In Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, the audience are confronted with a nightmarish series of violent acts, increasing in ferocity and volume, which culminate in the Roman general Titus feeding Tamora, Queen of the Goths, her sons ‘baked in a pie | Whereof their mother has daintily fed’ (5.3.59-60). 2 Much of the play’s reputation has been built upon the graphic depictions and reports of violence, which commence in state sanctioned execution, worsen to rape and mutilation, and climax in cannibalism. This paper will examine the nature of the violence in the play, and argue that the spiralling offences emanate from a loss of control over legally sanctioned violence. The juridical violence depicted in the early stages of the play is a discourse
