Page "Titus Andronicus" Paragraph 39

The story of Titus Andronicus is fictional, not historical, unlike Shakespeare's other Roman plays, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, all of which are based on real historical events and people.

Even the time in which Titus is set may not be based on a real historical period.

According to the prose version of the play ( see below ), the events are " set in the time of Theodosius ," who ruled from 379 to 395.

On the other hand, the general setting appears to be what Clifford Huffman describes as " late-Imperial Christian Rome ," possibly during the reign of Justinian I ( 527 – 565 ).

Also favouring a later date, Grace Starry West argues, " the Rome of Titus Andronicus is Rome after Brutus, after Caesar, and after Ovid.

We know it is a later Rome because the emperor is routinely called Caesar ; because the characters are constantly alluding to Tarquin, Lucretia, and Brutus, suggesting that they learned about Brutus ' new founding of Rome from the same literary sources we do, Livy and Plutarch.

" Others are less certain of a specific setting however.

For example, Jonathan Bate has pointed out that the play begins with Titus returning from a successful ten year campaign against the Goths, as if at the height of the Roman Empire, but ends with Goths invading Rome, as if at its death.

Similarly, T. J. B.

Spencer argues that " the play does not assume a political situation known to Roman history ; it is, rather a summary of Roman politics.

It is not so much that any particular set of political institutions is assumed in Titus, but rather that it includes all the political institutions that Rome ever had.