Titus Andronicus & Timon of Athens (4 page)

Entrances and Exits
are fairly thorough in Folio, which has accordingly been followed as faithfully as possible. Where characters are omitted or corrections are necessary, this is indicated by square brackets (e.g. “[
and Attendants
]”).
Exit
is sometimes silently normalized to
Exeunt
and
Manet
anglicized to “remains.” We trust Folio positioning of entrances and exits to a greater degree than most editors.

Editorial Stage Directions
such as stage business, asides, indications of addressee and of characters’ position on the gallery stage are only used sparingly in Folio. Other editions mingle directions of this kind with original Folio and Quarto directions, sometimes marking them by means of square brackets. We have sought to distinguish what could be described as
directorial
interventions of this kind from Folio-style directions (either original or supplied) by placing them in the right margin in a smaller typeface. There is a degree of subjectivity about which directions are of which kind, but the procedure is intended as a reminder to the reader and the actor that Shakespearean stage directions are often dependent upon editorial inference alone and are not set in stone. We also depart from editorial tradition in sometimes admitting uncertainty and thus printing permissive stage directions, such as an
Aside?
(often a line may be equally effective as an aside or as a direct address—it is for each production or reading to make its own decision) or a
may exit
or a piece of business placed between arrows to indicate that it may occur at various different moments within a scene.

Line Numbers
are editorial, for reference and to key the explanatory and textual notes.

Explanatory Notes
allusions and gloss obsolete and difficult words, confusing phraseology, occasional major textual cruces, and so on. Particular attention is given to nonstandard usage, bawdy innuendo, and technical terms (e.g. legal and military language). Where more than one sense is given, commas indicate shades of related meaning, slashes alternative or double meanings.

Textual Notes
at the end of the play indicate major departures from Folio. They take the following form: the reading of our text is given in bold and its source given after an equals sign. For
Titus Andronicus
“Q” indicates a reading from the First Quarto of 1594, “Q2” a reading from the Second Quarto of 1600, “F2” a correction that derives from the Second Folio of 1632, “F3” a correction introduced in the Third Folio of 1663–64, “F4” a correction from the Fourth Folio of 1685, and “Ed” one that derives from the subsequent editorial tradition. The rejected Folio (“F”) reading is then given. Thus for
Titus
Act 2 Scene 1 line 22: “
nymph
= Q. F = Queene” means that the Folio text’s “Queene” has been rejected in favor of the Quarto’s “nymph,” as the repetition of “queen” in Aaron’s speech would appear to be a compositorial error. There are no Quarto texts for
Timon of Athens
, thus “F2” indicates a correction introduced in the Second Folio of 1632, “F3” a correction introduced in the Third Folio of 1663–64, “F4” one from the Fourth Folio of 1685, and “Ed” a correction introduced by a later editor.

AUTHORSHIP:
Mostly by Shakespeare, but the first act and possibly the beginning of the second and fourth acts have the stylistic marks of
GEORGE PEELE
. It is not known whether this was an active collaboration or whether Shakespeare took over an older play by Peele and revised the later acts much more thoroughly than the first one. Francis Meres in 1598 and the 1623 Folio editors had no hesitation in attributing the play to Shakespeare.

MAJOR PARTS:
(
with percentage of lines/number of speeches/scenes on stage
) Titus Andronicus (28%/117/9), Aaron the Moor (14%/57/6), Marcus Andronicus (12%/63/9), Tamora (10%/49/5), Saturninus (8%/49/5), Lucius (7%/51/4), Demetrius (4%/39/7), Bassianus (3%/14/3), Lavinia (2%/15/3), Chiron (2%/30/6), Young Lucius (2%/11/4).

LINGUISTIC MEDIUM:
98% verse, 2% prose.

DATE:
1591/92, perhaps revised 1594? Performed at the Rose in January 1594 and marked by the theater manager as “ne,” possibly meaning “new.” Title page of first published edition, also 1594, seems to imply performance by three successive companies (see “Text,” below), suggesting staging before theaters were closed due to the plague for the second half of 1592 and nearly all of 1593. Perhaps the first two companies performed an old version by Peele and the 1594 performance and text were newly revised by Shakespeare.

SOURCES:
The story is not historical. An anonymous chapbook narrative, once thought to be the source, is almost certain to be a derivative text rather than a source, so it must be assumed either that there is a lost source or that the plot is freely invented, while drawing on a range of Roman materials, both historical and poetic—most notably the tragedies of Seneca and Ovid’s story of Progne’s revenge on the tyrant Tereus for the rape of her sister Philomel (
Metamorphoses
book 6, used as a prop and plot device in Act 4 Scene 1). There is also a strong influence from other tragedies of the period, notably Thomas Kyd’s
Spanish Tragedy
(c.1589, especially for the revenger as a self-consciously theatrical performer) and Christopher Marlowe’s
The Jew of Malta
(c.1591, for Aaron’s delight in his own villainy).

TEXT:
published in Quarto as
The Most Lamentable Romaine Tragedie of Titus Andronicus: As it was Plaide by the Right Honourable the Earle of Darbie, Earle of Pembrooke, and Earle of Sussex their Seruants
(1594, reprinted 1600 and 1611). A good-quality text, perhaps printed from Shakespeare’s manuscript, though with one or two signs of revision in the process of composition (some false starts and the possibility that the killing of both Alarbus and Mutius in the first act were late additions—could these be Shakespearean revisions to Peele’s original?). The Second Quarto, which included some good corrections, was printed from a damaged copy of the First Quarto, resulting in some changes to the wording of the final scene and the addition of four new lines at the very end of the play. The Folio text was printed from a copy of the Third Quarto, incorporating both corrections and errors from the Second and Third Quartos; it introduced many new errors of its own, because it was mostly typeset by “Compositor E,” the one genuinely incompetent agent in the creation of the First Folio. The principal value of the Folio text is that it introduces stage directions, presumably derived from the theatrical promptbook, and adds one complete new scene (Act 3 Scene 2, the fly-killing banquet). Most modern editions are based on the First Quarto, but with the banquet inserted from Folio. In accordance with our practice of beginning from Folio and avoiding the conflation of discrete texts, we depart from this tradition and edit the Folio text, though with frequent emendation in places where the text is erroneous, principally as a result of the shoddy work of “Compositor E.” Since they appear in the Folio, the Second Quarto’s extra four lines at the end are included, but they are marked with curly brackets to indicate that they are an addition that seems to derive from the printing shop rather than the playhouse.

his sons

Kinsmen of Titus

her sons

running scene 1

Flourish.
Enter the
Tribunes
and Senators,
aloft
. And then enter
Saturninus
and his followers at one door
[
below
],
and Bassianus and his followers at the other, with
Drum and Colours

Enter Marcus Andronicus, aloft, with the crown

Exeunt
[
his
]
Soldiers

[
Exeunt his Soldiers
]

Flourish. They
[
Saturninus and Bassianus
]
go up into the senate house. Enter a Captain