England's unexpected victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588 did much to strengthen England's national spirit and usher in a new era of exploration and imperial feeling . The exploration of the world beyond the borders of the British Isles "was accompanied by an intensified production of visions of 'other' worlds" (Bartels 433) gleaned from both classical sources and first-person accounts. 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 allow the "other" worlds into England. This era of English history is characterized not only by a flourishing taste for imperial exploits, but also tempered by fears of invasion by others” (Royster 435). In reaction, through "a conscious or unconscious agenda" (Bartels 434), English cultural rhetoric "began to delineate space and close borders, to discriminate under the guise of discernment, and to separate the Other from the self" (Bartels 434 ). . With skin color so easily distinguishable 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 print” (Bartels 434). However, the Other poses more of a threat to the mainstream than just the color of his skin, "[f]hat emerges as a key focus of the 'other' in Renaissance depictions of the Moors is a behavior that paradoxically… them also showed the English to be like them” (Bartels 435). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay. Such representations are reminiscent of what Susan Schibanoff calls the "rhetoric of proximity, which brings the Other dangerously close by suggesting its similarity or 'intimacy'." which ultimately "[maintains] rigid binary oppositions by temporarily destabilizing them" (Schibanoff 64). Because England was still in the process of defining its national identity, the definition of blackness in the same era must have been even more incomplete: “at this point in history, blackness still took place in a complex and nuanced racial world, rather than constituting one pole of a clearly binary system" (Royster 438). The process may not have been complete, but the Moor in 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 set in a Roman context Rome "as an analogue to Britain, we see a culture proudly committed to Romanness, Roman honour, ancestral Roman practices and values" as well as "the very fear of invasion." , the same panic about 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 enters with Aaron and Tamora's dark-haired son. Aaron himself responds "Well, more or less, or never nothing" (Titus Andronicus IV.i.52-53), cleverly punning on Moor/more and white/white, a testament to something more than just his wit, but an affirmation of his self-awareness of his position as the Other in Rome. The nurse could easily have addressed him simply as Aaron or the Moor, considering that "[b]esides from Lavinia, Aaron is the most visible character in Rome" (Little 65), being the only Moor mentioned by any of the Romans. Another character, who appears only briefly, emerges with the potential to also question Aaron's visibilityin Rome: the son of Aaron. The result of the union between Aaron and Tamora, the Blackamoor child, is described by the nurse as "a black, sad, joyless matter... loathsome as a toad / Among the loyal breeders of our clime" ( Titus Andronicus IV .ii.66-68). Aaron's vigorous defense of his son despite Tamora's order for Aaron to "baptize him with the point of [her] dagger" shows his even more submissive position as a double Other: not only the Other for the Romans, but also for its Gothic counterparts in Rome. Tamora enters the play pleading "noble Titus, spare my firstborn son" (Titus Andronicus Ii120), but later requests that her last son be killed by his own father. We are left to speculate that if she had cared for the baby she could have helped devise the plan to save the baby that Aaron ultimately does. Aaron embraces his offspring as a new companion in Otherness, "[recognizing] his color difference as alien 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 at first glance appears to be a binary representation of black and white, but Francesca Royster makes a convincing case for the dismantling of a “black/white.” white binary" (Royster 432). "If Aaron is coded as black," he argues, "Tamora is represented as hyperwhite" (Royster 432). Between these two extremes we are left to place the Romans, along a continuum between the two extremes mentioned above. It is not simply a question of whiteness versus blackness, since "Tamora's whiteness is racially marked, it is made visible, and therefore it is misleading to simplify the racial landscape of the work to black and white, with black as 'other'" (Royster 433). ). In Titus, we have normative Roman whiteness contrasted on both sides with Moorish whiteness as Other and Gothic whiteness as Other. Evidence for Gothic whiteness as Other comes from the "possibility that Saturninus' observations [on Tamora's hue] suggest that Tamora is whiter than Roman women" (Royster 434). In deconstructing a binary view of race, the work places a prism on a white monolith and breaks it down into a series of delimited shades. The most telling descriptions of whiteness come from the play's most recognizable Other, Aaron: "'White' can be seen in multiple ways as we gain insight into white skin and its disadvantages from Aaron's perspective" while "making mockery of the Goth Chiron blushes" (Royster 442). In contrast, "Coal black is better than another shade / As it scorns to bear another shade / For all the ocean water / It can never turn the swan's legs white" (Titus Andronicus IV. ii.99-103) . White is the variable color, and black is the "sign of permanence and constancy" (Royster 443). Bassanio seems to draw the same conclusion in his insult to Tamora in the forest during the hunt: "Believe me, queen, your [swart] Cimmerian / Does honor to the color of his body / Stained, detested and abominable" (Titus Andronicus) II.iii .72-75). Bassanius suggests that the Goth Other may also be tainted by the mark of the Moorish Other, reinforcing Aaron's double subjugation. Shakespeare, however, does not allow Aaron's position as an effective double Other to distance his character too far from the Roman mainstream; he “grants him a voice of eloquence and knowledge, and allows his schemes to shape the plot” (Bartels 442). For all that physically distinguishes him from the Romans, there is much more that brings him closer to the Romans. He can exchange witty speeches with the Romans, knows their literature well, and is familiar with their religious customs. In Schibanoff's "rhetoric of proximity", 8.1(1996):59-96.