[They knock.]
[Enter TITUS, 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 action?
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 the 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 globe.
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 the 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.
Rapine 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.
[Exit from above.]
TAMORA.
This closing with him fits his lunacy:
Whate’er I forge to feed his brainsick fiits,
Do you uphold and maintain in your speeches,
For now he firmly takes me for Revenge;
And, being credulous in this mad thought,
I’ll make him send for Lucius his son;
And whilst I at a banquet hold him sure,
I’ll find some cunning practice out of hand
To scatter and disperse the giddy Goths,
Or, at the least, make them his enemies.
See, here he comes, and I must ply my theme.
[Enter TITUS.]
TITUS.
Long have I been forlorn, and all for thee:
Welcome, dread fury, to my woeful house;—
Rapine and Murder, you are welcome too:—
How like the empress and her sons you are!
Well are you fitted, had you but a Moor:
Could not all hell afford you such a devil?—
For well I wot the empress never wags
But in her company there is a Moor;
And, would you represent our queen aright,
It were convenient you had such a devil:
But welcome as you are. What shall we do?
TAMORA.
What wouldst thou have us do, Andronicus?
DEMETRIUS.
Show me a murderer, I’ll deal with him.
CHIRON.
Show me a villain that hath done a rape,
And I am sent to be reveng’d on him.
TAMORA.
Show me a thousand that hath done thee wrong,
And I will be revenged on them all.
TITUS.
Look round about the wicked streets of Rome,
And when thou find’st a man that’s like thyself,
Good Murder, stab him; he’s a murderer.—
Go thou with him; and when it is thy hap
To find another that is like to thee,
Good Rapine, stab him; he is a ravisher.—
Go thou with them; and in the emperor’s court
There is a queen, attended by a Moor;
Well mayst thou know her by thine own proportion,
For up and down she doth