TITUS ANDRONICUS is to be
found in the first folio edition of Shakespeare's works, which it
was known was conducted by Heminge and Condell, for many years his
friends and fellow-managers of the same theatre. Is it possible to
persuade ourselves that they would not have known if a piece in
their repertory did or did not actually belong to Shakespeare? And
are we to lay to the charge of these honourable men a designed fraud
in this single case, when we know that they did not show themselves
so very desirous of scraping everything together which went by the
name of Shakespeare, but, as it appears, merely gave those plays of
which they had manuscripts in hand? Yet the following circumstance
is still stronger: George Meres, a contemporary and admirer of
Shakespeare, mentions TITUS ANDRONICUS in an enumeration of his
works, in the year 1598. Meres was personally acquainted with the
poet, and so very intimately, that the latter read over to him his
Sonnets before they were printed. I cannot conceive that all the
critical scepticism in the world would be sufficient to get over
such a testimony.
This tragedy, it is true, is framed according to a false idea of the
tragic, which by an accumulation of cruelties and enormities
degenerates into the horrible, and yet leaves no deep impression
behind: the story of Tereus and Philomela is heightened and
overcharged under other names, and mixed up with the repast of
Atreus and Thyestes, and many other incidents.
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