Titus Andronicus Analysis

Many of William Shakespeare’s plays are so memorable because of the protagonists presented in them. Shakespeare delicately crafts (his) protagonists as complex characters that (evoke) different responses from the audience, often leaving the audience with a memorable impression of how they initially felt about the protagonist and how over time those feelings changed due to their experiences in life. Even after the play, the protagonist’s reactions to the events that took place in the play stay with us, because they make us question how we would have handled the situations that the protagonist was presented with. This exact feeling happens in two of Shakespeare’s early plays, Titus Andronicus and Hamlet. Both plays present two protagonists of
Because Titus is a general and warrior, he is rash and decisive, which is the exact opposite of Hamlet. As stated before, Titus is quick to sacrifice Alarbus despite Tamora begging him not to. Another example of Titus’ rashness is at the beginning of the play when Titus chooses Saturnius to be emperor and gives his daughter Lavinia to Saturnius to marry. Saturnius’ brother Bassianus is engaged to Lavinia, and the two run away together to get eloped. Titus attempts to go after them, and kills his son Mutius without hesitation when Mutius blocked Titus’ way. Titus quickly killed his own son without pondering on it simply because Mutius went against his father to support his sister, which supports that Titus is a man of brutal action. In contrast to Titus, it is very easy to see that at the start of the play Hamlet is far from a man of action, and can easily be seen as a snarky teenager despite his real age of thirty years. Hamlet’s father has died, and because Hamlet was studying in Wittenberg, his uncle Claudius has assumed the throne and Hamlet’s mother. Hamlet expresses his distress in the second scene of the first act when replying to Claudius with “A little more than kin, and less than kind” (1.2.65). Hamlet is also quite rude to his mother as well, but her and Claudius’ marriage not even two months after his father’s death gives him reason to be. Both
One important factor in each of the protagonist’s decision(s) to take action is the time frame each of them takes place. Titus takes place before the formation of Christianity, while Hamlet takes place after. What is possibly Hamlet’s father’s ghost speaks to Hamlet from purgatory, which is how Hamlet found out that Claudius killed his father. The ghost asks Hamlet to avenge his father, which is another main difference between the protagonists journey to revenge. Titus decided to seek revenge on his own, while Hamlet was asked to. Instead of quickly coming to a rash decision like Titus would have, Hamlet makes sure to prove that Claudius indeed killed his father by setting up a play where a king was killed by the same means that Claudius killed Hamlet’s father. When Claudius nervously leaves the room when the murder in the play occurs, Hamlet then knows that Claudius murdered his father and decides to follow through with avenging his father, which is seen later in that same scene: “Now could I drink hot blood/And do such bitter business as the day/Would quake on”