Page:Titus Andronicus (1926) Yale.djvu/125



No single and direct source of the story of Titus Andronicus has ever been discovered. It is probable that the play as we have it was based on an older play, but there is no conclusive evidence of the existence of any version, English or foreign, prior to the text that we now have. The plot seems, however, to combine many themes and incidents found in other forms of literature. The story proper is apparently without any historical basis, and is curiously anachronistic in arrangement. A Roman emperor and a tribune are made contemporary; the emperor is engaged, as no Roman emperor ever was, in warring upon the Goths; and the Rome in which the scene is laid is, according to Aaron the Moor, the seat of 'Popish ceremonies.' As for the surname, Andronicus, no Roman emperor ever bore it, although there was a Byzantine emperor, Andronicus Comnenus, of the twelfth century A.D., and it is not without significance that he is represented by Nicetas Choniata as having shot arrows with certain devices attached in the siege of Prusa. It may be worth noting, too, that after the removal of the empire to Byzantium in the fourth century there were wars with the Goths, and thus a remote historical background for some of the incidents of the play may be postulated. Finally, the similarity of the name Tamora to that of Tomyris, the vengeful queen of the Getæ, has been pointed out.

Baildon (Arden ed.) suggests an Oriental origin for the story, in view of its peculiar cruelty and lavish bloodshed, and the presence in it of those two Bashibazouks, Chiron and Demetrius. But if the story came