History Theatre / TitusAndronicus

* AnArmAndALeg: Chiron and Demetrius cut off Lavinia's hands.

* AffectionateParody: A few critics think that the reason this play was so violent was because Shakespeare was having a go at Marlowe's often gruesome plays. Indeed, there are some scholars who argue that Shakespeare wrote ''Titus'' with such an outrageous amount of {{Gorn}} (even for the time period) that he actually [[RefugeInAudacity intended for it to be a comedy]]. See the bit about the knife and the fly if you're skeptical. Noted Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt reworked it into a comedy. Others dispute this, noting many other tragedies from the period with violence of similar nature, and likewise the presence of BlackComedy mixed with gruesome violence was a pretty common Elizabethan-Jacobean trope.

* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: Aaron loves [[MoralityPet his baby son]].
* EvenEvilHasStandards: Chiron and Demetrius have no compunctions about raping and dismembering Lavinia or attempting to kill Aaron's baby son, but they are still taken aback when Aaron murders the nurse. Aaron, for his part, has no compunctions about murdering the nurse (and practically every other misdeed in the play), but he'll also fight to the death to save his son's life.
** Even Saturninus has a moment of this in Act V, being abjectly horrified when Titus kills Lavinia. On learning that it was Chiron and Demetrius who raped and mutilated her, he orders them brought forth out of a seemingly-sincere desire to punish them. [[TheSecretOfLongPorkPies However...]]

* OutnumberedSibling: Titus had 25 sons and one daughter. But the ratio is down to 4:1 by the start of the play, and keeps "improving" (but falls back to 1:0 in the end).

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: In taking her revenge against Titus, Tamora decides to not only destroy his family but also drive him insane. [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge Titus]] [[TheSecretOfLongPorkPies goes]] [[FamilialCannibalismSurprise insane]] [[IAteWhat all]] [[KillEmAll right]].

* IAteWhat: Tamora is served a pie baked from her murdered sons Chiron and Demetrius in a ghastly attempt to evoke this reaction.

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: In taking her revenge against Titus, Tamora decides to not only destroy his family but also drive him insane. [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge Titus]] [[TheSecretOfLongPorkPies goes]] [[FamilialCannibalismSurprise insane]] [[IAteWhat al]][[KillEmAll right]].

-->--''The Reduced Shakespeare Company''

* NotSoDifferent: Titus and Tamora. Both "love" their kids. Both power-hungry. Both willing to kill other people's children in revenge. [[EvilVersusEvil Both sick nut-jobs]]. Titus kills his own children bear in mind, whereas Tamora doesn't.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: Chiron and Demetrius have no compunctions about raping and dismembering Lavinia or attemting to kill Aaron's baby son, but they are still taken aback when Aaron murders the nurse. Aaron, for his part, has no compunctions about murdering the nurse (and practically every other misdeed in the play), but he'll also fight to the death to save his son's life.

[[caption-width-right:285:Featuring wanton sex, violence, and an "IBangedYourMom" joke. Truly a masterpiece of English literature.]]

* ThoseTwoBadGuys: In the scene immediately after they rape Lavinia, Chiron and Demetrius both explain what just happened and demonstrate by that explanation how [[ColdBloodedTorture sadistic]] they are.

** Tamora, Aaron, Chiron, and Demetrius cross the line early on when they rape and mutilate Lavinia. But all of them have some virtues, with Aaron going out of his way to save his son, and Chiron and Demetrius, after some threats and convincing, agree to help save their step-brother.

* AnachronismStew: There was no Roman emperor who fought a war against the Goths (who invaded during the declining years of the Empire)[[labelnote:*]]strictly speaking, no emperor fought them and ''survived'' — both Claudius II and Valens led armies against the Goths, but both died on the battlefield. At any rate, the idea of a victorious emperor dragging a captive Gothic princess back to Rome is complete fiction[[/labelnote]], and a Tribune (a political office from the era of the Roman Republic) wouldn't have served alongside the emperor. Possibly justified in some cases as the chronology of the tragedies places Titus Andronicus "during the reign of a fictional (late?) Roman emperor" with the plays it is between being Cymbeline, early first century AD, and Hamlet, c. ninth-tenth century AD.

* CynicismCatalyst: At the start of the play, twenty-one of Titus' 25 sons are dead. It's the mutilation of Lavinia, though, that tips him over the edge into madness, angst, and [[HollywoodAtheist atheism]].

* AlienLunch: The infamous pie served to Tamora.

* EvilVsEvil: As mentioned above, there are only about three characters who don’t commit any moral atrocities over the course of the play, and one of them is a baby.

* NotSoDifferent: Titus and Tamora. Both "love" their kids. Both power-hungry. Both willing to kill other people's children in revenge. [[EvilVsEvil Both sick nut-jobs]]. Titus kills his own children bear in mind, whereas Tamora doesn't.

[[caption-width-right:285:Featuring wanton sex, extreme violence, and an "IBangedYourMom" joke. Truly a masterpiece of English literature.]]

[[caption-width-right:285:Featuring sex, violence, and an "IBangedYourMom" joke. Truly a masterpiece of English literature.]]

* TorturePorn: With all the violence, gore, and torture that occurs this play, it makes a good candidate for JustForFun/TheZerothLawOfTropeExamples here.

''The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus'' is considered to be Creator/WilliamShakespeare's first tragedy. It is set in UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire, albeit a very fantastic and fictional version that is melange of different periods and settings. It is noted to have been produced and performed by 1594. It is arguably one of the few Shakespeare plays (alongside ''Theatre/AMidsummerNightsDream'' and perhaps ''Theatre/TheTempest'') that is entirely original to Shakespeare[[note]]There is in addition to the play, a prose book on Titus Andronicus, and a popular ballad that has survived, and all three are dated to 1594, but nobody knows for sure whether the play, the prose, or the ballad came first, and which came second, and so on[[/note]]. Some scholars believe that the first parts of the play were co-written by George Peele, but this hypothesis is disputed.

* EvenBadMenLoveTheirMamas: Chiron and Demetrius love their mother and do all their villainy to help with her vengeance.
* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: Aaron loves [[MoralityPet his baby son]].
* EvenEvilHasStandards: Chiron and Demetrius have no compunctions about raping and dismembering Lavinia or killing Aaron's baby son, but they are still taken aback when Aaron murders the nurse. And Aaron has no compunctions about murdering the nurse (and practically every other misdeed in the play), but he'll also fight to the death to save his son's life.
* EvilMatriarch: Tamora, who is motivated by the deaths of some of her sons, and uses her living sons as her tools of vengeance.

* AmbiguousTimePeriod: The chronology of the tragedies puts this play "during the reign of a a fictional (late?) Roman emperor" with the plays between it being Cymbeline, early first century AD, and Hamlet, c. ninth-tenth century AD.

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