ABSTRACT
In 1687, the playwright Edward Ravenscroft described Shakespeare's earliest Tragedy, Titus Andronicus (1594), as “a heap of rubbish” and he reported that it was a revision of someone else's play. As a revision of a former play, the ballad and prose history are generally thought to be afterthoughts. The introduction to the prose History, written in support of the play, Titus Andronicus, declares that it was “newly translated from the Italian copy printed in Rome.” According to scholars, this is a fabrication. Rather the play was contrived using the untranslated Epitome of the Caesars as a source. The information about Caesar Bassianus (198–217), and Byzantine Emperor Andronicus I Comnenus (reigned 1183–1185AD) are derived from The Epitome. Alternative Gothic names for Tamora, Demetrius, and Chiron, are suggested in the prose History. They are Attava wife of Gothic King Atarphus (reigned 411–415AD), Visigoth King Alaricus (reigned 395–410) and Lombard King Albonus (reigned 560–572AD), selected from the untranslated Epitome. It is useful to ask what this bogus prose History is contrived to hide.
