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The survival of ritual forms in literature and in the drama is well known to scholars. Lord Raglan has conjectured that such traditions as those of Robin Hood, the Norse Sagas, Hengist and Horsa, Cuchulainn, and the story of Troy have originated in religious ceremonies (11), and Jessie Weston has offered the hypothesis that the Holy Grail stories originated in Mithraism (16). It has been shown by Dieterich (3), Ridgeway (13), Jane Harrison (6), Gilbert Murray (10), and Cornford (2) that theatrical forms are traceable to the religious rituals of ancient Greece.
G. Wilson Knight has suggested that Shakespearian tragedy is essentially a re-working of ancient religious ceremonies connected with the sacrifice of the mass. Shakespeare's kings, he states, are to be compared with the ritual kings of pagan cultures (7). This essay seeks to show the existence of a ritual pattern in the tragedy Titus Andronicus.
In a recent article on the Eleusinian Mysteries1 I discussed the psycho-analytic significance of primitive puberty rites. They represent, according to the hypothesis offered, a social institution devised, no doubt over a long period of time, by the older men. The purpose of this institution was both to rid the adolescents of their oedipal ambivalence, freeing their energies for higher cultural activities, and to provide an outlet for the hostility of the tribal fathers against their sons.
The essential feature of these rituals consists of being shown the tribal mysteries, dramatic portrayals of the killing and resurrection of the neophyte. Originally, according to Freud's hypothesis, the separation of the son from the mother was carried out by the killing, castrating, or driving out of the male offspring. Frequently, puberty rituals for girls consist of a defloration ceremony.
In the course of social development, these mysteries often survive under the direction of organizations of priests, who conduct the dramatic-magical rites of the group. The religious mysteri