Fear of a Catholic on England’s throne stirred high social and political anxieties that played out on the Restoration stage during the Exclusion Crisis. This paper explores the provenance of an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus by the Royalist playwright Edward Ravenscroft. Probably first performed in 1678, the play apparently dropped out of sight as the investigation of the Popish Plot led to incarceration and executions. I argue that Ravenscroft heightened the terrifying elements of the play in response to the initial outbreak of the Plot but by the time that the Catholic Duke of York succeeded to the throne as James II, Ravenscroft refocused his message to help quell the public’s fears about James II’s reign. My analysis explores why Restoration audiences would resonate with the horrors in the play, how changes that Ravenscroft makes to Shakespeare’s original text heighten the fear of a civil unrest, and how excerpts from the paratext of the 1687 publication illustrate a shift of emphasis on the fears that Ravenscroft was addressing between 1678 and 1687. Ravenscroft’s decision to use Titus not only demonstrates Shakespeare’s innate understanding of fear but also the Bard’s adaptability to a variety of politically charged contexts.