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 Lrcius, 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 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. A reason mighty, strong, and effectual; A pattern-precedent, and lively warrant, For me, most wretched, to perform the like:— Die, die, Lavinia, and thy shame with thee; [He kills LAVINIA. And, with thy shame, thy father's sorrow die! SAT. What hast thou done, unnatural and unkind? TIT. Kill'd her, for whom my tears have made me blind. I am as woeful as Virginius was, And have a thousand times more cause than he TIT. Will't please you eat?-will't please your highness feed? TAM. Why hast thou slain thine only daughter thus?" 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. Trг. 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 Tirus. 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 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, 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; (*) First folio inserts, hand. (+) First folio, This. a And I am the turn'd-forth, &c.] So the quartos; the folio has,"And I am turned forth," &c. b Damn'd as he is, &c.] Theobald's emendation; the old text having, "And as he is." These wrongs, unspeakable, past patience, Have we done aught amiss,-show us wherein, Will, hand in hand, all headlong cast us down, ÆMIL. 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! MARC. Tear for tear, and loving kiss for kiss, Thy brother Marcus tenders on thy lips : O, were the sum of these that I should pay, Countless and infinite, yet would I pay them! Luc. Come hither, boy; come, come, and learn of us To melt in showers. Thy grandsire lov'd thee well : (*) Old text, bloud-slaine. e ROMANS. Lucius, all hail, Rome's royal emperor!] This and the subsequent line, "Lucius, all hail, Rome's gracious governor!" are in the old copies ascribed to Marcus; but surely in error. 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 λaλéw, 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, lully by, sweete baby,' &c.; from which it seems probable that lullaby is only a comparatively modern contraction of Tully 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 bye, 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 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, 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. ACT V. (1) SCENE III. Then, afterwards, to order well the state, The following is the ballad registered by Danton when he entered the " Historye of Tytus Andronicus" on the Stationers' Rolls. It is extracted from Percy's "Reliques of Antient Poetry," Vol. I. : TITUS ANDRONICUS'S COMPLAINT. "You noble minds and famous martiall wights, "For when Romes foes their warlike forces bent, of five and twenty sonnes, I brought but three "When wars were done I conquest home did bring, The Queene of Goths, her sons, and eke a Moore, "The emperour did make this queene his wife, "Then she, whose thoughts to murder were inclined, "Soe when in age I thought to live in peace, "My deare Lavinia was betrothed than To Cæsars sonne, a young and noble man: Who in a hunting by the emperours wife And her two sonnes, bereaved was of life. "He being slaine was cast in cruel wise Into a darksome den from light of skies: The cruell Moore did come that way as then With my three sonnes, who fell into the den. "The Moore then fetcht the emperour with speed, For to accuse them of that murderous deed; And when my sonnes within the den were found, In wrongfull prison they were cast and bound. "But nowe, behold! what wounded most my mind, The empresses two sonnes of savage kind My daughter ravished without remorse, And took away her honour, quite perforce. "When they had tasted of soe sweete a flowre, Fearing this sweete should shortly turne to soure, They cutt her tongue, whereby she could not tell How that dishonoure unto her befell. "Then both her hands they basely cutt off quite. "My brother Marcus found her in the wood, "But when I sawe her in that woefull case, Than for my two and twenty sonnes before. "I tore the milk-white hairs from off mine head, I wisht this hand, that fought for countrie's fame, "The Moore delighting still in villainy, Did say, to sett my sonnes from prison free But for my sonnes would willingly impart, "But as my life did linger thus in paine, "Then past reliefe I upp and downe did goe, "The empresse then, thinking that I was mad, "I fed their foolish veines a certaine space, "Myself bereav'd my daughter then of life, "Then this revenge against the Moor was found, |