Page:Titus Andronicus (1926) Yale.djvu/126

112 from the Orient, it has undergone many modifications in transit.

The different threads of the plot of Titus Andronicus bear striking resemblance to other well-known themes and legends. The author frequently likens Lavinia's fate to that of Philomela, which Ovid's Metamorphoses had made known to England. The cruelty and villainy of Aaron suggest at once the deeds of Barabas and Ithamore in Marlowe's Jew of Malta. There is, furthermore, in Evans's Old Ballads and in the Roxburghe Ballads, a poem of about 1570 entitled, 'Lamentable Ballad of the Tragical End of a Gallant Lord and of his Beautiful Lady, with the untimely death of their children, wickedly performed by a heathen Blackamore, their servant: The like seldom heard before.' The theme of the 'heathen blackamore' was very popular. Professor Koeppel (in Englische Studien, 16. 370) points out several other versions of it: a Latin version by Pontano, an adaptation by Bandello in the twenty-first novel of his third book, a French paraphrase by Belleforest in the second volume of his Histoires Tragiques. And there are other versions in other languages.

When Titus Andronicus was entered on the Stationers' Register on February 6, 1593–4, there was entered also 'by warrant from Mr. Woodcock, the ballad thereof.' It is now generally agreed that this ballad is the same as that reprinted in Percy's Reliques, entitled Titus Andronicus's Complaint, and that it is not a source of the play but instead is based on the play. It cannot, according to Chappell, be earlier, in its extant form, than 1600.

In connection with the question of the sources of the play, several other facts now enter. Henslowe in his Diary records a play, 'tittus & vespacia' (which he calls elsewhere 'tittus') as having been performed by