KING:   Have you heard the Argument, is there no Offense in 't?

HAMLET:   No, no, they do but jest, poyson in jest, no Offense i' the world.

KING:   What do you call the Play?

HAMLET:   The Mouse-trap: Marry, how? Tropically: This Play is the Image of a murder done in Vienna: Gonzago is the Dukes name, his wife Baptista: you shall see anon: `tis a knavish peece of worke: But what o' that? Your Majestie, and wee that have free soules, it touches us not: let the galld jade winch: our withers are unrung.

THE ARGUMENT:

That knavish piece of work, Titus Andronicus, is actually an ingenious device, designed by its author (most likely, the same that gave us King Lear) to catch the conscience of the queen, a guilty creature with the blood of her own kin on her hands. Elizabeth I, whose mother, Anne Boleyn, knelt in the streets before her uncle, Thomas Howard II, 3^rd duke of Norfolk, to “begge for grace” in vain, could not have been ignorant of the play’s potential interpretation:

THE OFFENSE IN IT:

William Shakespeare would do no such thing. As an agreeable yet ambitious theater professional, he had to appease the censors, bow to the box office, and even collaborate with other playwrights to get the job done. The impertinent fool who would dare bait Elizabeth would soon find himself caught in his own trap. Wisely, he kept his religious and political opinions to himself.

Besides, if there were anything radically amiss with Titus Andronicus, it wouldn't have been played by the servants of the "Right Honorable" earls of Derby, Pembroke and Sussex, as proclaimed on the title page. Nor would it have been the first of Shakespeare's plays to be published, (albeit anonymously) in 1594:

BUT WHAT O' THAT?

"...most commentators assume that Shakespeare was in full possession of his genius when he wrote Titus Andronicus and was consequently doing something subtle. Accordingly, it is for us to study the play and work out what that is."

Alan Hughes, The New Cambridge Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus, 1994

Did William Shakespeare have Catholic sympathies?  His merciless lampooning of the Protestant martyr, Sir John Oldcastle, in the character of Falstaff (see Shakespeare's Typological Satire by Alice Lyle Scoufos), suggests a personal disaffection from the mainstream religious settlement.  For John Klause, (Shakespeare, the Earl and the Jesuit), Shakespeare's acute awareness of the Catholic martyr and poet Robert Southwell turns up in Alls Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure.  These "reminiscences" are "both nostalgic and forward-looking about the religious and political issues that Southwell had long ago raised," issues that "in radically changed circumstances, seemed as significant as ever" to the playwright.   Frank Brownlow finds in King Lear a "portrayal of illegitimate power" that "when juxtaposed to the activities of Richard Topcliffe and the government he served so assiduously" seem "remarkably true to the real conditions of life for Elizabeth's Catholic subjects."

With men like Topcliffe in charge of hunting down and torturing priests, Shakespeare would have needed an exceedingly subtle means to express any sympathy for Catholic martyrs, or distaste for the state's methods.  If his sympathies were more personal in nature, and attached to particular courtiers and/or noble families whom the queen and her privy council had reason to frown upon, his dramatic portrayal of these outcasts would need to be "too clever by half".

With the use of seven simple but very clever dramatic techniques, Shakespeare fought back against the Elizabethan authority that would tie his tongue.  The First Mousetrap presents a close historiographical reading of Titus Andronicus, revealing the author's strong affinity for the Catholic Howard family, especially Henry Howard, poet earl of Surrey, and his eldest son, Thomas Howard, 4th duke of Norfolk, both of whom were executed for treason.  Poor Tom had foolishly allowed Robert Dudley, the queen's favorite, to tempt him into conspiring to marry the Catholic claimant to England's throne, Mary Queen of Scots.

From the opening scene of the play, the old warrior Titus has numerous parallels with Elizabeth's great-grandsire, Thomas Howard, 2nd duke of Norfolk, the hero of Flodden Field.  Whoever recognized the uncanny resemblances between Titus and Thomas would soon re-interpret the entire play as a cathartic, pro-Catholic response to the Protestant "sacrifice" of the Flodden Duke's great-grandson, beheaded in 1572.