Page:Titus Andronicus (1926) Yale.djvu/131

Titus Andronicus which he records are identical. Numerous other contemporary allusions also attest its popularity. The events with which the first act of Titus concerns itself were familiar enough to furnish a simile for the author of the play, A Merry Knack to Know a Knave, which was published anonymously in 1594:

In 1614, twenty years after the First Quarto, Ben Jonson takes occasion in the Induction to his Bartholomew Fair to censure those (of whom there were presumably a goodly number) who still 'swear that Jeronimo or Andronicus are the best plays yet.' Whether Jonson is referring to our Titus Andronicus or not, the vogue of Titus would thus seem to have passed by this time with men of Jonson's tastes, but the contemptuous tone of his statement testifies that there were those to whom such blood-and-thunder plays still appealed. The Shakspere Allusion-Book records other references to the play from time to time. At the middle of the century strands of its gory locks were still in evidence. In 1648 an anonymous writer, J. S., issued a compilation of 'wise and learned sentences and phrases' from favorite authors under the title, Wit's Labyrinth. Of the half-dozen or more Shakespearean plays from which the compiler culled his phrases, only Titus Andronicus is honored by having as many as three sentences quoted.

As the century wore on, however, the performances