[Enter Senators, Tribunes, and Officers of Justice, with MARTIUS and QUINTUS bound, passing on to the place of execution; TITUS going before, pleading.]
TITUS.
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.
[Throwing himself on the ground.]
For 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.
[Exeunt Senators, Tribunes, &c., with the prisoners.]
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 springtime 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.
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.
Why, ‘tis no matter, man: if they did hear,
They would not mark me; if they did mark,
They would not pity me; yet plead I must,
And bootless unto them.
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 tribunes 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 pronounc’d
My everlasting doom of banishment.
TITUS.
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.
Titus, prepare thy aged eyes to weep;
Or if not so, thy noble heart to break:
I bring consuming sorrow to thine age.
TITUS.
Will it consume me? let me see it then.
MARCUS.
This was thy daughter.
TITUS.
Why, Marcus, so she is.
LUCIUS.
Ay me! this object kills me!
TITUS.
Fainthearted boy, arise, and look upon her.—
Speak, my Lavinia, what accursed hand
Hath made thee handless in thy father’s sight?
What fool hath added water to the sea,
Or brought a fagot to bright-burning Troy?
My grief was at the height before thou cam’st;
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 nurs’d this woe in feeding life;
In bootless prayer have they been held up,
And they have serv’d 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.
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.
O, thus I found her straying in the park,
Seeking to hide herself, as doth the deer
That hath receiv’d some unrecuring wound.
TITUS.
It was my deer; and he that wounded her
Hath hurt me more than had he kill’d me dead:
For now I stand as one upon a rock,
Environ’d with a wilderness of sea;