Hamlet, Titus Andronicus the Commedia dell' Arte: they all come together, in this study, to give us surprising details about who exactly William Shakespeare was in 1589. I think it is fair to say that it is filled with surprising information.
10. In particular, then, we will inspect the texts of two plays. Primarily Hamlet. By way of comparison, Titus Andronicus.2
11. It will, of course, not be possible to read either as being the actual text by Shakespeare. But we will be able to juxtapose Hamlet (D) with other texts and to draw conclusions of greater or lesser probability through comparison and contrast. We will be able to compare character names, key words and concepts, the order of scenes, portrayal of characters, apparent sources, etc.
12. But there have been those who have flatly declared that nothing at all can be determined by such comparisons. If we begin with the character names from the German Titus, for example, we immediately find ourselves in disagreement with Alexander Grossart, a 19th century scholar whom I admire:
The mere enumeration of the absent and of the new-introduced characters prepares us to find that as with the entire collection the translator… dealt with his originals as he wilfully or stupidly chose. The introduction of Vespatian is in keeping with his introduction of other characters. It does not give a shred of reason for asserting that he found him in Titus Andronicus.3
He admits that “the successive speeches distinctly echo Titus Andronicus and prove that our Titus Andronicus was present to the Translator.” And that is as far as he is prepared to go:
the whole thing is a travesty of translation. The Vespasianus is un-historical and the whole characters are ignorantly confused. Bits are arbitrarily taken and others are arbitrarily left out. It seems mere unreason to create another Titus Andronicus out of “Titus and Vespacia” merely to cover the nakedness of this theory.4
But no one has ever seen the original from which the translator worked.
13. Grossart feels the need to scare away readers who might be aware that Titus Andronicus appears to have gone under the name Titus and Vespasia(n) in the historical record for a time, although the latter name does not appear as a character in any of the extant English texts of the play. Yet Vespasian is a major character in the German version of the play transcribed in Cohn5. The title Titus Andronicus only began to replace the earlier title in January of 1593 when it first appeared in Philip Henslowe's Diary.
14. Try as he might to shoo away attention from this fact, his dismissal is beneath his dignity as a supposedly unbiased scholar. The many listings of Titus and Vespasia(n) in the early 1590s had been historically without explanation — a mystery to scholars. That a Vespasian appears in the German play is profoundly evidentiary. But it threatens to take Grossart’s personal theories in directions the implications of which he cannot foresee. It is clear that his reaction in this particular is a largely emotional one.
15. There are two scholarly types that historically have persistently dismissed any attempt to garner information from the German plays. First, there are those who fear that their pet theories about the texts of Shakespeare will be challenged based upon information alleged to be contained in the German texts. Second, are those who simply have no intention of adding yet another series of texts to their reading lists and simplify the matter by dismissing them out of hand. Grossart belongs to the former.
16. But Grossart’s worries did not end there as he would have discovered had he soldiered on. He gives the dramatis personae for the German and the English Titus:
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German Titus |
English Titus |
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The Roman Emperor. |
Saturnius, son to the late Emperor of Rome, and afterwards declared Emperor. |
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Andronicus |
Andronicus |
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Andronica. |
Lavinia, daughter of Titus Andronicus. |
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Consort of Andronica |
Bassianus, brother to Saturnius, in love with Lavinia. |
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Aetiopissa, Queen of Ethiopia, Empress. |
Tamora, Queen of the Goths. |
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Morian, a Moor beloved of Aetiopissa. |
Aaron, a Moor beloved of Tamora. |
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Vespasian, son of Titus Andronicus |
Lucius, son of Titus |
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Quintus, son of Titus |
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Martius, son of Titus |
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Mutius, son of Titus |
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Young Lucius, a boy, son to Lucius. |
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Helicates, eldest son of Aetiopissa. |
Alarbus, eldest son of Tamora |
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Saphonicus, second son of Aetiopissa. |
Demetrius, son of Tamora |
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Chiron, son of Tamora |
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Victoriades, brother of Titus Andronicus. |
Marcus Andronicus, tribune of the people and brother to Titus. |
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Publius, son to Marcus Andronicus. |
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Aemilius, a noble Roman |
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Messenger. |
A captain, tribune, messenger, and clown. |
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White Guards. |
Romans and Goths. |
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A midwife and a black child. |
A nurse and a black child. |
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Senators, tribunes, officers, soldiers and attendants. |
There proves to be a great deal of information to be gathered with this roster as a starting point. In part, because all of the characters’ names, except Titus Andronicus, are different between the plays.
1 Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Back When Ophelia Jumped Off a Cliff: The Hamlet of 1589 (2022). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09WC94FGW
2 Eine sehr klägliche Tragaedia von Tito Andronico und der hoffertigen Kayserin, darinnen denckwürdige actiones zu befinden. A Most Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus and the Haughty Empress, Wherein are Found Memorable Events.
3 Grossart, Alexander. “Was Robert Greene substantially the author of Titus Andronicus?” Englische Studien: Organ für englische philology (1896). 389-436@397.
4 Ibid. 398.
5 Cohn, Albert. Shakespeare in Germany in the sixteenth and Seventeenth Century (1865).
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
- Rocco Bonetti's Blackfriars Fencing School and Lord Hunsdon's Water Pipe. August 12, 2023. “... the tenement late in the tenure of John Lyllie gentleman & nowe in the tenure of the said Rocho Bonetti...”
On Shakespeare's lameness and historical-fiction biography, etc. August 5, 2023. “Those who support Sogliardo of Stratford and other authorship candidates generally stop by from time to time to remark...”
- Shakespeare CSI: Sir Thomas More, Hand-D. April 22, 2023. “What a glory to have an actual hand-written manuscript from the greatest English writer of all time!”
- Robert Greene and the Construction Shakespeare Never Used. August 9, 2022. 'Our first foray “staring intently into” the texts of Robert Greene has noted that his work utilized far fewer feminine endings than Shakespeare’s.'
A 1572 Oxford Letter and the Player’s Speech in Hamlet. August 11, 2020. “The player’s speech has been a source of consternation among Shakespeare scholars for above 200 years. Why was Aeneas’ tale chosen as the subject?”
- Check out the Shakespeare Authorship Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
- Check out the Letters Index: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford for many letters from this fascinating time, some related to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
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