Act 4, Scene 1

Rome. Before TITUS'S House.

[Enter TITUS and MARCUS. Then enter YOUNG LUCIUS running, with books under his arm, and LAVINIA running after him.]
Young Lucius
1424 Help, grandsire, help! my aunt Lavinia
1425 Follows me everywhere, I know not why.—
1426 Good uncle Marcus, see how swift she comes!
1427 Alas, sweet aunt, I know not what you mean.
Marcus Andronicus
1428 Stand by me, Lucius: do not fear thine aunt.
Titus Andronicus
1429 She loves thee, boy, too well to do thee harm.
Titus Andronicus
1430 YOUNG LUCIUS
1431 Ay, when my father was in Rome she did.
Marcus Andronicus
1432 What means my niece Lavinia by these signs?
Titus Andronicus
1433 Fear her not, Lucius: somewhat doth she mean:—
1434 See, Lucius, see how much she makes of thee:
1435 Somewhither would she have thee go with her.
1436 Ah, boy, Cornelia never with more care
1437 Read to her sons than she hath read to thee
1438 Sweet poetry and Tully's Orator.
Marcus Andronicus
1439 Canst thou not guess wherefore she plies thee thus?
Young Lucius
1440 My lord, I know not, I, nor can I guess,
1441 Unless some fit or frenzy do possess her:
1442 For I have heard my grandsire say full oft
1443 Extremity of griefs would make men mad;
1444 And I have read that Hecuba of Troy
1445 Ran mad for sorrow: that made me to fear;
1446 Although, my lord, I know my noble aunt
1447 Loves me as dear as e'er my mother did,
1448 And would not, but in fury, fright my youth:
1449 Which made me down to throw my books, and fly,—
1450 Causeless, perhaps: but pardon me, sweet aunt:
1451 And, madam, if my uncle Marcus go,
1452 I will most willingly attend your ladyship.
Marcus Andronicus
1453 Lucius, I will.
[LAVINIA turns over with her stumps the books which Lucius has let fall.]
Titus Andronicus
1454 How now, Lavinia!—Marcus, what means this?
1455 Some book there is that she desires to see.
1456 Which is it, girl, of these?—Open them, boy.—
1457 But thou art deeper read and better skill'd:
1458 Come and take choice of all my library,
1459 And so beguile thy sorrow, till the heavens
1460 Reveal the damn'd contriver of this deed.—
1461 Why lifts she up her arms in sequence thus?
Marcus Andronicus
1462 I think she means that there were more than one
1463 Confederate in the fact;—ay, more there was,
1464 Or else to heaven she heaves them for revenge.
Titus Andronicus
1465 Lucius, what book is that she tosseth so?
Young Lucius
1466 Grandsire, 'tis Ovid's Metamorphosis;
1467 My mother gave it me.
Marcus Andronicus
1468 For love of her that's gone,
1469 Perhaps she cull'd it from among the rest.
Titus Andronicus
1470 Soft! So busily she turns the leaves! Help her:
1471 What would she find?—Lavinia, shall I read?
1472 This is the tragic tale of Philomel,
1473 And treats of Tereus' treason and his rape;
1474 And rape, I fear, was root of thy annoy.
Marcus Andronicus
1475 See, brother, see; note how she quotes the leaves.
Titus Andronicus
1476 Lavinia, wert thou thus surpris'd, sweet girl,
1477 Ravish'd, and wrong'd, as Philomela was,
1478 Forc'd in the ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods?—
1479 See, see!—
1480 Ay, such a place there is where we did hunt.—
1481 O, had we never, never hunted there!—
1482 Pattern'd by that the poet here describes,
1483 By nature made for murders and for rapes.
Marcus Andronicus
1484 O, why should nature build so foul a den,
1485 Unless the gods delight in tragedies?
Titus Andronicus
1486 Give signs, sweet girl,—for here are none but friends,—
1487 What Roman lord it was durst do the deed:
1488 Or slunk not Saturnine, as Tarquin erst,
1489 That left the camp to sin in Lucrece' bed?
Marcus Andronicus
1490 Sit down, sweet niece:—brother, sit down by me.—
1491 Apollo, Pallas, Jove, or Mercury,
1492 Inspire me, that I may this treason find!—
1493 My lord, look here:—look here, Lavinia:
1494 This sandy plot is plain; guide, if thou canst,
1495 This after me, when I have writ my name
1496 Without the help of any hand at all.
[He writes his name with his staff, guiding it with feet and mouth.]
Marcus Andronicus
1497 Curs'd be that heart that forc'd us to this shift!—
1498 Write thou, good niece; and here display at last
1499 What God will have discover'd for revenge:
1500 Heaven guide thy pen to print thy sorrows plain,
1501 That we may know the traitors and the truth!
[She takes the staff in her mouth, guides it with her stumps, and writes.]
Titus Andronicus
1502 O, do ye read, my lord, what she hath writ?
Titus Andronicus
1503 'Stuprum—Chiron—Demetrius.'
Marcus Andronicus
1504 What, what!—the lustful sons of Tamora
1505 Performers of this heinous bloody deed?
Titus Andronicus
1506 Magni Dominator poli,
1507 Tam lentus audis scelera? tam lentus vides?
Marcus Andronicus
1508 O, calm thee, gentle lord; although I know
1509 There is enough written upon this earth
1510 To stir a mutiny in the mildest thoughts,
1511 And arm the minds of infants to exclaims,
1512 My lord, kneel down with me; Lavinia, kneel;
1513 And kneel, sweet boy, the Roman Hector's hope;
1514 And swear with me,—as, with the woeful fere
1515 And father of that chaste dishonour'd dame,
1516 Lord Junius Brutus sware for Lucrece' rape,—
1517 That we will prosecute, by good advice,
1518 Mortal revenge upon these traitorous Goths,
1519 And see their blood, or die with this reproach.
Titus Andronicus
1520 'Tis sure enough, an you knew how.
1521 But if you hunt these bear-whelps, then beware:
1522 The dam will wake; and if she wind you once,
1523 She's with the lion deeply still in league,
1524 And lulls him whilst she playeth on her back,
1525 And when he sleeps will she do what she list.
1526 You are a young huntsman, Marcus; let alone;
1527 And, come, I will go get a leaf of brass,
1528 And with a gad of steel will write these words,
1529 And lay it by: the angry northern wind
1530 Will blow these sands like Sibyl's leaves, abroad,
1531 And where's our lesson, then?—Boy, what say you?
Young Lucius
1532 I say, my lord, that if I were a man,
1533 Their mother's bedchamber should not be safe
1534 For these bad-bondmen to the yoke of Rome.
Marcus Andronicus
1535 Ay, that's my boy! thy father hath full oft
1536 For his ungrateful country done the like.
Young Lucius
1537 And, uncle, so will I, an if I live.
Titus Andronicus
1538 Come, go with me into mine armoury;
1539 Lucius, I'll fit thee; and withal, my boy,
1540 Shall carry from me to the empress' sons
1541 Presents that I intend to send them both:
1542 Come, come; thou'lt do my message, wilt thou not?
Young Lucius
1543 Ay, with my dagger in their bosoms, grandsire.
Titus Andronicus
1544 No, boy, not so; I'll teach thee another course.—
1545 Lavinia, come.—Marcus, look to my house:
1546 Lucius and I'll go brave it at the court;
1547 Ay, marry, will we, sir: and we'll be waited on.
[Exeunt TITUS, LAVINIA, and YOUNG LUCIUS.]
Marcus Andronicus
1548 O heavens, can you hear a good man groan,
1549 And not relent, or not compassion him?
1550 Marcus, attend him in his ecstasy,
1551 That hath more scars of sorrow in his heart
1552 Than foemen's marks upon his batter'd shield;
1553 But yet so just that he will not revenge:—
1554 Revenge, ye heavens, for old Andronicus!
[Exit.]

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Notes

TLN 1436historical topical
“Cornelia never with more care Read to her sons than she hath read to thee Sweet poetry and Tully's Orator”
Cornelia (second century BCE) was the famously educated daughter of the Roman general Scipio Africanus and mother of the reforming tribunes Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus; she personally supervised her sons' studies and was held up as the Roman model of a devoted, learned mother. 'Tully' is Marcus Tullius Cicero; his 'Orator' (De Oratore, 55 BCE) was the standard Latin textbook of rhetoric. Titus is saying Lavinia taught Young Lucius as carefully as the greatest mother Rome ever produced.
TLN 1444classical allusion
“Hecuba of Troy Ran mad for sorrow”
Hecuba was the queen of Troy who watched her husband, Priam, and most of her children killed when the Greeks sacked the city; in Ovid's account she went mad with grief and was transformed into a howling dog. Young Lucius, seeing Lavinia's frantic, mute gestures, reaches for the most extreme classical image of grief-induced madness he knows. The allusion quietly casts Lavinia as another royal woman destroyed by male violence.
classical Hecuba, Queen of Troy
TLN 1466classical allusion
“Ovid's Metamorphosis; My mother gave it me”
Ovid's Metamorphoses (c. 8 CE) is a Latin epic of 15 books retelling myths of transformation — gods, mortals, and nature changing shape. Arthur Golding's English translation (1567) was Shakespeare's primary mythological sourcebook. Here the book is a literal prop on stage: Lavinia, who cannot speak or point with hands, turns its pages to the story of Philomela to tell her family what happened to her. The choice is deliberate: Philomela's story (Book 6) is almost exactly Lavinia's own.
classical Ovid's Metamorphoses
TLN 1472classical allusion
“tragic tale of Philomel, And treats of Tereus' treason and his rape”
Philomela was an Athenian princess raped by Tereus, her sister Procne's husband, the king of Thrace. To prevent her naming him, Tereus cut out her tongue. Philomela wove the truth into a tapestry, which Procne read; the sisters avenged themselves by serving Tereus a meal of his own son. All three were then changed into birds — Philomela into the nightingale, whose mournful song was heard as her perpetual grief. Lavinia's situation — rape followed by the cutting out of her tongue and removal of her hands — is the direct Ovidian parallel: she is Philomela, and the book is how she says so.
classical Philomela
TLN 1475archaic vocab
“note how she quotes the leaves”
'Quotes' here means studies or examines closely, not copies out or cites as a source. Marcus is watching Lavinia turn over the pages of the Ovid with her stumps, scrutinizing certain leaves (pages) with particular urgency. The word 'quote' in Shakespeare's time could mean 'to note, observe, or mark carefully'; it is the root of the word 'quotation' but not yet limited to the act of citing a passage.
TLN 1488classical allusion
“as Tarquin erst, That left the camp to sin in Lucrece' bed”
Sextus Tarquinius, son of Rome's last king, raped the virtuous Roman wife Lucretia (Lucrece) in her own bed while her husband was away at war. Lucrece killed herself rather than live dishonoured; the outrage toppled the monarchy and founded the Roman Republic. Titus is asking whether Saturninus, the emperor, had a hand in Lavinia's rape — comparing him to Rome's most notorious royal criminal. The parallel makes the rape of Lavinia a potential political crime, not only a personal one.
classical Tarquin and the rape of Lucrece
TLN 1491classical allusion
“Apollo, Pallas, Jove, or Mercury, Inspire me”
Marcus calls on four Roman gods for inspiration as he tries to think of a way to communicate with Lavinia. Apollo was the god of prophecy and learning; Pallas (Athena/Minerva) was the goddess of wisdom and skill; Jove (Jupiter) was the king of the gods; Mercury was the messenger and guide of the arts. The invocation of four different divine patrons of thought and communication underlines how desperate the situation is: Marcus needs help that only the gods can provide.
TLN 1494stage direction note
“This sandy plot is plain; guide, if thou canst, This after me”
Marcus first demonstrates the technique himself, writing his name in the sand using a staff guided by his feet and mouth — then Lavinia copies him with the staff held in her mouth, steering it with her arm-stumps. The staging turns the sandy ground before Titus's house into a writing surface and solves what seemed an unsolvable problem: a woman with no hands and no tongue uses her body to write the names of her attackers. This is the play's dramatic turning point — the moment of revelation after two acts of mute suffering.
TLN 1503archaic vocab
“Stuprum—Chiron—Demetrius”
'Stuprum' is Latin for rape or sexual violation — specifically, the violation of a free person's bodily integrity and honour, a concept Roman law treated as a serious crime. Lavinia writes three words in the sand: the crime, then the two perpetrators. Writing in Latin, not English, is consistent with the play's Roman setting and with Lavinia as an educated Roman woman. The single Latin noun concentrates what two acts of spectacle have been building toward into one blunt, legible word.
TLN 1506classical allusion
“Magni Dominator poli, Tam lentus audis scelera? tam lentus vides?”
These two lines are adapted from Seneca's tragedy Hippolytus (lines 671-672): 'Ruler of the great heavens, do you hear such crimes so slowly? Do you see them so slowly?' Titus cries out to the supreme power of heaven, demanding to know why the gods are so slow to act against such wickedness. The Senecan quotation is exact in tone: Seneca's tragedies repeatedly stage this furious, unanswered appeal to a silent sky.
historical Seneca and the revenge tragedy
TLN 1514historical topical
“woeful fere And father of that chaste dishonour'd dame, Lord Junius Brutus sware for Lucrece' rape”
Lucius Junius Brutus was the husband (here called 'fere,' an archaic word for companion or spouse) of Lucretia (Lucrece), who was raped by Sextus Tarquinius. After Lucrece killed herself, Brutus swore a public oath on her body to avenge her and drive out the Tarquins, which he did, founding the Roman Republic. Marcus is asking the family to swear the same kind of oath over Lavinia's violation — turning a private crime into a political vow of Roman justice.
classical Tarquin and the rape of Lucrece
TLN 1529classical allusion
“angry northern wind Will blow these sands like Sibyl's leaves, abroad”
The Sibyl of Cumae was an ancient prophetess who wrote her oracles on individual leaves and left them at the mouth of her cave; if the wind blew them away before a visitor could gather them, the prophecy was lost forever. Titus uses the image to argue for a more permanent record: the names written in the sand could be scattered like those leaves, so he will engrave them on a sheet of brass with an iron stylus ('gad of steel') instead. It is a practical solution that also carries the weight of Rome's prophetic tradition.