Complete Plays, The (7 page)

Titus Andronicus

Come, Lucius, come; stay not to talk with them.

Exeunt

S
CENE
IV. A
NOTHER
PART
OF
THE
FOREST
.

Enter Demetrius and Chiron with Lavinia, ravished; her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out

Demetrius

So, now go tell, an if thy tongue can speak,
Who ’twas that cut thy tongue and ravish’d thee.

Chiron

Write down thy mind, bewray thy meaning so,
An if thy stumps will let thee play the scribe.

Demetrius

See, how with signs and tokens she can scrowl.

Chiron

Go home, call for sweet water, wash thy hands.

Demetrius

She hath no tongue to call, nor hands to wash;
And so let’s leave her to her silent walks.

Chiron

An ’twere my case, I should go hang myself.

Demetrius

If thou hadst hands to help thee knit the cord.

Exeunt Demetrius and Chiron

Enter Marcus

Marcus

Who is this? my niece, that flies away so fast!
Cousin, a word; where is your husband?
If I do dream, would all my wealth would wake me!
If I do wake, some planet strike me down,
That I may slumber in eternal sleep!
Speak, gentle niece, what stern ungentle hands
Have lopp’d and hew’d and made thy body bare
Of her two branches, those sweet ornaments,
Whose circling shadows kings have sought to sleep in,
And might not gain so great a happiness
As have thy love? Why dost not speak to me?
Alas, a crimson river of warm blood,
Like to a bubbling fountain stirr’d with wind,
Doth rise and fall between thy rosed lips,
Coming and going with thy honey breath.
But, sure, some Tereus hath deflowered thee,
And, lest thou shouldst detect him, cut thy tongue.
Ah, now thou turn’st away thy face for shame!
And, notwithstanding all this loss of blood,
As from a conduit with three issuing spouts,
Yet do thy cheeks look red as Titan’s face
Blushing to be encountered with a cloud.
Shall I speak for thee? shall I say ’tis so?
O, that I knew thy heart; and knew the beast,
That I might rail at him, to ease my mind!
Sorrow concealed, like an oven stopp’d,
Doth burn the heart to cinders where it is.
Fair Philomela, she but lost her tongue,
And in a tedious sampler sew’d her mind:
But, lovely niece, that mean is cut from thee;
A craftier Tereus, cousin, hast thou met,
And he hath cut those pretty fingers off,
That could have better sew’d than Philomel.
O, had the monster seen those lily hands
Tremble, like aspen-leaves, upon a lute,
And make the silken strings delight to kiss them,
He would not then have touch’d them for his life!
Or, had he heard the heavenly harmony
Which that sweet tongue hath made,
He would have dropp’d his knife, and fell asleep
As Cerberus at the Thracian poet’s feet.
Come, let us go, and make thy father blind;
For such a sight will blind a father’s eye:
One hour’s storm will drown the fragrant meads;
What will whole months of tears thy father’s eyes?
Do not draw back, for we will mourn with thee
O, could our mourning ease thy misery!

Exeunt

A
CT
III

S
CENE
I. R
OME
. A
STREET
.

Enter Judges, Senators and Tribunes, with Martius and Quintus, bound, passing on to the place of execution; Titus going before, pleading

Titus Andronicus

Hear me, grave fathers! noble tribunes, stay!
For pity of mine age, whose youth was spent
In dangerous wars, whilst you securely slept;
For all my blood in Rome’s great quarrel shed;
For all the frosty nights that I have watch’d;
And for these bitter tears, which now you see
Filling the aged wrinkles in my cheeks;
Be pitiful to my condemned sons,
Whose souls are not corrupted as ’tis thought.
For two and twenty sons I never wept,
Because they died in honour’s lofty bed.

Lieth down; the Judges, & c., pass by him, and Exeunt

For these, these, tribunes, in the dust I write
My heart’s deep languor and my soul’s sad tears:
Let my tears stanch the earth’s dry appetite;
My sons’ sweet blood will make it shame and blush.
O earth, I will befriend thee more with rain,
That shall distil from these two ancient urns,
Than youthful April shall with all his showers:
In summer’s drought I’ll drop upon thee still;
In winter with warm tears I’ll melt the snow
And keep eternal spring-time on thy face,
So thou refuse to drink my dear sons’ blood.

Enter Lucius, with his sword drawn

O reverend tribunes! O gentle, aged men!
Unbind my sons, reverse the doom of death;
And let me say, that never wept before,
My tears are now prevailing orators.

Lucius

O noble father, you lament in vain:
The tribunes hear you not; no man is by;
And you recount your sorrows to a stone.

Titus Andronicus

Ah, Lucius, for thy brothers let me plead.
Grave tribunes, once more I entreat of you,—

Lucius

My gracious lord, no tribune hears you speak.

Titus Andronicus

Why, tis no matter, man; if they did hear,
They would not mark me, or if they did mark,
They would not pity me, yet plead I must;
Therefore I tell my sorrows to the stones;
Who, though they cannot answer my distress,
Yet in some sort they are better than the tribunes,
For that they will not intercept my tale:
When I do weep, they humbly at my feet
Receive my tears and seem to weep with me;
And, were they but attired in grave weeds,
Rome could afford no tribune like to these.
A stone is soft as wax,— tribunes more hard than stones;
A stone is silent, and offendeth not,
And tribunes with their tongues doom men to death.

Rises

But wherefore stand’st thou with thy weapon drawn?

Lucius

To rescue my two brothers from their death:
For which attempt the judges have pronounced
My everlasting doom of banishment.

Titus Andronicus

O happy man! they have befriended thee.
Why, foolish Lucius, dost thou not perceive
That Rome is but a wilderness of tigers?
Tigers must prey, and Rome affords no prey
But me and mine: how happy art thou, then,
From these devourers to be banished!
But who comes with our brother Marcus here?

Enter Marcus and Lavinia

Marcus Andronicus

Titus, prepare thy aged eyes to weep;
Or, if not so, thy noble heart to break:
I bring consuming sorrow to thine age.

Titus Andronicus

Will it consume me? let me see it, then.

Marcus Andronicus

This was thy daughter.

Titus Andronicus

Why, Marcus, so she is.

Lucius

Ay me, this object kills me!

Titus Andronicus

Faint-hearted boy, arise, and look upon her.
Speak, Lavinia, what accursed hand
Hath made thee handless in thy father’s sight?
What fool hath added water to the sea,
Or brought a faggot to bright-burning Troy?
My grief was at the height before thou camest,
And now like Nilus, it disdaineth bounds.
Give me a sword, I’ll chop off my hands too;
For they have fought for Rome, and all in vain;
And they have nursed this woe, in feeding life;
In bootless prayer have they been held up,
And they have served me to effectless use:
Now all the service I require of them
Is that the one will help to cut the other.
’Tis well, Lavinia, that thou hast no hands;
For hands, to do Rome service, are but vain.

Lucius

Speak, gentle sister, who hath martyr’d thee?

Marcus Andronicus

O, that delightful engine of her thoughts
That blabb’d them with such pleasing eloquence,
Is torn from forth that pretty hollow cage,
Where, like a sweet melodious bird, it sung
Sweet varied notes, enchanting every ear!

Lucius

O, say thou for her, who hath done this deed?

Marcus Andronicus

O, thus I found her, straying in the park,
Seeking to hide herself, as doth the deer
That hath received some unrecuring wound.

Titus Andronicus

It was my deer; and he that wounded her
Hath hurt me more than had he killed me dead:
For now I stand as one upon a rock
Environed with a wilderness of sea,
Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave,
Expecting ever when some envious surge
Will in his brinish bowels swallow him.
This way to death my wretched sons are gone;
Here stands my other son, a banished man,
And here my brother, weeping at my woes.
But that which gives my soul the greatest spurn,
Is dear Lavinia, dearer than my soul.
Had I but seen thy picture in this plight,
It would have madded me: what shall I do
Now I behold thy lively body so?
Thou hast no hands, to wipe away thy tears:
Nor tongue, to tell me who hath martyr’d thee:
Thy husband he is dead: and for his death
Thy brothers are condemn’d, and dead by this.
Look, Marcus! ah, son Lucius, look on her!
When I did name her brothers, then fresh tears
Stood on her cheeks, as doth the honey-dew
Upon a gather’d lily almost wither’d.

Marcus Andronicus

Perchance she weeps because they kill’d her husband;
Perchance because she knows them innocent.

Titus Andronicus

If they did kill thy husband, then be joyful
Because the law hath ta’en revenge on them.
No, no, they would not do so foul a deed;
Witness the sorrow that their sister makes.
Gentle Lavinia, let me kiss thy lips.
Or make some sign how I may do thee ease:
Shall thy good uncle, and thy brother Lucius,
And thou, and I, sit round about some fountain,
Looking all downwards to behold our cheeks
How they are stain’d, as meadows, yet not dry,
With miry slime left on them by a flood?
And in the fountain shall we gaze so long
Till the fresh taste be taken from that clearness,
And made a brine-pit with our bitter tears?
Or shall we cut away our hands, like thine?
Or shall we bite our tongues, and in dumb shows
Pass the remainder of our hateful days?
What shall we do? let us, that have our tongues,
Plot some deuce of further misery,
To make us wonder’d at in time to come.

Lucius

Sweet father, cease your tears; for, at your grief,
See how my wretched sister sobs and weeps.

Marcus Andronicus

Patience, dear niece. Good Titus, dry thine eyes.

Titus Andronicus

Ah, Marcus, Marcus! brother, well I wot
Thy napkin cannot drink a tear of mine,
For thou, poor man, hast drown’d it with thine own.

Lucius

Ah, my Lavinia, I will wipe thy cheeks.

Titus Andronicus

Mark, Marcus, mark! I understand her signs:
Had she a tongue to speak, now would she say
That to her brother which I said to thee:
His napkin, with his true tears all bewet,
Can do no service on her sorrowful cheeks.
O, what a sympathy of woe is this,
As far from help as Limbo is from bliss!

Enter Aaron

Aaron

Titus Andronicus, my lord the emperor
Sends thee this word,— that, if thou love thy sons,
Let Marcus, Lucius, or thyself, old Titus,
Or any one of you, chop off your hand,
And send it to the king: he for the same
Will send thee hither both thy sons alive;
And that shall be the ransom for their fault.

Titus Andronicus

O gracious emperor! O gentle Aaron!
Did ever raven sing so like a lark,
That gives sweet tidings of the sun’s uprise?
With all my heart, I’ll send the emperor My hand:
Good Aaron, wilt thou help to chop it off?

Lucius

Stay, father! for that noble hand of thine,
That hath thrown down so many enemies,
Shall not be sent: my hand will serve the turn:
My youth can better spare my blood than you;
And therefore mine shall save my brothers’ lives.

Marcus Andronicus

 
Which of your hands hath not defended Rome,
And rear’d aloft the bloody battle-axe,
Writing destruction on the enemy’s castle?
O, none of both but are of high desert:
My hand hath been but idle; let it serve
To ransom my two nephews from their death;
Then have I kept it to a worthy end.

Aaron

Nay, come, agree whose hand shall go along,
For fear they die before their pardon come.

Marcus Andronicus

My hand shall go.

Lucius

 
By heaven, it shall not go!

Titus Andronicus

Sirs, strive no more: such wither’d herbs as these
Are meet for plucking up, and therefore mine.

Lucius

Sweet father, if I shall be thought thy son,
Let me redeem my brothers both from death.

Marcus Andronicus

And, for our father’s sake and mother’s care,
Now let me show a brother’s love to thee.

Titus Andronicus

Agree between you; I will spare my hand.

Lucius

Then I’ll go fetch an axe.

Marcus Andronicus

But I will use the axe.

Exeunt Lucius and Marcus

Titus Andronicus

Come hither, Aaron; I’ll deceive them both:
Lend me thy hand, and I will give thee mine.

Aaron

[Aside]
 
If that be call’d deceit, I will be honest,
And never, whilst I live, deceive men so:
But I’ll deceive you in another sort,
And that you’ll say, ere half an hour pass.

Cuts off Titus’s hand

Re-enter Lucius and Marcus