This one hand yet is left to cut your throats, And make two pasties of your shameful heads; (*) The first folio omits, own. a a coffin-] The crust of a raised pie was of old called the This ravenous tiger, this accursed devil; AARON. Some devil whisper curses in mine ear, And prompt me, that my tongue may utter forth The venomous malice of my swelling heart! Luc. Away, inhuman dog! unhallow'd slave !Sirs, help our uncle to convey him in. [Exeunt Goths, with AARON. without. Flourish Enter TITUS, dressed like a cook, LAVINIA, with a veil over her face, YOUNG LUCIUS, and others. TITUS places the dishes on the table. TIT. Welcome, my gracious lord; welcome, dread queen; Welcome, ye warlike Goths; welcome, Lucius; And welcome, all! Although the cheer be poor, 'T will fill your stomachs, please you eat of it. SAT. Why art thou thus attir'd, Andronicus? TIT. Because I would be sure to have all well, To entertain your highness and your empress. SAT. We are beholden to you, good Andronicus. TIT. An if your highness knew my heart, you were. My lord the emperor, resolve me this: aand it is now done.] A line not found in the folio. bthine only daughter thus?] The reading of the 4to. 1600; later editions omitting, "thus." c Lest Rome, &c.] This line, beginning, "Let Rome," &c. in SAT. It was, Andronicus. TIT. Your reason, mighty lord? SAT. Because the girl should not survive her shame, And by her presence still renew his sorrows. TIT. Kill'd her, for whom my tears have made me blind. I am as woeful as Virginius was, SAT. What, was she ravish'd? tell, who did the deed? TIT. Will 't please you eat?-will't please your highness feed? TAM. Why hast thou slain thine only daughter thus ?b TIT. Not I; 't was Chiron and Demetrius : They ravish'd her, and cut away her tongue; And they, 't was they, that did her all this wrong. SAT. Go fetch them hither to us presently. TIT. Why, there they are, both baked in that pie, Whereof their mother daintily hath fed, Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred. 'Tis true, 'tis true, witness my knife's sharp point! [Kills TAMORA. SAT. Die, frantic wretch, for this accursed deed! [Kills TITUS. Luc. Can the son's eye behold his father bleed? There's meed for meed, death for a deadly deed! [Kills SATURNINUS. A great tumult. The People disperse in terror. LUCIUS, MARCUS, and their Partisans ascend the steps of Titus's House. MARC. You sad-fac'd men, people and sons of Rome, By uproars sever'd, like a flight of fowl the old copies, has the prefix, "Roman Lord," in the quartos, and in the folio, "Goth." Steevens observes that, as the speech proceeds in a uniform tenor, the whole probably belongs to Marcus, and to him in its entirety we assign it. Grave witnesses of true experience, Cannot induce you to attend my words,- our ancestor, When with his solemn tongue he did discourse But floods of tears will drown my oratory, For their fell faults our brothers were beheaded; The gates shut on me, and turn'd weeping out, My scars can witness, dumb although they are, [Pointing to the Child in the arms of an Of this was Tamora delivered; These wrongs, unspeakable, past patience, Have we done aught amiss,-show us wherein, Will, hand in hand, all headlong cast us down, EMIL. Come, come, thou reverend man of And bring our emperor gently in thy hand, [To Attendants, who go into the house. ROMANS. Lucius, all hail, Rome's gracious governor! Luc. Thanks, gentle Romans: may I govern so, To heal Rome's harms, and wipe away her woe! But, gentle people, give me aim awhile, For nature puts me to a heavy task; Stand all aloof;—but, uncle, draw you near, To shed obsequious tears upon this trunk.O, take this warm kiss on thy pale-cold lips, [Kisses TITUS. These sorrowful drops upon thy blood-stain'd* face, The last true duties of thy noble son! pay, MARC. Tear for tear, and loving kiss for kiss, To melt in showers. Thy grandsire lov'd thee well: Boy. O, grandsire, grandsire! even with all my heart Would I were dead, so you did live again!- Re-enter Attendants, with AARON. 1 ROMAN. You sad Andronici, have done with woes: Give sentence on this execrable wretch, There let him stand, and rave, and cry for food: For the offence he dies. This is our doom. a No mournful bell-] Query, "No solemn bell," &c.? I am no baby, I, that with base prayers emperor And give him burial in his father's grave. ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. ACT II. (1) SCENE III.— Be unto us as is a nurse's song Of lullaby, to bring her babe asleep.] Douce, in his "Illustrations of Shakspeare," has an interesting note on the burden lullaby. "It would be a hopeless task to trace the origin of the northern verb to lull, which means to sing gently; but it is evidently connected with the Greek λαλέω, loquor, or Aάλλn, the sound made by the beach at sea. Thus much is certain, that the Roman nurses used the word lalla to quiet their children, and that they feigned a deity called Lallus, whom they invoked on that occasion; the lullaby or tune itself was called by the same name. As lallare meant to sing lalla, to lull might in like manner denote the singing of the nurse's lullaby to induce the child to sleep. Thus in an ancient carol composed in the fifteenth century, and preserved among the Sloane MSS. No. 2593: "che song a slepe wt her lullynge "In another old ballad, printed by Mr. Ritson in his Ancient Songs, p. 198, the burden is lully, lully, lullaby, lullyby, sweete baby,' &c.; from which it seems probable that lullaby is only a comparatively modern contraction of lully baby, the first word being the legitimate offspring of the Roman lalla. In another of these pieces, still more ancient, and printed in the same collection, we have ‘lullay, lullow, lully, bewy, lulla baw baw.' "The Welsh appear to have been famous for their lullaby songs. Jones, in his Arte and science of preserving bodie and soule, 1579, 4to., says :-The best nurses, but especially the trim and skilfull Welch women, doe use to sing some preaty sonets, wherwith their copious tong is plentifully stoared of divers pretie tunes and pleasaunt ditties, that the children disquieted might be brought to reste but translated never so well, they want their grace in Englishe, for lacke of proper words: so that I will omit them, as I wishe they would theyr lascivious Dymes, wanton Lullies, and amorous Englins.' "Mr. White, in reviewing his opinion of the etymology of good-by, will perhaps incline to think it a contraction, when properly written good b'ye, of God be with you, and not may your house prosper!" "To add to the stock of our old lullaby songs, two are here subjoined. The first is from a pageant of The slaughter of the innocents, acted at Coventry in the reign of Henry the Eighth, by the taylors and shearers of that city, and most obligingly communicated by Mr. Sharpe. The other is from the curious volume of songs mentioned before in p. 262. Both exhibit the simplicity of ancient manners : "Lully, lulla, thou littell tine childe, By by lully lullay, Lully lullay thou littell tyne child, By by lully lullay. "O sisters too, how may we do, For to preserve this day This pore yongling, for whom we do singe "Herod the king, in his raging, Chargid he hath this day; His men of might, in his owne sight, "That wo is me, pore child for thee, And ever morne and say; For thi parting, nether say nor sing, "By by lullaby In a dre late as I lay Me thought I hard a maydyn say Rockid I my child by by. Then merveld I ryght sore of thys Thus rockyd she her chyld By by lullaby, rockyd I my chyld.' (2) SCENE IV.--A precious ring, that lightens all the hole.] The gem supposed to possess a property of emitting native light was called a carbuncle, and is frequently mentioned in early books; thus, in " The Gesta Romanorum," b. vi. :-"He further beheld and saw a carbuncle in the hall that lighted all the house." So also in Lydgate's "Description of King Priam's Palace," L. II. :— "And for most chefe all derkeness to confound, And so Drayton, in "The Muses' Elysium: "Is that admired mighty stone, That in the very darkest night But the best illustration of the passage we have met with occurs in a letter from Boyle, containing "Observations on a Diamond that shines in the dark: "-" Though Vortomannus was not an eye-witness of what he relates, that the King of Pegu had a true Carbuncle of that bigness and splendour, that it shined very gloriously in the dark; and though Garcias ab Horto, the Indian Vice-Roy's physician, speaks of another carbuncle only on the report of one that he discoursed with; yet as we are not sure that these men that gave themselves out to be eye-witnesses, speak true, yet they may have done so for aught we know to the contrary. . . . . I must not omit that some virtuosi questioning me the other day at Whitehall, and meeting amongst them an ingenious Dutch gentleman whose father was long embassador for the Netherlands in England, I learned of him that he is acquainted with a person who was admiral of the Dutch in the East Indies, and who assured this gentleman Monsieur Boreel, that at his return from thence, he brought back with him into Holland a stone which though it looked but like a pale dull diamond, yet it was a real carbuncle; and did without rubbing shine so much, that when the admiral had occasion to open a chest which he kept under deck in a dark place where it was forbidden to bring candles for fear of mischances, as soon as he opened the trunk, the stone would by its native light shine so as to illustrate a great part of it."-Boyle's Works, Vol. II. p. 82. |