• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

But to torment you with my bitter tongue!

LUCIUS.

Sirs, stop his mouth, and let him speak no more.

Enter AEMILIUS

GOTH. My lord, there is a messenger from Rome

Desires to be admitted to your presence.

LUCIUS.

Let him come near.

Welcome, Aemilius. What's the news from Rome?

AEMILIUS.

Lord Lucius, and you Princes of the Goths,

The Roman Emperor greets you all by me;

And, for he understands you are in arms,

He craves a parley at your father's house,

Willing you to demand your hostages,

And they shall be immediately deliver'd.

FIRST GOTH.

What says our general?

LUCIUS.

Aemilius, let the Emperor give his pledges

Unto my father and my uncle Marcus.

And we will come. March away. Exeunt

SCENE II. Rome. Before TITUS' house

Enter TAMORA, and her two sons, DEMETRIUS and CHIRON, disguised

TAMORA. Thus, in this strange and sad habiliment,

I will encounter with Andronicus,

And say I am Revenge, sent from below

To join with him and right his heinous wrongs.

Knock at his study, where they say he keeps

To ruminate strange plots of dire revenge;

Tell him Revenge is come to join with him,

And work confusion on his enemies.

They knock and TITUS opens his study door, above

TITUS.

Who doth molest my contemplation?

Is it your trick to make me ope the door,

That so my sad decrees may fly away

And all my study be to no effect?

You are deceiv'd; for what I mean to do

See here in bloody lines I have set down;

And what is written shall be executed.

TAMORA.

Titus, I am come to talk with thee.

TITUS.

No, not a word. How can I grace my talk,

Wanting a hand to give it that accord?

Thou hast the odds of me; therefore no more.

TAMORA.

If thou didst know me, thou wouldst talk with me.

TITUS.

I am not mad, I know thee well enough:

Witness this wretched stump, witness these crimson lines;

Witness these trenches made by grief and care;

Witness the tiring day and heavy night;

Witness all sorrow that I know thee well

For our proud Empress, mighty Tamora.

Is not thy coming for my other hand?

TAMORA.

Know thou, sad man, I am not Tamora:

She is thy enemy and I thy friend.

I am Revenge, sent from th' infernal kingdom

To ease the gnawing vulture of thy mind

By working wreakful vengeance on thy foes.

Come down and welcome me to this world's light;

Confer with me of murder and of death;

There's not a hollow cave or lurking-place,

No vast obscurity or misty vale,

Where bloody murder or detested rape

Can couch for fear but I will find them out;

And in their ears tell them my dreadful name-

Revenge, which makes the foul offender quake.

TITUS.

Art thou Revenge? and art thou sent to me

To be a torment to mine enemies?

TAMORA.

I am; therefore come down and welcome me.

TITUS.

Do me some service ere I come to thee.

Lo, by thy side where Rape and Murder stands;

Now give some surance that thou art Revenge-

Stab them, or tear them on thy chariot wheels;

And then I'll come and be thy waggoner

And whirl along with thee about the globes.

Provide thee two proper palfreys, black as jet,

To hale thy vengeful waggon swift away,

And find out murderers in their guilty caves;

And when thy car is loaden with their heads,

I will dismount, and by thy waggon wheel

Trot, like a servile footman, all day long,

Even from Hyperion's rising in the east

Until his very downfall in the sea.

And day by day I'll do this heavy task,

So thou destroy Rapine and Murder there.

TAMORA.

These are my ministers, and come with me.

TITUS.

Are they thy ministers? What are they call'd?

TAMORA.

Rape and Murder; therefore called so

'Cause they take vengeance of such kind of men.

TITUS.

Good Lord, how like the Empress' sons they are!

And you the Empress! But we worldly men

Have miserable, mad, mistaking eyes.

O sweet Revenge, now do I come to thee;

And, if one arm's embracement will content thee,

I will embrace thee in it by and by.

TAMORA.

This closing with him fits his lunacy.

Whate'er I forge to feed his brain-sick humours,

Do you uphold and maintain in