ABSTRACT
Could any other dramatist but Shakespeare have written this tour de forcel ? The combination of interest in political order, Roman customs, Plutarch, Seneca and Ovid, with constructive skill, the 'inset' device, a theme of ingratitude, a varied characterization which even within this crude tale can make Aaron not wholly evil, Titus not wholly admirable; the rhetorical skill and flexibility, the sustained power of dramatic movement shown throughout, all these and other characteristics suggest that Shakespeare planned the play and probably wrote most of it. There are passages reminiscent of Peele, Marlowe and Kyd, but Shakespeare may have been imitating them while experimenting in styles different from those in his early Comedies and English Histories. If Shakespeare had a collaborator it was probably Peele. 2
A somewhat similar display of passions marks 2 and 3 Henry VI and Richard 111,3 in which however the rhetorical method is subordinate to historical chronicle and to political ideas which are confined to the beginning and end of Titus Andronicus. That these ideas are there at all, and that some attempt is made to present the Senecan-Ovidian plot within a new pseudo-historical framework, are evidence for Shakespeare's authorship and for a date not far from 1592.
