DEMETRIUS.
I would we had a thousand Roman dames
At such a bay, by turn to serve our lust.
CHIRON.
A charitable wish, and full of love.
AARON.
Here lacks but your mother for to say amen.
CHIRON.
And that would she for twenty thousand more.
DEMETRIUS.
Come, let us go; and pray to all the gods
For our beloved mother in her pains.
AARON.
[Aside.] Pray to the devils; the gods have given us over.
[Flourish within.]
DEMETRIUS.
Why do the emperor’s trumpets flourish thus?
CHIRON.
Belike, for joy the emperor hath a son.
DEMETRIUS.
Soft! who comes here?
[Enter a NURSE, with a blackamoor CHILD in her arms.]
NURSE.
Good morrow, lords:
O, tell me, did you see Aaron the Moor?
AARON.
Well, more or less, or ne’er a whit at all,
Here Aaron is; and what with Aaron now?
NURSE.
O gentle Aaron, we are all undone!
Now help, or woe betide thee evermore!
AARON.
Why, what a caterwauling dost thou keep!
What dost thou wrap and fumble in thy arms?
NURSE.
O, that which I would hide from heaven’s eye,
Our empress’ shame and stately Rome’s disgrace!—
She is deliver’d, lords,—she is deliver’d.
AARON.
To whom?
NURSE.
I mean, she’s brought a-bed.
AARON.
Well, God give her good rest! What hath he sent her?
NURSE.
A devil.
AARON.
Why, then she is the devil’s dam; a joyful issue.
NURSE.
A joyless, dismal, black, and sorrowful issue:
Here is the babe, as loathsome as a toad
Amongst the fairest breeders of our clime:
The empress sends it thee, thy stamp, thy seal,
And bids thee christen it with thy dagger’s point.
AARON.
Zounds, ye whore! is black so base a hue?—
Sweet blowse, you are a beauteous blossom sure.
DEMETRIUS.
Villain, what hast thou done?
AARON.
That which thou canst not undo.
CHIRON.
Thou hast undone our mother.
AARON.
Villain, I have done thy mother.
DEMETRIUS.
And therein, hellish dog, thou hast undone.
Woe to her chance, and damn’d her loathed choice!
Accurs’d the offspring of so foul a fiend!
CHIRON.
It shall not live.
AARON.
It shall not die.
NURSE.
Aaron, it must; the mother wills it so.
AARON.
What, must it, nurse? then let no man but I
Do execution on my flesh and blood.
DEMETRIUS.
I’ll broach the tadpole on my rapier’s point:—
Nurse, give it me; my sword shall soon despatch it.
AARON.
Sooner this sword shall plough thy bowels up.
[Takes the CHILD from the NURSE, and draws.]
Stay, murderous villains, will you kill your brother?
Now, by the burning tapers of the sky,
That shone so brightly when this boy was got,
He dies upon my scimitar’s sharp point
That touches this my first-born son and heir!
I tell you, younglings, not Enceladus,
With all his threatening band of Typhon’s brood,
Nor great Alcides, nor the god of war,
Shall seize this prey out of his father’s hands.
What, what, ye sanguine, shallow-hearted boys!
Ye white-lim’d walls! ye alehouse-painted signs!
Coalblack is better than another hue,
In that it scorns to bear another hue;
For all the water in the ocean
Can never turn the swan’s black legs to white,
Although she lave them hourly in the flood.
Tell the empress from me I am of age
To keep mine own,—excuse it how she can.
DEMETRIUS.
Wilt thou betray thy noble mistress thus?
AARON.
My mistress is my mistress: this my self,—
The vigour and the picture of my youth:
This before all the world do I prefer;
This maugre all the world will I keep safe,
Or some of you shall smoke for it in Rome.
DEMETRIUS.
By this our mother is for ever sham’d.
CHIRON.
Rome will despise her for this foul escape.
NURSE.
The emperor, in his rage, will doom her death.
CHIRON.
I blush to think upon this ignomy.
AARON.
Why, there’s the privilege your beauty bears:
Fie, treacherous hue, that will betray with blushing
The close enacts and counsels of thy heart!
Here’s a young lad fram’d of another leer:
Look how the black slave smiles upon the father,
As who should say ‘Old lad, I am thine own.’
He is your brother, lords; sensibly fed
Of that self-blood that first gave life to you;
And from your womb where you imprison’d were
He is enfranchised and come to