'My Cloudy Melancholy': Productions of Whiteness in Titus Andronicus (1594)

Abstract

This paper examines the significance of Aaron’s melancholy toward the production of whiteness in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. While the word ‘melancholy’ only appears once, Aaron’s self-confessed temperament becomes a key tool in the play’s efforts to define race along moral and physical lines. This paper explores how Aaron becomes a resource in securing the play’s representation of a white, Roman legacy, and how the commodification of Black bodies resonates with early modern constructions of race and the formation of a racially delineated hierarchical system.