Titus Andronicus is one of the bloodiest of Shakespare's tragedies, with many characters dying or being tortured both on stage and off. What stands out in the mist of all this violence, though, is that the imagery used in many of the lines echoes it. Characters often use metaphors referring to hands and tongues, and other body parts, which mirror the condition of the characters they are talking about. A particularly powerful example is the dialogue in Act II between Lavinia and her cousin Marcus Andronicus. By matching the extreme violence of what has happened to Lavinia with the metaphors people use to describe what has happened to her, Titus Andronicus rises above the sequence of violent killings and maimings it presents. Instead, the play is a compelling and shocking reflection on how language can desensitize us to violence, and lead us to commit physical atrocities of our own.
The main plot of Titus Andronicus is that of a struggle for power in Rome between the emperor, Saturnius, and his empress Tamora, originally a Goth, and the sons of a general named Titus Andronicus. Throughout the play, people are murdered and tortured, such as when Titus Andronicus makes Tamora's sons into food and serves them to their mother (V.ii.2520). One early example of the play's violence is what happens to Titus's daughter Lavinia, who is raped and mutilated by the general's enemies. In Act II, scene 4, the character enters with her attackers Demetrius and Chiron, who mock her.
Because Demetrius and Chiron have cut off Lavinia's hands and cut out her tongue, the language they use in this scene is full of references to hands and tongues. Demetrius, for example, says Lavinia should "go tell, an if thy tongue can speak / Who 'twas that cut thy tongue" (II.iv.1063-1064), while Chiron suggests that she "call for sweet water, wash thy hands" in order to be rid of the shame of what has happened to her (II.iv.1068). Of course, it is impossible for Lavinia to do any of these things, as her attackers are well aware. However, it is not just her attackers who refer to Lavinia's mutilation in this way. Indeed, it is constant throughout the remainder of the play, with Titus Andronicus himself describing the person who cut off her hands as an "accursed hand".
The constant references to what Lavinia has lost have the effect of mixing up reality and metaphor, making it so that violence seems as minor as words (Kendal, p.299). In the second act, Marcus Andronicus reacts to finding Lavinia raped and mutilated by using hand imagery to describe what has been done to her. For example, he asks "what stern ungentle hands / have lopp'd and hew'd and made thy body bare" (II.iv.1080-1081). Hands are not the only body part that Marcus comments on so callously, however. He also describes Lavinia's tongue as "bubbling" (Fawcett, p. 274), going to bizarre lengths in his details. Her tongue does not just bleed, but is " a crimson river of warm blood, / Like to a bubbling fountain stirr'd with wind" (II.iv.1086-1087). The rhetorical heights that Marcus reaches show the effect of the play's mixing of words and actions: a violent act like cutting out someone's tongue becomes an occasion to create poetry.
As can be seen, the violence the characters in Titus Andronicus encounter in their daily lives has dulled them to its horrors. Even when something happens to someone who is close to them, like a daughter or cousin, they do not respond with horror and shock. This is especially clear in how the various characters respond to the mutilated, raped Lavinia. Although her father and cousin claim to be upset by what has happened to her, the language they use is callous at best, and when taken to an extreme, as with Marcus's description of her ruined tongue, it shows that the men in the play are blind to acts of violence.
Works Cited
Fawcett, Mary. "Arms/Words/Tears: Language and the Body in Titus Andronicus." ELH, vol. 50, no. 2, 1983, pp. 261-277.
Kendall, Gillian. "Lend my thy Hand: Metaphor and Mayhem in Titus Andronicus." Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 40, no. 3, 1989, pp. 299-316.
Shakespeare, William. Titus Andronicus. Open Source Shakespeare, http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=titus&Scope=entire&pleasewait=1&msg=pl. Accessed 15 Jan. 2017.
