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Updated: April 30, 2025
What should we think of our best dramatist if, in one of his tragedies, a man's eyes were plucked out on the stage, and if he that did it exclaimed as he trampled on them, 'Out, vile jelly! where is thy lustre now? or of a Titus Andronicus cutting two throats, while his daughter ''tween her stumps doth hold a basin to receive their blood'?
Antony and Cleopatra, 1608 1608 31. Coriolanus, 1619 1610 32. The Tempest, 1613 1611 33. The Twelfth Night, 1613 1607 34. Henry VIII., 1613 1603 35. Othello, 1614 1604 Pericles and Titus Andronicus, although inserted in all the late editions of Shakspeare's Plays, are omitted in the above list, both by Malone and Chalmers, as not being Shakspeare's.
Before I end my tale, do not let me forget to say that the King strongly recommended Prince Comnenus to the Republic of Genoa, and obtained for him considerable property in Corsica and a handsome residence at Ajaccio. He accepted five or six beautiful jewels that had belonged to Andronicus, and caused the sum of twelve hundred thousand francs to be paid to the young Comnenus from his treasury.
Rightly viewed, calf-butchering accounts for Titus Andronicus, the only play ain't it? that the Stratford Shakespeare ever wrote; and yet it is the only one everybody tries to chouse him out of, the Baconians included. The historians find themselves "justified in believing" that the young Shakespeare poached upon Sir Thomas Lucy's deer preserves and got haled before that magistrate for it.
Andronicus proclaimed a free pardon to his subjects; they neither desired, nor would grant, forgiveness; he offered to resign the crown to his son Manuel; but the virtues of the son could not expiate his father's crimes.
The first of these doubtful plays, often called the Pre-Shakespearian Group, are Titus Andronicus and the first part of Henry VI. Shakespeare probably worked with Marlowe in the two last parts of Henry VI and in Richard III. The three plays, Taming of the Shrew, Timon, and Pericles are only partly Shakespeare's work, but the other authors are unknown.
Would it have been fair, or according to the common usage and understanding of men, to have inferred an intention on my part to decide the question respecting Titus Andronicus, or the larger portion of the three parts of Henry VI.? Would not every genial mind understand by Shakespeare that unity or total impression comprising and resulting from the thousandfold several and particular emotions of delight, admiration, gratitude excited by his works?
No scholar, for example, believes in the single authorship of Pericles or Andronicus; none, I suppose, would now question the part taken by some hireling or journeyman in the arrangement or completion for the stage of Timon of Athens; and few probably would refuse to admit a doubt of the total authenticity or uniform workmanship of the Taming of the Shrew.
His son Alexius II. had succeeded him, but was murdered after a very short reign by his uncle Andronicus, who seized upon the throne. His reign also was but of short duration. Isaac Angelus, a member of the same family, took up arms against the usurper, and having defeated and captured him in a pitched battle, had him put to death. He also mounted the throne only to be cast down from it.
Yet Andronicus resisted the daggers and swords of his most formidable enemies: Nice and Prusa were reduced and chastised: the Sicilians were content with the sack of Thessalonica; and the distance of Cyprus was not more propitious to the rebel than to the tyrant. His throne was subverted by a rival without merit, and a people without arms.
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