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William ShakespeareTitus Andronicus
William ShakespeareFiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1594A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Act IIIChapter Summaries & Analyses
Act III, Scene 1 Summary
The tribunes and senators cross the stage, leading Martius and Quintus to execution. Titus pleads with them, citing his years of military service for Rome, and his other sons’ honorable deaths in battle. He lies down; they all leave. Titus says he will weep indefinitely.
Lucius enters and tells him he pleads in vain, as the tribunes have left. Titus continues to plead, saying that he will speak to the stones as the tribunes will not listen. He notices that Lucius’s weapon is drawn; Lucius explains that he tried to rescue his brothers, but his attempt failed, and he was punished with banishment. Titus says this is a good thing: Rome is full of tigers.
Marcus enters with Lavinia in tow. Lucius falls to his knees at the sight of her, but Titus tells him to rise and look. Titus says his grief was already overwhelming before this. He vows to cut off his hands too, as they have done no good by serving Rome. He asks who has committed this crime. Marcus tells him Lavinia’s tongue has been torn out, and he found her in the wooded park. Titus laments his great griefs, saying that Lavinia’s suffering is the worst of them. They notice that she weeps at the mention of her brothers being condemned for Bassianus’s death, but they don’t know whether that is because she knows they are innocent, or guilty. Titus says she should be glad if they were guilty, as they will be executed for it. He then decides they would never do such a thing, noting Lavinia’s continued tears. He suggests they all go and cry into a fountain together, or that he, Marcus, and Lucius all chop off their own tongues and hands. He then determines that those with tongues must use them to plot revenge. Lucius tells him he is upsetting Lavinia. Marcus and Lucius offer their handkerchiefs to the other two, but they are already drenched in tears.
Aaron enters with a message from Saturninus. One of the men must cut off their hand and send it as a ransom, and then he will return Titus’s sons alive. All three argue that they should volunteer their hand; Aaron suggests they choose fast, to ensure they aren’t too late. Titus tells the others that he will let one of them send theirs, so they should go to get an axe. While they are gone, he has Aaron cut his hand off. Aaron privately notes that as Titus has deceived the others, he has deceived them all. Marcus and Lucius return. Titus asks that Saturninus bury his hand, which has done great service. Aaron leaves, promising to bring Titus his sons, privately clarifying that he means their heads.
Titus kneels and Lavinia joins him. They lament together; Titus describes how her grief feeds his own. A messenger enters and tells them that in mockery of Titus, his enemies return to him the heads of his sons and his hand. The messenger expresses his sympathy and leaves. All are appalled. Lucius wishes he would die. Lavinia kisses the heads. Titus wishes he would wake from this nightmare. Marcus says that Titus’s excessive grief is now the only right response—he will no longer try to temper it. Titus laughs and says he has no more tears left. He now feels that grief is only a distraction from his true purpose: revenge. He gathers everyone and swears a ritualistic vow to enact retribution.
To exit the stage, Titus tells Marcus to carry a head; he will take the other, and Lavinia will carry his hand in her mouth. Titus instructs Lucius to flee Rome in accordance with his banishment and go to the Goths to raise an army. They say a fond farewell and leave Lucius alone onstage. Lucius mourns their injuries and reiterates his plan to raise an army and enact revenge.
Act III, Scene 2 Summary
Titus, Marcus, Lavinia, and Young Lucius (Lucius’s son) gather to eat. Titus says they should only eat what they need to sustain them in their quest for revenge. He laments his and Lavinia’s lost hands, as they cannot beat their chests to still their hearts. He instructs Lavinia to sigh her heart away or bore a hole into it to drown it in tears. Marcus offends him by using the word hands colloquially; Titus too puns on the word. He vows to learn to understand all of Lavinia’s signs perfectly. Young Lucius entreats him to leave his laments and try to cheer up Lavinia.
Marcus angers Titus again by killing a fly; he says the fly could have had a family. Marcus protests that it looked like Aaron, referring derogatively to his skin color. This prompts Titus to stab at the fly again, imagining it as Aaron and Tamora. He leaves with Lavinia, planning to read her old stories. He brings Young Lucius to take over when his sight fails.
Act III Analysis
In Act III, Shakespeare develops the theme of Order Versus Chaos by depicting the total supremacy of the latter. The primary element of this chaos is the Andronici family’s grief and pain, existing in a world that is beyond their control or understanding, which no longer plays by any rules. Attempts to exert control only result in worse consequences: After Titus’s trade of his hand, he receives it back along with his sons’ heads; Lucius’s bid to rescue his brothers ends in his banishment. Shakespeare uses absurd imagery to show how events have spiraled: Titus falls out with Marcus over a fly and talks to stones; dismembered body parts litter the stage and are carried off in a procession in which Lavinia is forced to use her mouth to carry her father’s hand. The dining scene represents a parody of “normality,” with the mundane domesticity of a family meal echoing the order that has been lost. The family has disintegrated: Titus is consumed with sorrow, Lavinia brutalized, Lucius banished, and the other sons are dead. This disintegration of the family is physically embodied by their loss of limbs.
This Act also uses irony to reinforce that the binary of The Paradigm of “Civilized” Rome against “Barbarian” Other has broken down: Titus is driven to extremes in his desire to save his two sons from execution by the emperor, having murdered his son earlier on. Shakespeare also explores Rome’s political tyranny, with both Titus and Saturninus convinced of their righteousness in enacting personal justice, ostensibly on behalf of the Roman state. He shows the danger of an individual assuming total authority of the law. Titus warns Lucius: “Rome is but a wilderness of tigers” (3.1.54), telling him he is better off leaving and joining with the Goths. This statement is full of dramatic irony, as the Goths killed most of Lucius’s brothers, but the last one to die was in Rome at Titus’s own hands—his warning describes his actions. Shakespeare shows that Titus’s pride and assumption of his righteousness have created the environment he now characterizes as treacherous.
Lavinia’s presence in this Act is silent but central, as Shakespeare continues to explore The Complications of Female Expression through her. Lavinia tries to express herself using gestures, but it must always happen through a male lens of interpretation. Her performative gesturing is interpreted by Titus in line with his grief and her actions mirror his: Titus reports that she too rejects a handkerchief because it is already too tear-soaked; she kneels with him; and she carries off the body parts at his instruction. The meta-theatrical device of one character’s expression happening only through the lens of another’s highlights that in theater, archetypes like Lavinia are built through the participation of the playwright, actor, and audience; humanity is filtered through these lenses.
Titus sees her mutilation as an extension of the continued assault on himself. He asks “What accursèd hand / Hath made thee handless in thy father’s sight?” (3.1.67-68), and delivers a long monologue about the way this adds to his grief. This is an expression of deep concern for her but also highlights the injury that it does to him over her pain. He decides to chop off his own hands too, saying, “[T]hey have fought for Rome and all in vain” (3.1.74) and telling Lavinia it’s good she has no hands as serving Rome is pointless anyway. This moment foreshadows his limb amputation and is also a metaphor for giving all to an uncaring cause.
However, Lavinia’s mutilated body is also an expression of Titus’s grief and damaged honor. As the head of the Andronici, Titus believes that his family are extensions of him, with this Act highlighting how he sees them as his to either protect or to damage. He asserts his rights over his sons, calling them “jewels purchased at an easy price / And yet dear, too, because I bought mine own” (3.1.199-200). Through the imagery of jewels and Titus’s utter commitment to their protection, Shakespeare explores The Value of a Human to him: He values them highly, but only through a framework that connects familial relationship to ownership. He sacrifices his hand for them, in contrast to his murder of Mutius: They have value as expressions of his power, values, and identity.
Shakespeare also uses this Act to trivialize the value of human life in this violent world. He uses dark humor through hand-related puns and a casual acceptance of violence in moments. For example, Aaron’s casual reminder that Titus’ sons’ deaths are imminent suggests he is nonchalant about getting one of them to chop off a hand: “Nay, come, agree whose hand shall go along / For fear they die before their pardon come” (3.1.175-6). This trivialization contrasts with Titus’s despairing, heightened monologues: Shakespeare depicts both the intense horror of grief and pain and inurement to it, capturing the impossible contradiction of living in a violent society or with personal trauma.
The squabble over the fate of the fly is taken more seriously than the discussion of whose hand should be amputated, reflecting the carelessness with which the characters treat others’ lives and bodies. The tiny fly, meanwhile, is helpless in the face of greater forces, mirroring the experiences of the play’s victims. The Act develops the tonal shifts of the previous one, intertwining them within the same scenes to depict a world that has fallen into destructive chaos. It establishes a bleak view of humanity under these conditions.
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