What was Big Willy Shakes going for?
This phrase means exactly what it says: ah, here's the devil in the flesh. It's just another way of calling someone a bad person. Well, not just bad—the worst.
So who is Lucius talking about? "Aaron the Moor" of course. He's Tamora's secret lover and the diabolical mastermind behind the plot to destroy the Andronicus family. Let's take a look at what he does over the play:
- He convinces Demetrius and Chiron to rape Lavinia (2.1).
- He's responsible for framing Martius and Quintus for the murder of Bassianus (2.1).
- He even convinces Titus to lop off his own hand (3.1).
We think it's safe to say that he causes a lot of suffering. There's no doubt he earned the name "devil" on his own. But the play also dramatizes some 16th-century attitudes toward race and skin color. Aaron the Moor's dark skin is associated with evil, and he displays a hyper-sexuality that Elizabethans often associated with black men. So it's not exactly the most progressive characterization in the world. But at the same time, Shakespeare also raises the possibility that Aaron's motives for vengeance may originate in the way society views him. This phrase could be talking about Aaron's race, instead of his actions.
Earlier, when the nurse calls Aaron's dark-skinned child a "devil," Aaron doesn't disagree. Instead, he embraces the nurse's racist remark and turns it into a positive, insisting that his little "devil" is a "joyful issue" ("issue" meaning something that comes out of something else, i.e. a baby), and that his lover, Tamora, must be the devil's "dam" (mother).
Hmm… so maybe Aaron wouldn't take this as the insult it's meant to be. One thing's for sure: Shakespeare liked his insult. He used it 10 years later in Henry V: "they were devils incarnate" (2.3.30).