The Danger of Nobility in Titus Andronicus

Abstract

“Noble” is a pregnant term in Shakespeare, particularly in his Roman plays. The most famous use of it is likely Antony’s declaration in Julius Caesar that Brutus was “the noblest Roman of them all” (5.5.67),¹ but the significance of the term is not limited to one line in one play, no matter how frequently quoted. Across the Roman plays, nobility serves as a contested space in which virtue and authority can be expressed, but which is frequently (as in the description of Brutus) ironized or otherwise complicated along the way. Many critics have noted the significance of nobility to Shakespeare’s Rome, and indeed to Renaissance imaginings of Rome beyond Shakespeare, frequently connecting it to the ideals of Romanitas and virtus that made up a neoclassical sense of Roman virtue.²