The end of the republic: Titus Andronicus and Julius Caesar.

When the theatres reopened on 27 December 1593, only one new play seems to have been performed by the Lord Chamberlain's Men at Henslowe's Rose Theatre, Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. The play was staged some four weeks into the season, on 24 January 1594, presumably because it took a month to rehearse and to make sure that it was ready for professional performance. Like Henry VI, Part One, Titus appears to have been a notable success, achieving the best takings of the season, and would undoubtedly have enjoyed a long run had not a restraining order, due to yet another outbreak of the plague, forced the theatres to close yet again. And, as with the Henry VI plays, Titus is almost certainly the product of co-authorship, a strong case having been made by Brian Vickers for the conspicuously classical George Peele as the author of the first and last scenes. Opinions differ as to whether Titus was specially written for the reopening of the theatres in late 1593, making it ‘the pivotal play in Shakespeare's early career’, as Jonathan Bate suggests, or whether it was a revival of a work first performed in the late 1580s or early 1590s, and then probably rewritten for the grand reopening. Either way, it is clear that Titus was considered to be a potentially popular work that was likely to entice audiences back to the theatre in the mid-1590s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]