ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the revenge-cannibalism performed in the final act of Titus Andronicus – when Tamora unwittingly consumes her sons, Chiron and Demetrius, perpetrators of sex crimes against Lavinia. It traces the relationship of this episode to similar moments in less well-known Elizabethan plays and its much later iteration in Julie Taymor’s film, Titus. The pattern for a significant portion of the narrative of Titus Andronicus, namely, the rape and mutilation of Lavinia, is the story of Philomel, as found in Arthur Golding’s widely read 1567 translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare’s first Roman play, dramatises the end of the Roman empire and wars with the Goths which took place around 400AD. Another dramatisation of revenge-cannibalism, which is likely to have been known to Shakespeare and Peele at the time of Titus Andronicus’ composition, is found in Seneca’s Roman tragedy Thyestes, which was translated into English by Jasper Heywood in 1559.
