A morbid curiosity today – but what else can Titus Andronicus produce if you try to take it seriously. It would be mildly interesting to compare the rhetoric of revelation across all scenes of parents being fed their children. Off the top of my head I can only think of Procne feeding Itys to Tereus and Atreus feeding Thyestes his own sons but I think you could include Tantalus’ revelation to the gods about Pelops and Cadmus’ calling Agave to her senses about Pentheus’ head (with, in Euripides’ version, the chilling ‘whose head then are you holding in your arms?’ – τίνος πρόσωπον δῆτ᾽ ἐν ἀγκάλαις ἔχεις;). You’d have to make allowances for period of composition and poetry vs. drama but it could prove interesting to see how different authors handle so over-the-top a revelation without losing control of the atmosphere (as I think Shakespeare does below – where I can only picture Titus as giddy).
TITUS ANDRONICUS
Will’t please you eat? will’t please your
highness feed?
TAMORA
Why hast thou slain thine only daughter thus?
TITUS ANDRONICUS
Not I; ’twas Chiron and Demetrius:
They ravish’d her, and cut away her tongue;
And they, ’twas they, that did her all this wrong.
SATURNINUS
Go fetch them hither to us presently.
TITUS ANDRONICUS
Why, there they are both, baked in that pie;
Whereof their mother daintily hath fed,
Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred.
‘Tis true, ’tis true; witness my knife’s sharp point.
Kills TAMORA
Extracts 