Act 4, Scene 2

Rome. A Room in the Palace.

[Enter AARON, DEMETRIUS and CHIRON, at one door; at another door, YOUNG LUCIUS and an Attendant, with a bundle of weapons, and verses writ upon them.]
Chiron
1555 Demetrius, here's the son of Lucius;
1556 He hath some message to deliver us.
Aaron
1557 Ay, some mad message from his mad grandfather.
Young Lucius
1558 My lords, with all the humbleness I may,
1559 I greet your honours from Andronicus,—
[Aside.]
Young Lucius
1560 And pray the Roman gods confound you both!
Demetrius
1561 Gramercy, lovely Lucius: what's the news?
[Aside]
Young Lucius
1562 That you are both decipher'd, that's the news,
1563 For villains mark'd with rape.—May it please you,
1564 My grandsire, well advis'd, hath sent by me
1565 The goodliest weapons of his armoury
1566 To gratify your honourable youth,
1567 The hope of Rome; for so he bid me say;
1568 And so I do, and with his gifts present
1569 Your lordships, that, whenever you have need,
1570 You may be armed and appointed well:
1571 And so I leave you both—
[aside]
Young Lucius
1572 like bloody villains.
[Exeunt YOUNG LUCIUS and Attendant.]
Demetrius
1573 What's here? A scroll; and written round about?
1574 Let's see:
[Reads.]
Demetrius
1575 'Integer vitae, scelerisque purus,
1576 Non eget Mauri jaculis, nec arcu.'
Chiron
1577 O, 'tis a verse in Horace, I know it well:
1578 I read it in the grammar long ago.
Aaron
1579 Ay, just,—a verse in Horace;—right, you have it.—
[Aside]
Aaron
1580 Now, what a thing it is to be an ass!
1581 Here's no sound jest! the old man hath found their guilt;
1582 And sends them weapons wrapp'd about with lines,
1583 That wound, beyond their feeling, to the quick.
1584 But were our witty empress well afoot,
1585 She would applaud Andronicus' conceit.
1586 But let her rest in her unrest awhile.—
1587 And now, young lords, was't not a happy star
1588 Led us to Rome, strangers, and more than so,
1589 Captives, to be advanced to this height?
1590 It did me good before the palace gate
1591 To brave the tribune in his brother's hearing.
Demetrius
1592 But me more good to see so great a lord
1593 Basely insinuate and send us gifts.
Aaron
1594 Had he not reason, Lord Demetrius?
1595 Did you not use his daughter very friendly?
Demetrius
1596 I would we had a thousand Roman dames
1597 At such a bay, by turn to serve our lust.
Chiron
1598 A charitable wish, and full of love.
Aaron
1599 Here lacks but your mother for to say amen.
Chiron
1600 And that would she for twenty thousand more.
Demetrius
1601 Come, let us go; and pray to all the gods
1602 For our beloved mother in her pains.
[Aside.]
Aaron
1603 Pray to the devils; the gods have given us over.
[Flourish within.]
Demetrius
1604 Why do the emperor's trumpets flourish thus?
Chiron
1605 Belike, for joy the emperor hath a son.
Demetrius
1606 Soft! who comes here?
[Enter a NURSE, with a blackamoor CHILD in her arms.]
Nurse
1607 Good morrow, lords:
1608 O, tell me, did you see Aaron the Moor?
Aaron
1609 Well, more or less, or ne'er a whit at all,
1610 Here Aaron is; and what with Aaron now?
Nurse
1611 O gentle Aaron, we are all undone!
1612 Now help, or woe betide thee evermore!
Aaron
1613 Why, what a caterwauling dost thou keep!
1614 What dost thou wrap and fumble in thy arms?
Nurse
1615 O, that which I would hide from heaven's eye,
1616 Our empress' shame and stately Rome's disgrace!—
1617 She is deliver'd, lords,—she is deliver'd.
Aaron
1618 To whom?
Nurse
1619 I mean, she's brought a-bed.
Aaron
1620 Well, God give her good rest! What hath he sent her?
Nurse
1621 A devil.
Aaron
1622 Why, then she is the devil's dam; a joyful issue.
Nurse
1623 A joyless, dismal, black, and sorrowful issue:
1624 Here is the babe, as loathsome as a toad
1625 Amongst the fairest breeders of our clime:
1626 The empress sends it thee, thy stamp, thy seal,
1627 And bids thee christen it with thy dagger's point.
Aaron
1628 Zounds, ye whore! is black so base a hue?—
1629 Sweet blowse, you are a beauteous blossom sure.
Demetrius
1630 Villain, what hast thou done?
Aaron
1631 That which thou canst not undo.
Chiron
1632 Thou hast undone our mother.
Aaron
1633 Villain, I have done thy mother.
Demetrius
1634 And therein, hellish dog, thou hast undone.
1635 Woe to her chance, and damn'd her loathed choice!
1636 Accurs'd the offspring of so foul a fiend!
Chiron
1637 It shall not live.
Aaron
1638 It shall not die.
Nurse
1639 Aaron, it must; the mother wills it so.
Aaron
1640 What, must it, nurse? then let no man but I
1641 Do execution on my flesh and blood.
Demetrius
1642 I'll broach the tadpole on my rapier's point:—
1643 Nurse, give it me; my sword shall soon despatch it.
Aaron
1644 Sooner this sword shall plough thy bowels up.
[Takes the CHILD from the NURSE, and draws.]
Aaron
1645 Stay, murderous villains, will you kill your brother?
1646 Now, by the burning tapers of the sky,
1647 That shone so brightly when this boy was got,
1648 He dies upon my scimitar's sharp point
1649 That touches this my first-born son and heir!
1650 I tell you, younglings, not Enceladus,
1651 With all his threatening band of Typhon's brood,
1652 Nor great Alcides, nor the god of war,
1653 Shall seize this prey out of his father's hands.
1654 What, what, ye sanguine, shallow-hearted boys!
1655 Ye white-lim'd walls! ye alehouse-painted signs!
1656 Coal-black is better than another hue,
1657 In that it scorns to bear another hue;
1658 For all the water in the ocean
1659 Can never turn the swan's black legs to white,
1660 Although she lave them hourly in the flood.
1661 Tell the empress from me I am of age
1662 To keep mine own,—excuse it how she can.
Demetrius
1663 Wilt thou betray thy noble mistress thus?
Aaron
1664 My mistress is my mistress: this my self,—
1665 The vigour and the picture of my youth:
1666 This before all the world do I prefer;
1667 This maugre all the world will I keep safe,
1668 Or some of you shall smoke for it in Rome.
Demetrius
1669 By this our mother is for ever sham'd.
Chiron
1670 Rome will despise her for this foul escape.
Nurse
1671 The emperor, in his rage, will doom her death.
Chiron
1672 I blush to think upon this ignomy.
Aaron
1673 Why, there's the privilege your beauty bears:
1674 Fie, treacherous hue, that will betray with blushing
1675 The close enacts and counsels of thy heart!
1676 Here's a young lad fram'd of another leer:
1677 Look how the black slave smiles upon the father,
1678 As who should say 'Old lad, I am thine own.'
1679 He is your brother, lords; sensibly fed
1680 Of that self-blood that first gave life to you;
1681 And from your womb where you imprison'd were
1682 He is enfranchised and come to light:
1683 Nay, he is your brother by the surer side,
1684 Although my seal be stamped in his face.
Nurse
1685 Aaron, what shall I say unto the empress?
Demetrius
1686 Advise thee, Aaron, what is to be done,
1687 And we will all subscribe to thy advice:
1688 Save thou the child, so we may all be safe.
Aaron
1689 Then sit we down and let us all consult.
1690 My son and I will have the wind of you:
1691 Keep there: now talk at pleasure of your safety.
[They sit.]
Demetrius
1692 How many women saw this child of his?
Aaron
1693 Why, so, brave lords! when we join in league
1694 I am a lamb: but if you brave the Moor,
1695 The chafed boar, the mountain lioness,
1696 The ocean swells not so as Aaron storms.—
1697 But say, again, how many saw the child?
Nurse
1698 Cornelia the midwife and myself;
1699 And no one else but the deliver'd empress.
Aaron
1700 The empress, the midwife, and yourself:
1701 Two may keep counsel when the third's away:
1702 Go to the empress, tell her this I said:—
[Stabs her, and she dies.]
Aaron
1703 Weke, weke!—so cries a pig prepar'd to the spit.
Demetrius
1704 What mean'st thou, Aaron? Wherefore didst thou this?
Aaron
1705 O Lord, sir, 'tis a deed of policy:
1706 Shall she live to betray this guilt of ours,—
1707 A long-tongu'd babbling gossip? no, lords, no:
1708 And now be it known to you my full intent.
1709 Not far, one Muliteus lives, my countryman;
1710 His wife but yesternight was brought to bed;
1711 His child is like to her, fair as you are:
1712 Go pack with him, and give the mother gold,
1713 And tell them both the circumstance of all;
1714 And how by this their child shall be advanc'd,
1715 And be received for the emperor's heir,
1716 And substituted in the place of mine,
1717 To calm this tempest whirling in the court;
1718 And let the emperor dandle him for his own.
1719 Hark ye, lords; ye see I have given her physic.
[Pointing to the NURSE.]
Aaron
1720 And you must needs bestow her funeral;
1721 The fields are near, and you are gallant grooms:
1722 This done, see that you take no longer days,
1723 But send the midwife presently to me.
1724 The midwife and the nurse well made away,
1725 Then let the ladies tattle what they please.
Chiron
1726 Aaron, I see thou wilt not trust the air
1727 With secrets.
Demetrius
1728 For this care of Tamora,
1729 Herself and hers are highly bound to thee.
[Exeunt DEMETRIUS and CHIRON, bearing off the dead NURSE.]
Aaron
1730 Now to the Goths, as swift as swallow flies;
1731 There to dispose this treasure in mine arms,
1732 And secretly to greet the empress' friends.—
1733 Come on, you thick-lipp'd slave, I'll bear you hence;
1734 For it is you that puts us to our shifts:
1735 I'll make you feed on berries and on roots,
1736 And feed on curds and whey, and suck the goat,
1737 And cabin in a cave, and bring you up
1738 To be a warrior and command a camp.
[Exit.]

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Notes

TLN 1575classical allusion
“Integer vitae, scelerisque purus”
Titus wraps the weapons in a quotation from Horace: 'Integer vitae, scelerisque purus / Non eget Mauri jaculis, nec arcu' — 'The man of upright life, unstained by guilt, needs neither the javelins nor the bow of the Moor.' The surface meaning praises an innocent man's safety; the buried meaning is a lethal taunt directed at Chiron and Demetrius, rapists who are anything but innocent. The word 'Mauri' (Moors, Africa's archers) also points at Aaron.
TLN 1581rhetorical device
“old man hath found their guilt; And sends them weapons wrapp'd about with lines, That wound, beyond their feeling, to the quick”
Aaron's aside explains the joke: Titus's 'wound' is a metaphor — not the weapons themselves but the Latin lines wrapped round them, which expose Chiron and Demetrius's guilt in language they cannot fully decode. 'To the quick' means to the most sensitive, living part (the flesh under the nail, used proverbially for any wound that goes deep). The weapons are a vehicle for a textual weapon; the verse is the real blade.
TLN 1584archaic vocab
“were our witty empress well afoot, She would applaud Andronicus' conceit”
'Witty' here means clever or quick-witted, not merely funny. 'Well afoot' means up and about, active — Tamora is confined to childbed and therefore not available. A 'conceit' is an ingenious device or clever scheme; Aaron means that if Tamora were mobile, she would admire Titus's clever trick of sending weapons wrapped in the accusing Latin lines.
TLN 1622archaic vocab
“then she is the devil's dam; a joyful issue”
'Dam' is the standard word for an animal's mother (as 'sire' for the father), often applied to human mothers contemptuously. The 'devil's dam' was a proverbial figure — the devil's mother, imagined as even worse than the devil himself. Aaron is firing back at the Nurse's description of the child as 'a devil': if the child is a devil, Tamora must be the devil's own mother. 'Issue' means offspring or child.
TLN 1628cultural context
“Zounds, ye whore! is black so base a hue?— Sweet blowse, you are a beauteous blossom sure.”
Aaron's explosive outburst refuses the contempt heaped on his child's skin. 'Zounds' is a strong oath (a contraction of 'God's wounds,' Christ's wounds on the cross). 'Blowse' (also spelled 'blowze') meant a ruddy or buxom country girl — here used sardonically in contrast to the Nurse's word 'loathsome.' Aaron's counter-question, 'is black so base a hue?', is the play's most direct challenge to the equation of dark skin with moral inferiority, a link the other characters take for granted.
historical The 'Moor' on the Elizabethan stage
TLN 1654archaic vocab
“ye sanguine, shallow-hearted boys! Ye white-lim'd walls! ye alehouse-painted signs!”
'Sanguine' means flush-faced and ruddy — the complexion of fair-skinned men, contrasted with Aaron's darkness. Aaron uses it as an insult: you are merely the right colour on the outside, but cowardly within. 'White-limed walls' means whitewashed walls — a surface covering for dirty plaster, borrowed from Matthew 23:27, where Jesus calls hypocrites 'whited sepulchres.' 'Alehouse-painted signs' are cheap, crudely daubed pub signs — gaudy on the outside, worthless.
TLN 1656cultural context
“Coal-black is better than another hue, In that it scorns to bear another hue”
Aaron delivers a sustained argument that black is a superior colour because it refuses to be covered or changed — unlike white, which yields to dye or stain. The swan's legs, black by nature, will not turn white no matter how long they are washed. Aaron uses this as a point of pride: his son's dark skin is permanent and authentic, whereas whiteness is erasable. The speech is the play's most extended anti-racist counter-argument — voiced by a character the play simultaneously presents as villainous, which is itself a tension the play never resolves.
historical The 'Moor' on the Elizabethan stage
TLN 1667archaic vocab
“This maugre all the world will I keep safe, Or some of you shall smoke for it in Rome.”
'Maugre' (from Old French 'malgre,' ill-will) means 'in spite of' or 'notwithstanding.' Aaron is saying he will keep his son safe despite the whole world's opposition. 'Smoke for it' means to suffer for it — to be punished or made to pay. The two archaisms together signal Aaron's formal, heightened register when he claims absolute authority over his child.
TLN 1672archaic vocab
“I blush to think upon this ignomy”
'Ignomy' is a contraction of 'ignominy' — public disgrace or shame. Chiron says he blushes at the scandal his mother's affair has caused. Aaron's instant riposte — that blushing itself is a betrayal of the 'treacherous hue' of white skin — turns Chiron's evidence of shame into further proof of his colour's unreliability.
TLN 1701rhetorical device
“Two may keep counsel when the third's away”
Aaron quotes a proverbial saying to explain why he is about to kill the Nurse: a secret can only be safe when all but one of those who know it are removed. In the same breath as he speaks the proverb he demonstrates it, stabbing the Nurse immediately after so that only the empress (who will not tell her own shame) and the midwife (next on his list) remain. The proverb's calm is darkly ironic against the violence it licenses.
TLN 1703rhetorical device
“Weke, weke!—so cries a pig prepar'd to the spit.”
Aaron mimics the squeal of a pig being killed as the Nurse dies from his stab, comparing her to an animal slaughtered for the table. The grotesque simile belongs to the scene's pattern of dehumanising language ('babbling gossip,' the Nurse already described as a disposal problem rather than a person) and is part of Aaron's deliberate callousness. It also prepares the audience for his clinical instructions to 'bestow her funeral' like disposing of waste.
TLN 1705archaic vocab
“'tis a deed of policy”
'Policy' in Elizabethan usage meant cunning statecraft, strategic calculation, or shrewd scheming — often with a negative connotation of cold-blooded pragmatism over morality. Aaron calls murdering the Nurse a 'deed of policy' as if it were simply good management. The word belongs to a discourse of Machiavellian calculation; an Elizabethan audience would hear it as a code-word for the amoral cleverness associated with Italian political thought.
TLN 1730cultural context
“Now to the Goths, as swift as swallow flies”
Aaron's closing soliloquy reveals that he plans to flee Rome with his infant son to the Goths — Rome's enemy nation, from which Tamora originally came and where Lucius is now raising an army. His plan to raise the boy on 'berries and on roots,' curds and whey, and goat's milk, and to bring him up 'to be a warrior' follows a pastoral exile pattern familiar from romance — but Aaron's version of it is practical military training, not pastoral idyll. 'As swift as swallow flies' is a simile from nature, the swallow being the type of speed.