Under Development
Most scholars date the play to the early 1590s. In his Arden edition, Jonathan Bate points out that on 24 January 1594, it was apparently listed as a new play in Philip Henslowe's diary. However, Bate reports that many scholars have doubted its newness in 1594, given that Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair (1614) describes the play as 25 to 30 years old, which would date it to ca. 1584-89.
The play was published in three separate quarto editions prior to the First Folio of 1623, which are referred to as Q1, Q2, and Q3 by Shakespeare scholars. The play was entered into the Register of the Stationers Company on Feb. 6, 1594, by the printer John Danter. Danter sold the rights to the booksellers Thomas Millington and Edward White; they issued the first quarto edition (Q1) later that year, with printing done by Danter. The title page is unusual in that it assigns the play to three different companies of actors—Pembroke's Men, Derby's Men, and Sussex's Men. White published Q2 in 1600 (printed by James Roberts), and Q3 in 1611 (printed by Edward Allde). The First Folio text (1623) was printed from Q3 with an additional scene, III, ii.
Q1 is regarded as a reasonably "good" (complete and reliable) text, and is the basis for most modern editions, although it does not include some material found in the First Folio. Only a single copy is known to exist today; Q2 appears to be based on a damaged copy of Q1, as it is a good reproduction of the Q1 text, but is missing a number of lines. Two copies are known to exist today; Q3 appears to be a further degradation of the Q2 text: it includes a number of corrections to Q2, but introduces even more errors. The First Folio text of 1623 seems to be based on the Q3 text, but also includes material found in none of the quarto editions, including the entirety of Act 3, Scene 2 (in which Titus seems to be losing his sanity). This scene is generally regarded as authentic and included in modern editions of the play.
None of the three quarto editions names the author (as was normal in the publication of playtexts in the early 1590s). However, Francis Meres lists the play as one of Shakespeare's tragedies in a publication of 1598, and the editors of the First Folio included it among his works. Despite this, Shakespeare's full authorship has been doubted. In the introduction to his 1678 adaptation of the play (printed nine years later, in 1687), Edward Ravenscroft states: "I have been told by some anciently conversant with the Stage, that it was not Originally his, but brought by a private Author to be Acted, and he only gave some Master-touches to one or two Principal Parts or Characters". There are problems with Ravenscroft's statement: the old men "conversant with the Stage" could not have been more than children when Titus was written, and Ravenscroft may be biased, since he uses the story to justify his alterations of Shakespeare's play. However, the story has been used to bolster arguments that another author was partly responsible.
The principal candidate is the dramatist George Peele, whose linguistic characteristics have been detected in both the first act, and the scene in which Lavinia uses Ovid's Metamorphoses to explain that she has been raped. The assertion of Peele's hand in the play remains controversial, however, and those who admire the play tend to argue against it. It has even been posited that Shakespeare didn't write Titus Andronicus at all; for example, the 19th century Globe Illustrated Shakespeare (still in print in 2005) goes so far as to claim there was a general agreement on the matter due to the un-Shakespearean "barbarity" of the play's action.