Titus Andronicus
ACT IV SCENE II | The same. A room in the palace. | |
[ Enter, from one side, AARON, DEMETRIUS, and CHIRON; from the other side, Young LUCIUS, and an Attendant, with a bundle of weapons, and verses writ upon them ] | ||
CHIRON | Demetrius, here’s the son of Lucius; | |
He hath some message to deliver us. | ||
AARON | Ay, some mad message from his mad grandfather. | |
Young LUCIUS | My lords, with all the humbleness I may, | |
I greet your honours from Andronicus. | 5 | |
[Aside] | ||
And pray the Roman gods confound you both! | ||
DEMETRIUS | Gramercy, lovely Lucius: what’s the news? | |
Young LUCIUS | [Aside] That you are both decipher’d, that’s the news, | |
For villains mark’d with rape.–May it please you, | ||
My grandsire, well advised, hath sent by me | 10 | |
The goodliest weapons of his armoury | ||
To gratify your honourable youth, | ||
The hope of Rome; for so he bade me say; | ||
And so I do, and with his gifts present | ||
Your lordships, that, whenever you have need, | 15 | |
You may be armed and appointed well: | ||
And so I leave you both: | ||
[Aside] | ||
like bloody villains. | ||
[Exeunt Young LUCIUS, and Attendant] | ||
DEMETRIUS | What’s here? A scroll; and written round about? | |
Let’s see; | 20 | |
[Reads] | ||
‘Integer vitae, scelerisque purus, | ||
Non eget Mauri jaculis, nec arcu.’ | ||
CHIRON | O, ’tis a verse in Horace; I know it well: | |
I read it in the grammar long ago. | ||
AARON | Ay, just; a verse in Horace; right, you have it. | 25 |
[Aside] | ||
Now, what a thing it is to be an ass! | ||
Here’s no sound jest! the old man hath found their guilt; | ||
And sends them weapons wrapped about with lines, | ||
That wound, beyond their feeling, to the quick. | ||
But were our witty empress well afoot, | 30 | |
She would applaud Andronicus’ conceit: | ||
But let her rest in her unrest awhile. | ||
And now, young lords, was’t not a happy star | ||
Led us to Rome, strangers, and more than so, | ||
Captives, to be advanced to this height? | 35 | |
It did me good, before the palace gate | ||
To brave the tribune in his brother’s hearing. | ||
DEMETRIUS | But me more good, to see so great a lord | |
Basely insinuate and send us gifts. | ||
AARON | Had he not reason, Lord Demetrius? | 40 |
Did you not use his daughter very friendly? | ||
DEMETRIUS | I would we had a thousand Roman dames | |
At such a bay, by turn to serve our lust. | ||
CHIRON | A charitable wish and full of love. | |
AARON | Here lacks but your mother for to say amen. | 45 |
CHIRON | And that would she for twenty thousand more. | |
DEMETRIUS | Come, let us go; and pray to all the gods | |
For our beloved mother in her pains. | ||
AARON | [Aside] Pray to the devils; the gods have given us over. | |
[Trumpets sound within] | ||
DEMETRIUS | Why do the emperor’s trumpets flourish thus? | 50 |
CHIRON | Belike, for joy the emperor hath a son. | |
DEMETRIUS | Soft! who comes here? | |
[Enter a Nurse, with a blackamoor Child in her arms] | ||
Nurse | Good morrow, lords: | |
O, tell me, did you see Aaron the Moor? | ||
AARON | Well, more or less, or ne’er a whit at all, | 55 |
Here Aaron is; and what with Aaron now? | ||
Nurse | O gentle Aaron, we are all undone! | |
Now help, or woe betide thee evermore! | ||
AARON | Why, what a caterwauling dost thou keep! | |
What dost thou wrap and fumble in thine arms? | 60 | |
Nurse | O, that which I would hide from heaven’s eye, | |
Our empress’ shame, and stately Rome’s disgrace! | ||
She is deliver’d, lords; she is deliver’d. | ||
AARON | To whom? | |
Nurse | I mean, she is brought a-bed. | 65 |
AARON | Well, God give her good rest! What hath he sent her? | |
Nurse | A devil. | |
AARON | Why, then she is the devil’s dam; a joyful issue. | |
Nurse | A joyless, dismal, black, and sorrowful issue: | |
Here is the babe, as loathsome as a toad | 70 | |
Amongst the fairest breeders of our clime: | ||
The empress sends it thee, thy stamp, thy seal, | ||
And bids thee christen it with thy dagger’s point. | ||
AARON | ‘Zounds, ye whore! is black so base a hue? | |
Sweet blowse, you are a beauteous blossom, sure. | 75 | |
DEMETRIUS | Villain, what hast thou done? | |
AARON | That which thou canst not undo. | |
CHIRON | Thou hast undone our mother. | |
AARON | Villain, I have done thy mother. | |
DEMETRIUS | And therein, hellish dog, thou hast undone. | 80 |
Woe to her chance, and damn’d her loathed choice! | ||
Accursed the offspring of so foul a fiend! | ||
CHIRON | It shall not live. | |
AARON | It shall not die. | |
Nurse | Aaron, it must; the mother wills it so. | 85 |
AARON | What, must it, nurse? then let no man but I | |
Do execution on my flesh and blood. | ||
DEMETRIUS | I’ll broach the tadpole on my rapier’s point: | |
Nurse, give it me; my sword shall soon dispatch it. | ||
AARON | Sooner this sword shall plough thy bowels up. | 90 |
[Takes the Child from the Nurse, and draws] | ||
Stay, murderous villains! will you kill your brother? | ||
Now, by the burning tapers of the sky, | ||
That shone so brightly when this boy was got, | ||
He dies upon my scimitar’s sharp point | ||
That touches this my first-born son and heir! | 95 | |
I tell you, younglings, not Enceladus, | ||
With all his threatening band of Typhon’s brood, | ||
Nor great Alcides, nor the god of war, | ||
Shall seize this prey out of his father’s hands. | ||
What, what, ye sanguine, shallow-hearted boys! | 100 | |
Ye white-limed walls! ye alehouse painted signs! | ||
Coal-black is better than another hue, | ||
In that it scorns to bear another hue; | ||
For all the water in the ocean | ||
Can never turn the swan’s black legs to white, | 105 | |
Although she lave them hourly in the flood. | ||
Tell the empress from me, I am of age | ||
To keep mine own, excuse it how she can. | ||
DEMETRIUS | Wilt thou betray thy noble mistress thus? | |
AARON | My mistress is my mistress; this myself, | 110 |
The vigour and the picture of my youth: | ||
This before all the world do I prefer; | ||
This maugre all the world will I keep safe, | ||
Or some of you shall smoke for it in Rome. | ||
DEMETRIUS | By this our mother is forever shamed. | 115 |
CHIRON | Rome will despise her for this foul escape. | |
Nurse | The emperor, in his rage, will doom her death. | |
CHIRON | I blush to think upon this ignomy. | |
AARON | Why, there’s the privilege your beauty bears: | |
Fie, treacherous hue, that will betray with blushing | 120 | |
The close enacts and counsels of the heart! | ||
Here’s a young lad framed of another leer: | ||
Look, how the black slave smiles upon the father, | ||
As who should say ‘Old lad, I am thine own.’ | ||
He is your brother, lords, sensibly fed | 125 | |
Of that self-blood that first gave life to you, | ||
And from that womb where you imprison’d were | ||
He is enfranchised and come to light: | ||
Nay, he is your brother by the surer side, | ||
Although my seal be stamped in his face. | 130 | |
Nurse | Aaron, what shall I say unto the empress? | |
DEMETRIUS | Advise thee, Aaron, what is to be done, | |
And we will all subscribe to thy advice: | ||
Save thou the child, so we may all be safe. | ||
AARON | Then sit we down, and let us all consult. | 135 |
My son and I will have the wind of you: | ||
Keep there: now talk at pleasure of your safety. | ||
[They sit] | ||
DEMETRIUS | How many women saw this child of his? | |
AARON | Why, so, brave lords! when we join in league, | |
I am a lamb: but if you brave the Moor, | 140 | |
The chafed boar, the mountain lioness, | ||
The ocean swells not so as Aaron storms. | ||
But say, again; how many saw the child? | ||
Nurse | Cornelia the midwife and myself; | |
And no one else but the deliver’d empress. | 145 | |
AARON | The empress, the midwife, and yourself: | |
Two may keep counsel when the third’s away: | ||
Go to the empress, tell her this I said. | ||
[He kills the nurse] | ||
Weke, weke! so cries a pig prepared to the spit. | ||
DEMETRIUS | What mean’st thou, Aaron? wherefore didst thou this? | 150 |
AARON | O Lord, sir, ’tis a deed of policy: | |
Shall she live to betray this guilt of ours, | ||
A long-tongued babbling gossip? no, lords, no: | ||
And now be it known to you my full intent. | ||
Not far, one Muli lives, my countryman; | 155 | |
His wife but yesternight was brought to bed; | ||
His child is like to her, fair as you are: | ||
Go pack with him, and give the mother gold, | ||
And tell them both the circumstance of all; | ||
And how by this their child shall be advanced, | 160 | |
And be received for the emperor’s heir, | ||
And substituted in the place of mine, | ||
To calm this tempest whirling in the court; | ||
And let the emperor dandle him for his own. | ||
Hark ye, lords; ye see I have given her physic, | 165 | |
[Pointing to the nurse] | ||
And you must needs bestow her funeral; | ||
The fields are near, and you are gallant grooms: | ||
This done, see that you take no longer days, | ||
But send the midwife presently to me. | ||
The midwife and the nurse well made away, | 170 | |
Then let the ladies tattle what they please. | ||
CHIRON | Aaron, I see thou wilt not trust the air | |
With secrets. | ||
DEMETRIUS | For this care of Tamora, | |
Herself and hers are highly bound to thee. | 175 | |
[ Exeunt DEMETRIUS and CHIRON bearing off the Nurse’s body ] | ||
AARON | Now to the Goths, as swift as swallow flies; | |
There to dispose this treasure in mine arms, | ||
And secretly to greet the empress’ friends. | ||
Come on, you thick lipp’d slave, I’ll bear you hence; | ||
For it is you that puts us to our shifts: | 180 | |
I’ll make you feed on berries and on roots, | ||
And feed on curds and whey, and suck the goat, | ||
And cabin in a cave, and bring you up | ||
To be a warrior, and command a camp. | ||
[Exit] |
Titus Andronicus, Act 4, Scene 3