Dismiss your followers, and, as suitors should,
Plead your deserts in peace and humbleness.
SAT. How fair the tribune speaks to calm my
thoughts!

BAS. Marcus Andronicus, so I do affy
In thy uprightness and integrity,

And so I love and honour' thee and thine,

Thy nobler brother Titus, and his sons,

And her, to whom my thoughts are humbled all,
Gracious Lavinia, Rome's rich ornament,
That I will here dismiss my loving friends;
And to my fortunes, and the people's favour,
Commit my cause in balance to be weigh'd.

[Exeunt the Followers of BASSIANUS. SAT. Friends, that have been thus forward in my right,

I thank you all, and here dismiss you all;
And to the love and favour of my country
Commit myself, my person, and the cause.

[Exeunt the Followers of SATURninus.

Rome, be as just and gracious unto me,
As I am confident and kind to thee.-

Open the gates, and let me in.

BAS. Tribunes! and me, a poor competitor. [SAT. and Bas. go into the Capitol, and exeunt with Senators, MARCUS, &c.

SCENE II.

The Same.

Enter a Captain, and Others.

CAP. Romans, make way; The good Andronicus, Patron of virtue, Rome's best champion, Successful in the battles that he fights, With honour and with fortune is return'd,

From where he circumscribed with his sword,
And brought to yoke, the enemies of Rome.

Flourish of Trumpets, &c. Enter MUTIUS and MARTIUS: after them, two Men bearing a Coffin covered with black; then QUINTUS and LUCIUS. After them, TITUS ANDRONICUS; and then TAMORA, with ALARBUS, CHIRON, DEMETRIUS, AARON, and other Goths, prisoners; Soldiers and People, following. The Bearers set down the Coffin, and Tirus speaks.

TIT. Hail, Rome, victorious in thy mourning weeds 3 !

Lo, as the bark, that hath discharg'd her fraught*,
Returns with precious lading to the bay,

From whence at first she weigh'd her anchorage,
Cometh Andronicus, bound with laurel boughs,
To re-salute his country with his tears;
Tears of true joy for his return to Rome,-
Thou great defender of this Capitol,

Stand gracious to the rights that we intend!

3 Hail, Rome, victorious in THY mourning weeds!] I suspect that the poet wrote:

66

in my mourning weeds!

i. e. Titus would say: "Thou, Rome, art victorious, though I am a mourner for those sons which I have lost in obtaining that victory.' WARBURTON.

Thy is as well as my. We may suppose the Romans in a grateful ceremony, meeting the dead sons of Andronicus with mournful habits. JOHNSON.

Or that they were in mourning for their emperor who was just dead. STEEVENS.

4- HER fraught.] Old copies-his fraught. Corrected in the fourth folio. MALONE.

66

his fraught," As in the other old copies noted by Mr. Malone. It will be proper here to observe, that the edition of 1600 is not paged. TODD.

5 Thou great defender of this Capitol,] Jupiter, to whom the Capitol was sacred. JOHNSON.

Romans, of five and twenty valiant sons,
Half of the number that king Priam had,
Behold the poor remains, alive, and dead!
These, that survive, let Rome reward with love;
These, that I bring unto their latest home,

With burial amongst their ancestors:

Here Goths have given me leave to sheath my sword.

Titus, unkind, and careless of thine own,
Why suffer'st thou thy sons, unburied yet,
To hover on the dreadful shore of Styx ?
Make way to lay them by their brethren..

[The Tomb is opened.

There greet in silence, as the dead are wont, And sleep in peace, slain in your country's wars! O sacred receptacle of my joys,

Sweet cell of virtue and nobility,

How many sons of mine hast thou in store,
That thou wilt never render to me more?

Luc. Give us the proudest prisoner of the Goths,
That we may hew his limbs, and, on a pile,
Ad manes fratrum sacrifice his flesh,
Before this earthly prison' of their bones;
That so the shadows be not unappeas'd,
Nor we disturb'd with prodigies on earth.
TIT. I give him you; the noblest that survives,
The eldest son of this distressed queen.

TAM. Stay, Roman brethren ;-Gracious conqueror,

6 To hover on the dreadful shore of Styx?] Here we have one of the numerous classical notions that are scattered with a pedantick profusion through this piece. MALONE.

7

EARTHLY prison-] Edit. 1600-" earthy prison."

TODD.

8 Nor we disturb'd with prodigies on earth.] It was supposed by the ancients, that the ghosts of unburied people appeared to their friends and relations, to solicit the rites of funeral.

STEEVENS.

Victorious Titus, rue the tears I shed,
A mother's tears in passion for her son:
And, if thy sons were ever dear to thee,
O, think my son to be as dear to me.
Sufficeth not, that we are brought to Rome,
To beautify thy triumphs, and return,
Captive to thee, and to thy Roman yoke;
But must my sons be slaughter'd in the streets,
For valiant doings in their country's cause?
O! if to fight for king and common weal
Were piety in thine, it is in these.

Andronicus, stain not thy tomb with blood:
Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods?
Draw near them then in being merciful":
Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge;
Thrice-noble Titus, spare my first-born son.

TIT. Patient yourself, madam, and pardon me. These are their brethren, whom you Goths beheld Alive, and dead; and for their brethren slain, Religiously they ask a sacrifice:

To this your son is mark'd; and die he must,
To appease their groaning shadows that are gone.

Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods?
Draw near them then in being merciful:]

"Homines enim

ad deos nulla re propius accedunt, quam salutem hominibus dando.”. Cicero pro Ligario.

Mr. Whalley infers the learning of Shakspeare from this passage: but our present author, whoever he was, might have found a translation of it in several places, provided he was not acquainted with the original. STEEVENS.

The same sentiment is in Edward III. 1596:

66

kings approach the nearest unto God,

By giving life and safety unto men." REED.

9 PATIENT yourself, &c.] This verb is used by other dramatick writers. So, in Arden of Feversham, 1592:

"Patient yourself, we cannot help it now."

Again, in King Edward I. 1599:

"Patient your highness, 'tis but mother's love." Again, in Warner's Albion's England, 1602, b. xii. ch. lxxv.: "Her, weeping ripe, he laughing, bids to patient her awhile.”

STEEVENS.

Luc. Away, with him! and make a fire straight; And with our swords, upon a pile of wood,

Let's hew his limbs, till they be clean consum'd. [Exeunt LUCIUS, QUINTUS, MARTIUS, and MUTIUS, with ALARBUS.

TAM. O cruel, irreligious piety!

CHI. Was ever Scythia half so barbarous ? DEM. Oppose not Scythia to ambitious Rome. Alarbus goes to rest; and we survive

To tremble under Titus' threatening look.
Then, madam, stand resolv'd; but hope withal,
The self-same gods, that arm'd the queen of Troy
With opportunity of sharp revenge

Upon the Thracian tyrant in his tent',
May favour Tamora, the queen of Goths,

(When Goths were Goths, and Tamora was queen,) To quit the bloody wrongs upon her foes.

The self-same gods, that arm'd the queen of Troy
With opportunity of sharp revenge

Upon the Thracian tyrant in HIS tent, &c.] I read, against the authority of all the copies :

:

66

in her tent

i. e. in the tent where she and the other Trojan captive women were kept for thither Hecuba by a wile had decoyed Polymnestor, in order to perpetrate her revenge. This we may learn from Euripides's Hecuba; the only author, that I can at present remember, from whom our writer must have gleaned this circumstance.

THEOBALD.

Mr. Theobald should first have proved to us that our author understood Greek, or else that this play of Euripides had been translated. In the mean time, because neither of these particulars are verified, we may as well suppose he took it from the old storybook of the Trojan War, or the old translation of Ovid. See Metam. xiii. The writer of the play, whoever he was, might have been misled by the passage in Ovid, "vadit ad artificem," and therefore took it for granted that she found him in his tent.

STEEVENS.

I have no doubt that the writer of this play had read Euripides in the original. Mr. Steevens justly observes in a subsequent note near the end of this scene, that there is "a plain allusion to the Ajax of Sophocles, of which no translation was extant in the time of Shakspeare." MALONE.