Abstract: In the midst of his ‘ecstasy’ of grief (4.1.125), Titus cries out against the injustices he has suffered, ‘Terras Astraea reliquit: be you remembered, Marcus,/ She’s gone, she’s fled’ (4.3.4–5). Such a sentiment is understandable, to be expected even, in the world of Shakespeare’s play, as Ovid is re-purposed to express Titus’s torment.2 Rather than seeing such a statement as conventional, this chapter investigates the links between the many hardships suffered by the Andronicii and contemporaneous changes within early modern l...
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