England's unexpected victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588 did much to strengthen England's national spirit and lead the way to a new era of exploration and imperial sentiment. Exploration of the world beyond the borders of the British Isles "was accompanied by an intensified production of visions of 'other' worlds" (Bartels 433), drawn from both classical sources and early accounts. person. England's new imperialist tendencies became a double-edged sword: they opened the world to the prying eyes of the English, but at the same time they opened the door to "other" worlds in England. This era in English history is characterized by “not only a burgeoning taste for imperial enterprise, but also a taste tempered by fear of invasion by others” (Royster 435). In response, whether through “a conscious or unconscious agenda” (Bartels 434), English cultural rhetoric “began to demarcate space and close boundaries, to discriminate under the guise of discernment and to separate the Other from the self” (Bartels 434). . With skin color so easy to discern from a distance, it is not surprising that the Moor emerged as an Other in Renaissance England, "becoming increasingly visible within English society, in person and in printed form” (Bartels 434). However, the Other poses a greater threat to the mainstream than just the color of one's skin, "[f]or what appears as a key element of 'otherness' in Renaissance depictions of the Moors is a behavior which, paradoxically... showed them also the English" (Bartels 435). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get an original essaySuch representations are reminiscent what Susan Schibanoff calls the “rhetoric of proximity, which brings the Other dangerously close by suggesting their similarity or “intimacy”” which ultimately “[maintains] rigid binary oppositions by temporarily destabilizing them” (Schibanoff 64). that England was still defining its own national identity, the definition of blackness at the same time must have been even more incomplete: "at this point in history, blackness was still part of a complex racial world and nuanced rather than constituting a single pole of a clearly binary system” (Royster 438). The process may not have been complete, but the Moor of Elizabethan England was destined to occupy the position of Other in an emerging racially binary society. In Titus Andronicus we see this chapter of British history unfolding in a Roman context. With Rome "as Britain's analogue, we see a culture proudly committed to Romanness, to Roman honor, to ancient Roman practices and values" as well as "the same fear of invasion, the same panic facing the danger of blurred boundaries” ( Royster 450). The setting may be Roman, but as a representation of England its camouflage is thin. “Oh, tell me, have you seen Aaron the Moor?” the nurse asks when she walks in with Aaron and Tamora's blackamoor child. Aaron himself responds "Well, more or less, or never at all" (Titus Andronicus IV.i.52-53), playing cleverly on Moor/more and white/white, a testimony of more than his wit. , but an affirmation of his self-awareness of his position as Other in Rome. The nurse could just as easily have called him simply Aaron or the Moor, considering that "[next to Lavinia, Aaron is the most visible character in Rome" (Little 65), being the only Moor mentioned by any of the Romans . Another character, who only appearsbriefly, emerges with the potential to call into question even Aaron's visibility in Rome: Aaron's child. The result of the union between Aaron and Tamora, the child Blackamoor, is described by the nurse as "a black and painful trouble without joy, dismal... as loathsome as a toad/Among the fair-faced breeders of our climate" (Titus Andronicus IV.ii.66-68). Aaron's vigorous defense of his child despite Tamora's order for Aaron to "baptize him with [her] dagger point" shows his even more subjugated position as a double.Other: not only is he the Other for the Romans, but even for its Gothic counterparts in Rome. Tamora enters the room pleading "noble Titus, spare my firstborn" (Titus Andronicus Ii120), but she later demands that her lastborn be killed by his own father. We are left to assume that if she had cared for the child, she could have helped come up with the plan to save the child, which Aaron ends up doing. Aaron welcomes his offspring as a new companion in the Other, “[recognizing] their color difference as foreign and ultimately alienating” (Bartels 446). What makes the child perhaps more threatening to Rome than Aaron himself is that the Other is now multiplying. Race in Titus appears at first glance to be a binary representation of black and white, but Francesca Royster argues convincingly for the dismantling of a “black/white.” binary white" (Royster 432). “If Aaron is coded as black,” she asserts, “Tamora is represented as hyperwhite” (Royster 432). Between these two extremes, we remain to place the Romans, along of a continuum between the two extremes mentioned above It is not simply a question of whiteness versus blackness, because “Tamora's whiteness is racially marked, is made visible, and therefore it is misleading to simplify. the racial landscape of the play in black and white, with black as "the other" (Royster 433), we have normative Roman whiteness contrasted on both sides with Moorish blackness as Other and whiteness. Gothic as Other Evidence for Gothic whiteness as Other comes from "the possibility that Saturninus's remarks [on Tamora's hue] suggest that Tamora is whiter than Roman women" (Royster 434). of race, the piece puts a prism on a white monolith and divides it into a number of demarcated hues. The most telling descriptions of whiteness come from the play's most recognizable Other, Aaron: "'white' can be seen in multiple ways when we have Aaron's vision of white skin and its downsides." as he “mocks whiteness.” Goth Chiron blushes" (Royster 442). In contrast, "Coal black is better than another hue / In that he scorns to bear another hue / For all the water of the ocean / Can never transform the swan's legs into white" (Titus Andronicus IV.ii.99-103). It is white which is the variable color, and black the "sign of permanence and constancy" (Royster 443). Bassanius seems draw the same conclusion in his insult to Tamora in the forest during the hunt: “Believe me, Queen, your [black] Cimmerian / Does your honor with the hue of his body / Spotted, hated and abominable” (Titus Andronicus II. iii.72-75). Bassanius suggests that even the Goth Other can be tainted by the mark of the Moorish Other, reinforcing Aaron's double enslavement. that double Other effective in distancing his character too far from the Roman mainstream; it “grants him a voice of eloquence and knowledge, and allows his projects to shape the plot” (Bartels 442). Despite everything that physically distinguishes him from the Romans, there is 8.1(1996):59-96.