Act 3, Scene 2

Rome. A Room in TITUS'S House. A banquet set out.

[Enter TITUS, MARCUS, LAVINIA, and YOUNG LUCIUS, a boy.]
Titus Andronicus
1339 So so, now sit: and look you eat no more
1340 Than will preserve just so much strength in us
1341 As will revenge these bitter woes of ours.
1342 Marcus, unknit that sorrow-wreathen knot:
1343 Thy niece and I, poor creatures, want our hands,
1344 And cannot passionate our tenfold grief
1345 With folded arms. This poor right hand of mine
1346 Is left to tyrannize upon my breast;
1347 And, when my heart, all mad with misery,
1348 Beats in this hollow prison of my flesh,
1349 Then thus I thump it down.—
[To LAVINIA]
Titus Andronicus
1350 Thou map of woe, that thus dost talk in signs!
1351 When thy poor heart beats with outrageous beating,
1352 Thou canst not strike it thus to make it still.
1353 Wound it with sighing, girl; kill it with groans;
1354 Or get some little knife between thy teeth,
1355 And just against thy heart make thou a hole,
1356 That all the tears that thy poor eyes let fall
1357 May run into that sink, and, soaking in,
1358 Drown the lamenting fool in sea-salt tears.
Marcus Andronicus
1359 Fie, brother, fie! teach her not thus to lay
1360 Such violent hands upon her tender life.
Titus Andronicus
1361 How now! has sorrow made thee dote already?
1362 Why, Marcus, no man should be mad but I.
1363 What violent hands can she lay on her life?
1364 Ah, wherefore dost thou urge the name of hands;—
1365 To bid Aeneas tell the tale twice o'er
1366 How Troy was burnt and he made miserable?
1367 O, handle not the theme, to talk of hands,
1368 Lest we remember still that we have none.—
1369 Fie, fie, how frantically I square my talk,—
1370 As if we should forget we had no hands,
1371 If Marcus did not name the word of hands!—
1372 Come, let's fall to; and, gentle girl, eat this.—
1373 Here is no drink! Hark, Marcus, what she says;—
1374 I can interpret all her martyr'd signs;—
1375 She says she drinks no other drink but tears,
1376 Brew'd with her sorrow, mesh'd upon her cheeks:—
1377 Speechless complainer, I will learn thy thought;
1378 In thy dumb action will I be as perfect
1379 As begging hermits in their holy prayers:
1380 Thou shalt not sigh, nor hold thy stumps to heaven,
1381 Nor wink, nor nod, nor kneel, nor make a sign,
1382 But I of these will wrest an alphabet,
1383 And by still practice learn to know thy meaning.
Young Lucius
1384 Good grandsire, leave these bitter deep laments:
1385 Make my aunt merry with some pleasing tale.
Marcus Andronicus
1386 Alas, the tender boy, in passion mov'd,
1387 Doth weep to see his grandsire's heaviness.
Titus Andronicus
1388 Peace, tender sapling; thou art made of tears,
1389 And tears will quickly melt thy life away.—
[MARCUS strikes the dish with a knife.]
Titus Andronicus
1390 What dost thou strike at, Marcus, with thy knife?
Marcus Andronicus
1391 At that that I have kill'd, my lord,—a fly.
Titus Andronicus
1392 Out on thee, murderer! thou kill'st my heart;
1393 Mine eyes are cloy'd with view of tyranny:
1394 A deed of death done on the innocent
1395 Becomes not Titus' brother: get thee gone;
1396 I see thou art not for my company.
Marcus Andronicus
1397 Alas, my lord, I have but kill'd a fly.
Titus Andronicus
1398 But how if that fly had a father and mother?
1399 How would he hang his slender gilded wings
1400 And buzz lamenting doings in the air!
1401 Poor harmless fly,
1402 That with his pretty buzzing melody
1403 Came here to make us merry! and thou hast kill'd him.
Marcus Andronicus
1404 Pardon me, sir; 'twas a black ill-favour'd fly,
1405 Like to the empress' Moor; therefore I kill'd him.
Titus Andronicus
1406 O, O, O!
1407 Then pardon me for reprehending thee,
1408 For thou hast done a charitable deed.
1409 Give me thy knife, I will insult on him,
1410 Flattering myself as if it were the Moor
1411 Come hither purposely to poison me.—
1412 There's for thyself, and that's for Tamora.—
1413 Ah, sirrah!
1414 Yet, I think, we are not brought so low
1415 But that between us we can kill a fly
1416 That comes in likeness of a coal-black Moor.
Marcus Andronicus
1417 Alas, poor man! grief has so wrought on him,
1418 He takes false shadows for true substances.
Titus Andronicus
1419 Come, take away.—Lavinia, go with me;
1420 I'll to thy closet; and go read with thee
1421 Sad stories chanced in the times of old.—
1422 Come, boy, and go with me: thy sight is young,
1423 And thou shalt read when mine begin to dazzle.
[Exeunt.]

Reading mode

Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 1342archaic vocab
“unknit that sorrow-wreathen knot”
Marcus is sitting at the table with his brow furrowed or his arms folded — a conventional Elizabethan gesture for grief and deep thought, the body literally 'knotted' by sorrow. Titus tells him to relax it: there is nothing left for grief to do here.
TLN 1344archaic vocab
“cannot passionate our tenfold grief / With folded arms”
'Passionate' is used here as a verb meaning to express or give vent to grief with great feeling. Folding the arms across the chest was a recognized Elizabethan gesture of mourning — but Titus and Lavinia have lost their hands, so even this small physical outlet is gone. The word 'tenfold' (multiplied ten times over) measures how many sons Titus has lost.
TLN 1350rhetorical device
“Thou map of woe, that thus dost talk in signs”
Titus calls Lavinia a 'map of woe' — her body is a map on which every kind of suffering has been charted and displayed. 'Map' in Elizabethan English could mean any detailed representation or epitome of something, not just a geographical chart. The phrase concentrates the scene's recurring idea that Lavinia communicates only through her maimed body, a body that has become a text to be read.
TLN 1365classical allusion
“bid Aeneas tell the tale twice o'er / How Troy was burnt”
Aeneas was the Trojan hero who escaped when the Greeks burned the city of Troy, and who later told the full story of its destruction to Dido, Queen of Carthage. In Virgil's Aeneid (Book 2) that retelling is among the most famous of all classical narratives of grief. Titus says that asking him to speak of 'hands' is like making Aeneas tell the story of Troy's burning all over again — forcing the survivor to relive the worst thing that has happened to him.
classical The fall of Troy: Pyrrhus and Priam
TLN 1376archaic vocab
“brew'd with her sorrow, mesh'd upon her cheeks”
'Mesh'd' (meshed, strained through a mesh or sieve) is a brewing term: when making ale, the brewer 'mashed' the malt by steeping and straining it. Titus is saying Lavinia's tears are brewed from grief the way ale is brewed from malt — her sorrow is the grain, her face is the straining cloth, and the tears are the liquid pressed out of both. The extended brewing metaphor is deliberately homely and domestic amid the horror.
TLN 1390cultural context
“What dost thou strike at, Marcus, with thy knife”
The 'fly scene' — in which Titus first condemns Marcus as a murderer for killing a harmless fly, then reverses himself when Marcus calls the fly black 'like to the empress' Moor' — is the scene's emotional and structural center. It dramatizes Titus's grief-shattered mind: his moral compass is so overwhelmed that the death of a fly can produce genuine rage, and the comparison to Aaron can convert rage to satisfaction. The scene is often read as Shakespeare's most acute study of trauma-induced breakdown.
TLN 1404cultural context
“a black ill-favour'd fly, / Like to the empress' Moor”
Marcus justifies killing the fly by comparing it to Aaron, Tamora's lover, on the basis of its black colour. 'Ill-favour'd' means ugly or unpleasant-looking. The comparison shows how the play voices the Elizabethan assumption that dark skin was a sign of wickedness — not as an endorsed view, but as a prejudice held by characters who are themselves guilty of great crimes. The play repeatedly gives Aaron wit, strategic intelligence, and a fierce love for his infant son that none of the 'Roman' characters can match.
historical The 'Moor' on the Elizabethan stage
TLN 1409archaic vocab
“Give me thy knife, I will insult on him”
'Insult' here does not mean to speak rudely; it means to exult or triumph over a defeated enemy, to leap or trample upon him. Titus is asking for the knife so he can vent his rage on the fly as though it were Aaron himself — physically striking a stand-in for his tormentor.
TLN 1420classical allusion
“go read with thee / Sad stories chanced in the times of old”
Titus plans to read with Lavinia from books of classical myth and history — what the play calls 'sad stories chanced in the times of old.' In the very next scene (4.1) this reading leads directly to Lavinia's revelation: she turns the pages of Ovid's Metamorphoses to the story of Philomela, whose rape and silencing by Tereus mirrors her own, and so names what was done to her. This closing moment of Act 3, Scene 2 plants the seed for that discovery.
classical Philomelaclassical Ovid's Metamorphoses