Tyranny delineated

This chapter analyzes how the Andronici might have recalled to some contemporaries the situation of Elizabethan Catholics. The chapter talks about the tyranny of Andronici that operates at a number of levels and through a series of linked networks of evil counsel and of sexual or sexualized corruption and influence. It also describes the figure of Saturninus, who, from the outset, reveals himself as the stuff of which tyrants are made. The chapter points out how Saturninus is shown to be a creature of his passions, as evidenced by his instant attraction and attachment to Tamora. It also discusses how the play “Titus Andronicus” presented the impulses that lie behind aims that are quintessentially “feminine.”

The politics of conscience

This chapter focuses on the action of William Shakespeare's plays and explains in detail how various concerns, points of references, and sets of narrative expectation are brought together and resolved. It highlights the depiction of Hamlet's spiritual crisis and his obsession over the prospect of suicide. It puzzles over the extent and the spiritual and epistemological consequences of Hamlet's own madness or melancholy, analysing whether he is the subject of demonically induced delusions and lies. The chapter looks into the term “atheist” in its Elizabethan sense, which is someone who is acting, or trying to act, as though God, the soul and the afterlife do not exist. It also compares Hamlet's soliloquies to someone talking like an atheist but acting like a Christian.

Pagan/Catholic/Protestant/Christian

This chapter reviews the comparison between Hamlet and Titus Andronicus. It explains how Titus operated as an exercise in natural theology and thought experiment that is set in an elaborately evoked pre-Christian Rome. It also points out how Titus sets up a revenge-based primal scene, within which the relations between revenge, religion, and resistance are examined. The chapter highlights the great confessional conflicts of the 1500s that are evoked through the annihilating religious violence, attendant discourses of martyrdom, and persecution at the heart of the action. It also compares the relationship between the plays Titus Andronicus and Richard III to Hamlet and Julius Caesar. It argues how Williams Shakespeare's plays responded to the central issues of tyranny and resistance.