Titus Andronicus

Titus Andronicus, a Roman general returning victorious from war against the Goths, sacrifices the eldest son of their captive queen, Tamora, and so begins a chain of revenge more violent than any other in Shakespeare. Tamora marries the new emperor and, with her lover Aaron the Moor, a brilliant and gleeful villain, takes terrible vengeance on Titus's family, until Titus, half mad with grief, plans a revenge of his own, ending in a banquet no audience forgets.

Shakespeare's first tragedy, written in the early 1590s, it was hugely popular in its time, in the fashion set by Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. Long dismissed for its horrors, it has been revived with success in modern times, and Julie Taymor filmed it in 1999. This edition follows the First Folio of 1623, which added a scene, Titus at a banquet killing a fly, not found in the earlier printings.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616), born in Stratford-upon-Avon, actor, playwright and shareholder of a London company, wrote about thirty-seven plays and 154 sonnets.

The tragedies Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello and King Lear, and comedies such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, are here in full, with hundreds of editions and studies from HathiTrust.