ENGl 339

As quoted by Marcus Cicero, "silence is one of the greatest arts of conversation" and Shakespeare exercises this art of conversation by manipulating the quantity of language in his play Titus Andronicus. Accordingly, by incorporating the absences of speech, Shakespeare moves past the convention of language, which is to act as a device for communication, by employing silence as an independent agent. In this way, Shakespeare is able to reframe the customary use of language in his play and as a result, he underpins the contrasting "conversation" of male power and authority in relationship to female subservience and obedience. As an overshadowing motif, power colours the choices, actions, and decisions, made by many of the characters in the play. Consequently, Shakespeare's minimal use of language with respect to his character Lavina draws attention to her lack of power as a woman. At the same time, her powerlessness also calls attention to the suggestion of a secondary theme one in which Shakespeare admonishes the marginalization of woman during the Renaissance era. Thus, the presence of Lavinia's silence accentuates the disproportionate representation of male power and functions a metaphor. Lavinia has a voice for merely two scenes. Yet, her presence as a character remains in the tragedy until the final moments of the play. As a character, she also conveys, in a profound and omniscient manner, the ideological norm surrounding the perception of women in Shakespeare's epoch.

Lavinia serves a number of vital functions. Foremost, Lavina, as a character, operates as a device to maintain the momentum of revenge, which flues the tragedy of the protagonist Titus. As well, Shakespeare deliberately bends the development of the character Lavi...

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...ty as both sophisticated and enlightened, both attributes align with the idea of culture and the principles of logic respectively. Thus, Shakespeare's audience inevitably comes to associate these attribute with Lavinia; therefore, by association her attackers, Chiron and Demetrious, are at the opposite end of the scale in which they become associated with crudeness and irrationality. From this perspective, a metaphorical binary develops between Lavinia and her attackers, which compares the act of cutting out Lavinia's tongue as a means to prevent her from disclosing the names of her aggressors with her clever reconciliation of communication through narrative. In this way, Shakespeare uses the Metamorphoses and Philomel's story to expresses that the true power lies in one's ability to communicate and therefore self-advocate.