Early Modern German Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus and The Taming of the Shrew

Front matter

THE ARDEN SHAKESPEARE

TITUS ANDRONICUS and LHE TAMING OF THE SHREW

Tito Andronico and Kunst iiber alle Kiinste, ein bös Weib gut zu machen in Translation

Contents

List of illustrations List of tables Acknowledgements

Introduction to Tito Andronico (Titus Andronicus)

The relationship of Tito Andronico to Titus Andronicus

Conclusion

The 1620/1624 Engelische Comedien vnd Tragedien: extant copies

Editorial history vii

79 80

Contents

Introduction to Kunst über alle Künste, ein bös Weib gut zu machen (The Taming of the Shrew) 83 The relationship of Kunst über alle Künste to The Taming of the Shrew 84 Characters and plot: correspondences and differences 85 Adapting the plot of The Taming of the Shrew 93 Soliloquies and asides 104 Verbal, cultural and dramatic language 114 The Taming of the Shrew in German in the seventeenth century 124 Textual introduction 136 The early editions and their contexts: publication, paratext and authorship 136 The order of publication of the two editions of 1672 149 Extant copies of the early editions 156 Editorial history 158 A note on the translations 159 A note on the commentary and collation 163

TITO ANDRONICO IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION 167

KUNST UBER ALLE KUNSTE, EIN BOS WEIB GUT ZU MACHEN IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION 243

Appendix: Doubling charts for Tito Andronico and Kunst über alle Künste, ein bos Weib gut zu machen 417

Abbreviations and references 423

Index 443 viii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

. The Peacham drawing (Longleat House, Warminster, Wiltshire, Great Britain), reproduced by permission of the Marquess of Bath.

. Title page of Engelische Comedien vnd Tragedien (Leipzig, 1620) (University Library, LMU Munich, shelfmark: W 8 P.germ. 46), courtesy of the University Library, LMU Munich.

. Friedrich Menius, ‘Catalogus Lucubrationum Friderici Menij’ (Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek, shelfmark: Nordin 1997), courtesy of the Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek. Sample page of Tito Andronico, in Engelische Comedien vnd Tragedien (Leipzig, 1620), sig. Qq5r (University Library, LMU Munich, shelfmark: W 8 P.germ. 46), courtesy of the University Library, LMU Munich. Sample page of Engelische Comedien vnd Tragedien

(n.p., 1624), sig. Qq5r (Württembergische Landesbibliothek

Stuttgart, shelfmark: R 17 Come 1), courtesy of the Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart.

. Copper engraving, Kunst über alle Künste (‘Rapperschweyl’, 1672, 2nd edn), sig. Alr (Austrian National Library, shelfmark: 23387-A), courtesy ofthe Austrian National Library.

. Title page of Kunst über alle Künste (‘Rapperschweyl’, 1672, Ist edn), sig. A2r (Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek, Weimar, shelfmark: O 9: 246), courtesy of the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek, Weimar.

. Title page of Kunst über alle Künste (‘Rapperschweyl’, 1672, 2nd edn), sig. A2r (Austrian National Library,

shelf mark: 23387-A), courtesy of the Austrian

National Library.

. List of roles, Kunst über alle Künste (‘Rapperschweyl’, 1672, 1st edn), sig. A3r (Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek,

Illustrations

Weimar, shelfmark: O 9: 246), courtesy of the Herzogin

Anna Amalia Bibliothek, Weimar. 154 10. Sample page of Kunst über alle Künste (‘Rapperschweyl’,

1672, Ist edn), sig. F4r (Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek,

Weimar, shelfmark: O 9: 246), courtesy of the Herzogin

Anna Amalia Bibliothek, Weimar. 155

LIST OF TABLES

. Character correspondences between Kunst tiber alle Kiinste and The Taming of the Shrew 86

. Plot correspondences between Kunst über alle Künste and The Taming of the Shrew 89 xi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) generously funded research towards this edition and subsidized the digital as well as the pre-print stage of the bibliographic versions of the present publication. For their assistance, we wish to thank Christine Etienne, Regula Graf, Maude Joye and Katharine Weder. At the University of Geneva, where the research project was undertaken, we received help from Nadège Berdoz, Philippe Coet, Anne-Lise Farquet Severi, Delphine Goldschmidt-Clermont, Frédéric Goubier, Isabelle Kronegg, Angela Simondetta, Clare Tierque, Roxana Vicovanu and Héléne Vincent. We also wish to acknowledge the generous assistance and advice we have received from many librarians, notably at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the Bibliotheque de Genève, the Bibliothèque de l’Université de Geneve, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbiittel, the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek Weimar, the Kislak Center at the University of Pennsylvania, the Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, the Staatsbibliothek Bamberg, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, the Staats- und Universitatsbibliothek Dresden, the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, the Universitätsbibliothek Kassel, the LMU Universitätsbibliothek München, the University of Chicago Library, the Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek, the Wienbibliothek im Rathaus, and the Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart. Special thanks to Christoph Boveland and Andreas Herz at the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel for assistance well beyond the call of duty.

The present book is the second of two ‘Early Modern German Shakespeare’ volumes published by the Arden Shakespeare, following Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet: Der Bestrafte Brudermord and Romio und Julieta in Translation, edited by Lukas Erne and Kareen Seidler (2020). As co-editor xii

Acknowledgements of the companion volume, Kareen has had an impact on the present volume in manifold ways. The two volumes belong to the same editorial project, and our editorial principles have been applied to each of the four plays published in the two volumes. The ‘Note on the commentary and collation’ and the ‘Note on the translations’ partly draw on the corresponding notes in the Brudermord and Romio und Julieta volume.

A word about the nature of the collaboration among the three editors that has led to the present volume over the last six years. Lukas initiated the project, secured the funding and first elaborated the principles informing the translation and editing, many of which were later adjusted and refined thanks to input by Florence and Maria. Maria worked with Lukas on Tito Andronico, and Florence and Lukas on Kunst tiber alle Kiinste. Maria and Florence produced a conservative German text (see below, p. xvii), with textual notes, and drafted the translation, commentary, collation and large parts of the introduction. Lukas checked and provided feedback on all these components, from where the work developed in conversation. Late in the process, Lukas revised and added to the introductions and the commentaries, and, later still, we shared the labour of seeing this volume into print. Our collaboration also benefited from countless conversations among the three of us during our joint time in Geneva. It has been an exhilarating and stimulating process that has allowed each of us to benefit greatly from the other two.

While our editorial work was in progress, we had the pleasure of organizing staged readings of Tito Andronico and Kunst tiber alle Künste, in our English translations, at the University of Geneva in June and November 2017. We thank all those who participated in those memorable and insightful events, in particular Aleida Auld, Amy Brown, Emma Depledge, Valerie Fehlbaum, Jeanne Gressot, Lexie Intrator, Elizabeth Kukorelly, Vincent Laughery, Jia Liu, Roberta Marangi, Giuseppe Samo, Kilian Schindler, Anne Schutt-West, Devani Singh and Bryn xiii

Acknowledgements

Skibo-Birney. We further wish to acknowledge the kind help we have received from René Wetzel on early modern German, Damien Nelis on Latin, and Paul Schubert on ancient Greek. Other colleagues who have generously discussed with us aspects of our editions and provided assistance of various kinds include Guillemette Bolens, Emma Depledge, Tobias Döring, Neil Forsyth, Indira Ghose, Ton Hoenselaars, Zachary Lesser, Noémie Ndiaye, Scott Newstok, June Schlueter, Kareen Seidler, Tiffany Stern, Michael Suarez, Anna Swärdh, Bart van Es and Richard Waswo. Our heartfelt thanks to them all.

The Doctoral Workshop in Medieval and Early Modern English Studies at the University of Geneva offered a friendly and inspiring venue in which to present our work in progress. A seminar devoted to ‘Shakespearean Drama and the Early Modern European Stage’ at the conference of the European Shakespeare Research Association (ESRA) in Gdansk in July 2017 allowed us to discuss some of our ideas as they were taking shape and to receive incisive feedback from colleagues. Special thanks to Ton Hoenselaars, who co-led the seminar and provided helpful advice about our edition during the conference. In the context of the Geneva—Exeter Renaissance Exchange (GEREx), undertaken by members of the English departments of the Universities of Geneva and Exeter and generously subsidized by the two universities, we have initiated a stimulating conversation with Pascale Aebischer, Freyja Cox Jensen and Harry McCarthy about innovative ways of exploring early modern German Shakespeare adaptations which we now plan to develop. Maria’s work on Tito has benefited from participation in Curtis Perry and Marissa Nicosia’s seminar on ‘Shakespearean Distortions of Early Modern Drama’ at the Shakespeare Association (SAA) Annual Meeting in 2017, and Karen Newman’s seminar on ‘Continental Shakespeare’ at SAA 2018; she is grateful to the hosts and seminar participants, particularly Anston Bosman, Ton Hoenseelars, M. A. Katritzky and Noémie Ndiaye, who provided detailed feedback on her xiv

Acknowledgements papers. Maria is likewise grateful to the Folger Shakespeare Library for supporting her work through a short-term fellowship.

At the Arden Shakespeare, Margaret Bartley has provided untiring support, and we are grateful to her anonymous external readers for incisive input. Our advisory editor, Tiffany Stern, provided immensely helpful feedback to a draft of the complete typescript. When this book was in production, we benefited from the labours of Lara Bateman, Meredith Benson, Ian Buck, Ronnie Hanna and Merv Honeywood.

We have been very fortunate to benefit from Anthony Mortimer’s help and expertise over the years. He has read and helpfully commented on every part of this volume (and its companion volume), has much improved our prose translation and has translated the verse passages and poems in Kunst based on our prose renderings. He has truly been a model of generosity. In gratitude for all his kind help and encouragement this book is dedicated to him.

Finally, on a more personal note, we wish to thank those whose love and support have been the rock on which this book was built: Katrin, Rebecca, Raphael and Miriam; Habibi and Juro; and Anatoliy, Svitlana and Douglas.

Lukas Erne Florence Hazrat Maria Shmygol

XV

The present is the second of two ‘Early Modern German Shakespeare’ volumes published by the Arden Shakespeare. Volume 1 (2020), edited by Lukas Erne and Kareen Seidler, contains Der Bestrafte Brudermord (in English Fratricide Punished), a version of Hamlet, and Romio und Julieta (Romeo and Juliet). Volume 2 adds Tito Andronico (Titus Andronicus) and Kunst über alle Künste, ein bös Weib gut zu machen, in English An Art beyond All Arts, to Make a Bad Wife Good (The Taming of the Shrew). Jointly, the two volumes make available in English translation the best versions of Shakespeare’s plays as they existed in seventeenth-century Germany.

The aim of Arden’s ‘Early Modern German Shakespeare’ edition is to make these versions join the conversation about Shakespeare’s texts. As scholars have come to realize, many of Shakespeare’s English texts embed within themselves the contributions of actors, revisers and adapters. They are socialized products, in keeping with the eminently socialized art form that is theatre. We have been used to thinking of Shakespeare’s socialized early modern texts as purely English, but such monolingualism imposes upon them a restriction that simply does not square with the international traffic of early modern theatre companies and their plays. From the late sixteenth century, plays that were performed in commercial theatres in London also had an existence elsewhere, not only in the provinces but also on the Continent, and in particular its German-speaking parts. At a time when the United Kingdom has recently left the European Union, it seems a good moment to remember that Shakespeare’s plays have always also been European, and that we have much to gain from recovering the life they led on the Continent.

We acknowledge that the German-English language barrier may be a greater obstacle in the modern world of scholarship xvi than it was in the early modern world of the theatre. German is no longer the language of learning that it was in the nineteenth century, and the language of international Shakespeare scholarship is now emphatically English. Editing Shakespeare’s early modern German plays in German therefore means cutting them off from the attention of most Shakespeareans. That is the reason why the present volume and its companion volume make the plays available in English translation. We have also prepared editions of the original German texts, with short introductions and textual notes, and they are available online and for download on the University of Geneva’s institutional repository, ‘Archive ouverte UNIGE’, at https://doi. org/10.13097/archive-ouverte/unige: 150834 (Tito Andronico) and _https://doi.org/10.13097/archive-ouverte/unige: 150835 (Kunst tiber alle Kiinste).

The preface to the first volume of our ‘Early Modern German Shakespeare’ edition provides short introductions to the presence of English actors on the Continent from the late sixteenth century and to Shakespeare’s contributions to the repertoires of early modern German theatre companies. It also supplies an illustration of the impact a passage in an early modern German version can have on our editorial and critical reception of a Shakespeare play. These prefatory materials, which are relevant to both volumes, are not repeated here (see Erne and Seidler, xiv-xxi).

Tito Andronico and Kunst über alle Künste have the distinction of being, respectively, the earliest and the best of the extant early modern German Shakespeare versions. Tito Andronico was published in a dramatic collection that appeared in 1620. The earliest dramatic collection containing a Shakespeare play was thus not the First Folio, published in London in 1623, but the Engelische Comedien vnd Tragedien (English Comedies and Tragedies) published in octavo in Leipzig, Germany, and in German. Its early date means that it is closely connected to and can throw light on several Titus xvii documents, not only Shakespeare’s play but also the Peacham Drawing and the chapbook prose history of Titus Andronicus. As our edition aims to show, it is a key witness to the early history of Shakespeare’s play.!

Published in two duodecimo editions dated 1672, Kunst über alle Künste bears witness to the sophistication German drama had acquired in the half-century since Tito. While it essentially preserves the dramatis personae and plot outline of The Taming of the Shrew (except for the Induction), and at times follows the original speech by speech and almost word for word, it also confidently reworks and elaborates on it. It constitutes a shrewd engagement with Shakespeare’s play, keenly alert to its dramatic potential and attuned to its gender and social issues while not afraid of positioning itself differently vis-a-vis those points.

Shakespeare’s has long become the epitome of dramatic authorship, but his seventeenth-century German translators and adaptors remain shrouded in mystery. Der Bestrafte Brudermord was probably revised for performance by the company of Carl Andreas Paulsen in the 1660s and Romio und Julieta for performance by Eggenberg’s Comedians at the court theatre of Cesky Krumlov (Bohemian Krumlov) in 1688, but who undertook the revisions is now beyond recovery (Erne and Seidler, 28-31, 90-100). Contrary to what might be expected, the earliest ofthe four plays, Tito Andronico, is the only one for which we can name a writer who was almost certainly involved in the adaptation: Friedrich Menius, a colourful figure who was prosecuted and condemned for both bigamy and heresy. Yet the exact form that Menius’s involvement took is far from clear (see below, pp. 64-74). Kunst über alle Künste is the work of an adaptor who is identified as a ‘Teutsche[r] Edelman’, a German gentleman, on the title page; he writes an address to

' For the co-authorship of Titus Andronicus, see below, p. 2, n. 1.

xviii the reader in a distinctive voice but chooses to remain anonymous. To paraphrase the characteristically poignant formulation with which he explains his anonymity, it does not matter what a kitten is called, provided it catches mice (see below, pp. 140-3). While little is known about the identity of Shakespeare’s early modern German translators and adaptors, the plays published in this and its companion volume bear witness to the ingenuity of their dramatic engagement with Shakespeare’s drama.

XIX

XX

Introduction To Tito Andronico (titus Andronicus)

Until not so long ago, Titus Andronicus, first published in London in 1594, was considered a barbarous and savage play. Generations of critics were repulsed by what they saw as its excessive violence, and passed it offas a piece of Shakespeare’s juvenilia or denied that he wrote it at all.' Yet it was that very violence which made the story of Titus Andronicus immensely popular in its own day, both in England and on the Continent. When English travelling actors performed plays in their native tongue in the Netherlands and in Germany, the audience’s lack of linguistic comprehension was compensated for by physical action and, in the case of versions of Titus, by displays of spectacular violence: bloodshed, torture, rape and mutilation. That the Titus material was popular in Germany from at least the early seventeenth century is suggested by a German collection of Engelische Comedien vnd Tragedien (English Comedies and Tragedies, Leipzig, 1620) which contains Eine sehr klägliche Trageedia von Tito Andronico vnd der hoffertigen Käyserin (A Very Lamentable Tragedy of Tito Andronico and the Haughty Empress). The play’s action largely corresponds to what we find in Titus, although Tito is much shorter, written entirely in prose, and differs from the English play in intriguing ways. Since the nineteenth century, Tito Andronico has sporadically attracted the interest of scholars, but, prior to the present edition, it has never received the attention it deserves.? It is a play that has much to teach us and is an important witness to the early history of Titus plays on the English stage.

! See Metz, Studies, 17-43. ? The most comprehensive studies of Tito are Fuller and Braekman.

The German play is only 1,154 lines long, whereas Titus, now commonly believed to have been co-authored by Shakespeare and George Peele, comes in at approximately 2,500 lines.! Unlike the early quarto texts of Titus, which have no formal act or scene divisions, Tito is divided into eight acts.* While the plot is similar to that of Titus, the action in Tito is more streamlined and some elements are absent, including the classical references: no mention is made of Philomel and Tereus (2.2.43; 2.3.38-43; 4.1.47-53; 5.2.194), and no copy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses appears on the stage (4.1.42). The language of Tito is simpler than that of Titus, but it is not without moments of rhetorical force, particularly in Tito’s outrage at Aetiopissa (4.3.8-20) and his moving response to the futile loss of his hand (4.3.21—7), as well as his lamentations over his dead sons (4.3.28-33) and his defiled daughter (4.3.60-76). Throughout the play, there are parallels with the language and imagery of Titus, a number of which are discussed below, and many more in the commentary.

The number of roles in Tito is significantly smaller than in Titus. The German play omits Mutius, Young Lucius, Publius, Sempronius, Caius, Valentine, Emillius and Alarbus; all that remains of Quintus and Martius are their heads: those of two unnamed sons of Tito are brought on stage in Act 4, Scene 3.

! Hart counts 2,522 lines (21), which includes the Folio-only ‘Fly Scene’ (3.2), of which Tito shows no trace, so the quarto text of Titus has approximately 2,435 lines. For Shakespeare and Peele’s co-authorship of Titus, see Vickers, 148-243, and Taylor and Loughnane, 490-3.

2? Quarto editions of Titus Andronicus appeared in 1594, 1600 and 1611. The First Folio collection of Shakespeare’s dramatic works, which divides the play into five acts, was published in 1623, three years after the first edition of Tito. Four plays in the 1620 volume are divided into five acts (and one of them, Sidonia und Theagene, is further divided into scenes). Julio und Hyppolita is in four Acts, while two plays in the collection, Von dem verlornen Sohn (The Prodigal Son) and Von eines Königes Sohne auß Engellandt vnd des Königes Tochter aus Schottlandt (A King's Son of England and a King’s Daughter of Scotland), have six acts. It is most unusual for early modern plays in Germany or England to be divided into eight acts, and we know of no other instance.

Yet all the major characters are present, although with the exception of Tito their names are entirely different: Vespasianus (Lucius), Victoriades (Marcus), Andronica (Lavinia), Aetiopissa (Tamora), Helicates (Demetrius), Saphonus (Chiron) and Morian (Aaron).! Tito’s equivalent of Saturninus has no name but is simply referred to as the Roman Emperor. As we will see below, the characterization of Morian and Aetiopissa differs substantially from that of Aaron and Tamora, and there are other, subtler differences that impact the other characters, notably Tito, Andronica and Vespasianus.

Despite these differences, Tito Andronico can shed much light on the English play, and recent editors of Titus Andronicus have shown some awareness of this. Jonathan Bate’s Arden edition bases a crucial stage direction on Tito. In Act 3, Scene 1, Titus is tricked by Aaron into cutting offhis hand in the hope of saving the life of his sons Quintus and Martius. But they are executed nonetheless, and their heads are sent to Titus along with his hand, as recorded in a startling stage direction, ‘Enter a Messenger with two heads and a hand’ (3.1.234 SD). The remaining Andronici, Titus, Marcus, Lucius and the mutilated Lavinia, are aghast. Commenting on an unscripted stage action, Marcus says, ‘Alas, poor heart, that kiss is comfortless / As frozen water to a starved snake’ (3.1.25 1—2).? No early edition clarifies what action prompts Marcus’ words, leading editors to speculate about various possibilities: ‘Lavinia kisses [Marcus]’, ‘Lavinia kisses Lucius’ or ‘Lavinia kisses Titus’ (Ard? TA, 47). Yet the stage direction in the German version states that Lavinia ‘goes to the heads and kisses them’ (4.3.80 SD), which Bate adopts and slightly adapts: ‘Lavinia kisses the heads’ (3.1.250 SD). Arrestingly, the ‘tongueless woman’, Lavinia, thus ‘kisses the severed heads of her

' For the names of the characters in Tito, see below, pp. 168-70. Tito can be performed by a minimum of ten actors as opposed to the much larger number needed for Titus (see the Appendix).

All references are from Ard? 74 unless indicated otherwise.

brothers’, Quintus and Martius (Ard? TA, 47). Close attention to the German version here leads to the insertion of poignant stage business into an authoritative edition of Shakespeare’s play. Gary Taylor and his fellow editors of The New Oxford Shakespeare have similarly given prominence to Tito. Like Bate, they draw on the German play to make Lavinia kiss her brothers’ severed heads, and, unlike Bate, they quote directly from a translation of Zito when doing so (5.248 SD). Later in the scene, when Titus invites Lucius, Marcus and Lavinia to swear an oath with him, the editors of The New Oxford Shakespeare use evidence from Titus, namely the protagonist’s “You heavy people, circle me about’ (5.275), as the basis for their inserted stage direction: ‘They form a circle and make a vow’ (5.277 SD). The equivalent stage direction in Tito does not call for a circle and is somewhat different in how it handles the swearing of the oath, yet the editors of the New Oxford Shakespeare demonstrate the value of the German play as an early witness of theatrical practice by reproducing the corresponding stage direction in the margin (see Tito, 5.1.61 SD) in one of the edition’s ‘Performance Notes’, whose purpose it is ‘to call attention to more complex staging possibilities’ (47) than those embedded in the stage directions of the main text. Despite this incipient awareness of Tito’s importance, the German play remains a vastly underused resource in the study of Titus Andronicus. For while recent editors of Titus incorporate one or two of its stage directions, they take no account of many others that are no less important. For instance, in the opening scene of both plays, the Moor character, Morian in Tito and Aaron in Titus, is silent during the succession crisis but remains on stage when all the other characters leave and speaks a soliloquy. In Tito, the play’s opening stage direction points out that Morian ‘has a humble cloak pulled over his magnificent clothes’ (1.1.0 SD), and when the other characters have left, another stage direction informs us that ‘He pulls off the old cloak’ (1.1.83 SD) to reveal his magnificent clothes. There is no equivalent stage direction in Titus, but Aaron’s words are suggestive: ‘Away with slavish weeds and servile thoughts! / I will be bright, and shine in pearl and gold’ (1.1.517-18). Does Aaron remove his ‘slavish weeds’ at the same time as he mentions them? At the very least, Morian enacts a version of what Aaron says, and it is not impossible that Aaron’s words were accompanied by a similar costume change.

There are other moments in the play when a stage direction in Tito may reflect how Titus was performed. When Aaron arrives to announce that the Emperor will spare Titus’ sons in exchange for a chopped-off hand, Marcus and Lucius plead with Titus to let one of them undergo the ordeal. When Titus declines the offer, they keep pleading (3.1.151-83). At the equivalent point, Tito’s brother and son ‘fall on their knees before him’ (Tito, 4.1.32 SD) as a way of intensifying their pleas. A stage direction close to the end of Tito similarly conveys how a moment of emotional crisis was staged. When Aetiopissa, as Tito’s Empress is called, has been informed by Tito that the pie from which she has been eating contains her sons’ remains, she ‘shakes and trembles violently in fright’ (8.2.51 SD). Neither stage direction has an equivalent in Titus, but the action they designate is perfectly compatible with the English play and may reflect what happened in early performances.

Similarly, after Tamora has given birth, the Nurse enters to Aaron, Demetrius and Chiron with the ‘blackamoor child’ (4.2.51 SD). Tamora’s sons are dismayed and want to ‘dispatch’ (4.2.88) the baby. The conflict comes to a head when Demetrius demands, ‘Nurse, give it me’ (4.2.88), yet the baby is rescued by Aaron. There is no stage direction in the early editions of the English play to indicate how the moment was staged. The English dramatist Edward Ravenscroft, who produced an adaptation of Titus Andronicus in 1678 (published 1687), inserted a stage direction, ‘Aron takes the child from the Woman’ (Ard? TA, 265), and Hughes comments that ‘Aaron probably takes the child from the Nurse’ (126). The stage action in Tito is different, however, and arguably more dramatic: Saphonus ‘takes the child from the midwife, draws his sword and is about to kill the child’ (6.1.47 SD) when it is snatched from him by Morian. Here and elsewhere, Tito provides the best evidence we have of how the English play may have been performed, and the stage action is different from and arguably more complex and more interesting than that mediated to us through modern editions of Titus.

Other stage directions in Tito that may reflect the early performance history of Titus concern the character of Andronica (Tito’s Lavinia). When Andronica and her husband enter in the scene that will lead to the former’s rape and the latter’s murder, they do so ‘hand in hand’ (3.3.0 SD). The equivalent stage direction in Titus (“Enter BASSIANUS and LAVINIA’, 2.2.50 SD) does not convey this detail, although physical intimacy between Lavinia and her husband is suggested in the allusion to the newlyweds’ consummation of their marriage (2.1.14-17). When the husband is murdered, Titus has no stage direction that tells us what she does, but Tito informs us that ‘She goes to sit on the ground with the corpse’ (3.3.69 SD). After Lavinia/ Andronica has been raped, she reappears on stage with the rapists who have mutilated her, and now make cruel fun of the fact (Titus, 2.3.1-10; Tito, 4.2.1-9). When the brothers have left, she remains on stage alone, and a stage direction in Tito, with no equivalent in Titus, informs us that she is ‘sighing and looking wretchedly up to heaven’ (4.2.9 SD2). When the mutilated Lavinia has been found by her uncle and brought by him before her father and her brother, Lucius responds verbally to the sight of his sister — ‘Ay me, this object kills me’ (3.1.65) — and the following line, spoken by Titus, implies that he has responded physically, too, for Titus asks him to ‘arise and look upon her’ (3.1.66). According to an editorially added stage direction in the Arden edition, Lucius ‘fall[s] to his knees’ (3.1.64 SD), whereas the editors of the New Oxford Shakespeare comment that ‘Lucius must have sat, fallen, or knelt, or perhaps fainted at the sight of Lavinia’s injuries’ (215). Neither edition mentions that Tito supports this last possibility, for a stage direction spells out that Vespasianus, as the Lucius character is called in Tito, ‘falls to the ground in a swoon’ (4.3.59 SD).

If, with Bate and the editors of the New Oxford Shakespeare, we assume that, in some instances, Tito’s stage directions reflect how Titus was performed, then we have reason to suppose that they may do so in other instances too. Tito thus has much to offer to editors, critics and actors who want to come to a fuller understanding of Titus Andronicus, of how it may be staged now and of how it may have been staged in Shakespeare’s time.

THE RELATIONSHIP OF TITO ANDRONICO TO TITUS ANDRONICUS

Other early modern German plays edited for Arden Shakespeare — Der Bestrafte Brudermord, Romio und Julieta and Kunst tiber alle Künste — are adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays. Tito is special insofar as it may be based not on the surviving Titus Andronicus at all, but an earlier version of the play or a common source play (see below, pp. 36-40). Nonetheless, the relationship between Tito and Titus 1s close, and the aim of this section is to explore it.

In Tito’s first scene, eight of the nine principal characters are onstage (only Victoriades is not), and the only extras called for are unspecified ‘Romans’.' The first scene of Titus, by contrast, calls not only for fourteen named characters to be onstage (Saturninus, Bassianus, Titus, his brother, his four sons and his daughter, Tamora, her three sons and Aaron) but also for a

' Victoriades may be absent from the opening scene because the actor who plays y pening play his role later in the play is needed in this scene as one of the unnamed ‘Romans’ (see Appendix, pp. 417-19).