Bate devises a thesis which suggests that the Goths who appear earlier in the play are 'evil' and those who follow Lucius are 'good'. Bate also argues that "at one level, the Goths at the end of the play are invading Rome because they wish to take revenge on their Queen Tamora for selling out and marrying Saturninus. But at the same time, they and Lucius share a language of faithful friendship, worthiness, honour and valour. They serve as a rebuke to the decadence into which Rome has fallen. This is of a piece with the play's persistent dissolution of the binary opposition which associates Rome and the city with virtue, the Goths and the woods with barbarism."
  Jacques Berthoud argues that the Goths at the end of the play are Germanic whereas Tamora is not a Germanic name, but is instead Asiatic, thus the Goths at the end of the play (the Germanic Goths) are not the Goths ruled over by Tamora (the barbaric Goths).  Speaking of Tamora's Goths, Berthoud argues "what these Goths have revealed about themselves is not that they are possessed by Satanic powers, but that they are, as it were, socially moronic. The Romans are Roma
caption: As Lucius tells Titus the tribunes are no longer listening to him, Titus begins to realise that the line between civilisation and barbarism is narrower than he thought; Jean-Michel Moreau illustration, engraved by N. le Mire (1785)
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