Titus Andronicus quotes

O, if to fight for king and commonweal Were piety in thine, it is in these. Andronicus, stain not thy tomb with blood: Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods? Draw near them then in being merciful:

Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge:

Thrice noble Titus, spare my first-born son.

And name thee in election for the empire, With these our late-deceased emperor’s sons: Be candidatus then, and put it on,

And help to set a head on headless Rome.

A better head her glorious body fits Than his that shakes for age and feebleness: What should I don this robe, and trouble you? Be chosen with proclamations to-day, To-morrow yield up rule, resign my life, And set abroad new business for you all?

Shall I speak for thee? shall I say ’tis so? O, that I knew thy heart; and knew the beast, That I might rail at him, to ease my mind!

Sorrow concealed, like an oven stopp’d, Doth burn the heart to cinders where it is.

Fair Philomela, she but lost her tongue, And in a tedious sampler sew’d her mind: But, lovely niece, that mean is cut from thee;

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 tribune 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?

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?

I go, Andronicus: and for thy hand Look by and by to have thy sons with thee. Aside. Their heads, I mean. O, how this villany Doth fat me with the very thoughts of it!

Let fools do good, and fair men call for grace, Aaron will have his soul black like his face.

Exit.

O brother, speak with possibilities, And do not break into these deep extremes.

Is not my sorrow deep, having no bottom? Then be my passions bottomless with them.

But yet let reason govern thy lament.

When heaven doth weep, doth not the earth o’erflow? If the winds rage, doth not the sea wax mad, Threatening the welkin with his big-swoln face? And wilt thou have a reason for this coil?

I am the sea; hark, how her sighs do blow!

She is the weeping welkin, I the earth: Then must my sea be moved with her sighs; Then must my earth with her continual tears Become a deluge, overflow’d and drown’d;

Alas, my lord, I have but kill’d a fly.

But how, if that fly had a father and mother?

How would he hang his slender gilded wings, And buzz lamenting doings in the air! Poor harmless fly, That, with his pretty buzzing melody, Came here to make us merry! and thou hast kill’d him.

But how, if that fly had a father and mother? How would he hang his slender gilded wings, And buzz lamenting doings in the air!

Poor harmless fly, That, with his pretty buzzing melody, Came here to make us merry! and thou hast kill’d him.

Pardon me, sir; it was a black ill-favour’d fly, Like to the empress’ Moor; therefore I kill’d him.

Thou hast undone our mother.

Villain, I have done thy mother.

And therein, hellish dog, thou hast undone. Woe to her chance, and damn’d her loathed choice! Accursed the offspring of so foul a fiend!

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-limed walls! ye alehouse painted signs!

Coal-black 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.

King, be thy thoughts imperious, like thy name.

Is the sun dimm’d, that gnats do fly in it?

The eagle suffers little birds to sing, And is not careful what they mean thereby, Knowing that with the shadow of his wings He can at pleasure stint their melody: Even so mayst thou the giddy men of Rome. Then cheer thy spirit:

Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?

Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.

Even now I curse the day—and yet, I think, Few come within the compass of my curse— Wherein I did not some notorious ill, As kill a man, or else devise his death, Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it, Accuse some …

And on their skins, as on the bark of trees, Have with my knife carved in Roman letters, “Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.”

Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things As willingly as one would kill a fly,

And nothing grieves me heartily indeed But that I cannot do ten thousand more.

Go fetch them hither to us presently.

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.

Can the son’s eye behold his father bleed?

There’s meed for meed, death for a deadly deed!

Kills Saturninus. A great tumult. Lucius, Marcus, and others go up into the balcony.