Pity and Piety in Titus Andronicus

Abstract:This article argues that William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus dramatizes the potential ambivalence of pity in rhetorical situations when images and objects that evoke pity not only constitute evidence of genuine suffering but can also facilitate motives of fraud, cruelty, and revenge. The play is organized around six appeals to pity that identify the emotion not only as a key element in the dramatic and rhetorical contexts of the play's aesthetic of blood but also as an emotion that is tied closely to its interest in vengeance and clemency as contrary shaping motives in the construction of Roman pietas, or "piety," a word whose etymological associations with pity were more evident to early modern audiences than they are today. The play is also informed by a tension in Renaissance philosophy between Augustinianism and Stoicism regarding the relative merits of clemency and pity as social and religious values. These divergent and sometimes contradictory ideas about pity, clemency, and piety in the play resonate not only with Elizabethan perceptions of imperial Rome but also with Elizabethan culture's perceptions of its own historical and mythological connections to ancient Troy and, by extension, the Roman Empire. But the play's consideration of these values also reflects an understanding of the practical, everyday circumstances that Shakespeare's playgoers surely contended with themselves when confronted with public spectacles of punishment and execution, when engaged in civic and legal affairs, and when evaluating their social connections with fellow citizens, especially those experiencing distress and suffering in their manifold forms.