Act 5, Scene 2

Rome. Before TITUS'S House.

[Enter TAMORA, DEMETRIUS and CHIRON, disguised.]
Tamora
2134 Thus, in this strange and sad habiliment,
2135 I will encounter with Andronicus,
2136 And say I am Revenge, sent from below
2137 To join with him and right his heinous wrongs.
2138 Knock at his study, where they say he keeps
2139 To ruminate strange plots of dire revenge;
2140 Tell him Revenge is come to join with him,
2141 And work confusion on his enemies.
[They knock.]
[Enter TITUS, above.]
Titus Andronicus
2142 Who doth molest my contemplation?
2143 Is it your trick to make me ope the door,
2144 That so my sad decrees may fly away
2145 And all my study be to no effect?
2146 You are deceiv'd: for what I mean to do
2147 See here in bloody lines I have set down;
2148 And what is written shall be executed.
Tamora
2149 Titus, I am come to talk with thee.
Titus Andronicus
2150 No, not a word: how can I grace my talk,
2151 Wanting a hand to give it action?
2152 Thou hast the odds of me; therefore no more.
Tamora
2153 If thou didst know me, thou wouldst talk with me.
Titus Andronicus
2154 I am not mad; I know thee well enough:
2155 Witness this wretched stump, witness these crimson lines;
2156 Witness these trenches made by grief and care;
2157 Witness the tiring day and heavy night;
2158 Witness all sorrow, that I know thee well
2159 For our proud empress, mighty Tamora:
2160 Is not thy coming for my other hand?
Tamora
2161 Know thou, sad man, I am not Tamora;
2162 She is thy enemy and I thy friend:
2163 I am Revenge; sent from the infernal kingdom
2164 To ease the gnawing vulture of thy mind
2165 By working wreakful vengeance on thy foes.
2166 Come down and welcome me to this world's light;
2167 Confer with me of murder and of death:
2168 There's not a hollow cave or lurking-place,
2169 No vast obscurity or misty vale,
2170 Where bloody murder or detested rape
2171 Can couch for fear but I will find them out;
2172 And in their ears tell them my dreadful name,—
2173 Revenge, which makes the foul offender quake.
Titus Andronicus
2174 Art thou Revenge? and art thou sent to me
2175 To be a torment to mine enemies?
Tamora
2176 I am; therefore come down and welcome me.
Titus Andronicus
2177 Do me some service ere I come to thee.
2178 Lo, by thy side where Rape and Murder stands;
2179 Now give some surance that thou art Revenge,—
2180 Stab them, or tear them on thy chariot wheels;
2181 And then I'll come and be thy waggoner,
2182 And whirl along with thee about the globe.
2183 Provide thee two proper palfreys, black as jet,
2184 To hale thy vengeful waggon swift away,
2185 And find out murderers in their guilty caves:
2186 And when thy car is loaden with their heads
2187 I will dismount, and by the waggon-wheel
2188 Trot, like a servile footman, all day long,
2189 Even from Hyperion's rising in the east
2190 Until his very downfall in the sea:
2191 And day by day I'll do this heavy task,
2192 So thou destroy Rapine and Murder there.
Tamora
2193 These are my ministers, and come with me.
Titus Andronicus
2194 Are they thy ministers? what are they call'd?
Tamora
2195 Rapine and Murder; therefore called so
2196 'Cause they take vengeance of such kind of men.
Titus Andronicus
2197 Good Lord, how like the empress' sons they are!
2198 And you the empress! But we worldly men
2199 Have miserable, mad, mistaking eyes.
2200 O sweet Revenge, now do I come to thee;
2201 And, if one arm's embracement will content thee,
2202 I will embrace thee in it by and by.
[Exit from above.]
Tamora
2203 This closing with him fits his lunacy:
2204 Whate'er I forge to feed his brain-sick fiits,
2205 Do you uphold and maintain in your speeches,
2206 For now he firmly takes me for Revenge;
2207 And, being credulous in this mad thought,
2208 I'll make him send for Lucius his son;
2209 And whilst I at a banquet hold him sure,
2210 I'll find some cunning practice out of hand
2211 To scatter and disperse the giddy Goths,
2212 Or, at the least, make them his enemies.
2213 See, here he comes, and I must ply my theme.
[Enter TITUS.]
Titus Andronicus
2214 Long have I been forlorn, and all for thee:
2215 Welcome, dread fury, to my woeful house;—
2216 Rapine and Murder, you are welcome too:—
2217 How like the empress and her sons you are!
2218 Well are you fitted, had you but a Moor:
2219 Could not all hell afford you such a devil?—
2220 For well I wot the empress never wags
2221 But in her company there is a Moor;
2222 And, would you represent our queen aright,
2223 It were convenient you had such a devil:
2224 But welcome as you are. What shall we do?
Tamora
2225 What wouldst thou have us do, Andronicus?
Demetrius
2226 Show me a murderer, I'll deal with him.
Chiron
2227 Show me a villain that hath done a rape,
2228 And I am sent to be reveng'd on him.
Tamora
2229 Show me a thousand that hath done thee wrong,
2230 And I will be revenged on them all.
Titus Andronicus
2231 Look round about the wicked streets of Rome,
2232 And when thou find'st a man that's like thyself,
2233 Good Murder, stab him; he's a murderer.—
2234 Go thou with him; and when it is thy hap
2235 To find another that is like to thee,
2236 Good Rapine, stab him; he is a ravisher.—
2237 Go thou with them; and in the emperor's court
2238 There is a queen, attended by a Moor;
2239 Well mayst thou know her by thine own proportion,
2240 For up and down she doth resemble thee;
2241 I pray thee, do on them some violent death;
2242 They have been violent to me and mine.
Tamora
2243 Well hast thou lesson'd us; this shall we do.
2244 But would it please thee, good Andronicus,
2245 To send for Lucius, thy thrice-valiant son,
2246 Who leads towards Rome a band of warlike Goths,
2247 And bid him come and banquet at thy house;
2248 When he is here, even at thy solemn feast,
2249 I will bring in the empress and her sons,
2250 The emperor himself, and all thy foes;
2251 And at thy mercy shall they stoop and kneel,
2252 And on them shalt thou ease thy angry heart.
2253 What says Andronicus to this device?
Titus Andronicus
2254 Marcus, my brother!—'tis sad Titus calls.
[Enter MARCUS.]
Titus Andronicus
2255 Go, gentle Marcus, to thy nephew Lucius;
2256 Thou shalt inquire him out among the Goths:
2257 Bid him repair to me, and bring with him
2258 Some of the chiefest princes of the Goths;
2259 Bid him encamp his soldiers where they are:
2260 Tell him the emperor and the empress too
2261 Feast at my house, and he shall feast with them.
2262 This do thou for my love; and so let him,
2263 As he regards his aged father's life.
Marcus Andronicus
2264 This will I do, and soon return again.
[Exit.]
Tamora
2265 Now will I hence about thy business,
2266 And take my ministers along with me.
Titus Andronicus
2267 Nay, nay, let Rape and Murder stay with me,
2268 Or else I'll call my brother back again,
2269 And cleave to no revenge but Lucius.
[Aside to them.]
Tamora
2270 What say you, boys? will you abide with him,
2271 Whiles I go tell my lord the emperor
2272 How I have govern'd our determin'd jest?
2273 Yield to his humour, smooth and speak him fair,
2274 And tarry with him till I come again.
[Aside.]
Titus Andronicus
2275 I knew them all, though they suppose me mad,
2276 And will o'er reach them in their own devices,—
2277 A pair of cursed hell-hounds and their dam.
Demetrius
2278 Madam, depart at pleasure; leave us here.
Tamora
2279 Farewell, Andronicus: Revenge now goes
2280 To lay a complot to betray thy foes.
Titus Andronicus
2281 I know thou dost; and, sweet Revenge, farewell!
[Exit TAMORA.]
Chiron
2282 Tell us, old man, how shall we be employ'd?
Titus Andronicus
2283 Tut, I have work enough for you to do.—
2284 Publius, come hither, Caius, and Valentine.
[Enter PUBLIUS and others.]
Publius
2285 What is your will?
Titus Andronicus
2286 Know you these two?
Publius
2287 The empress' sons, I take them: Chiron, Demetrius.
Titus Andronicus
2288 Fie, Publius, fie! thou art too much deceiv'd,—
2289 The one is Murder, Rape is the other's name;
2290 And therefore bind them, gentle Publius:—
2291 Caius and Valentine, lay hands on them:—
2292 Oft have you heard me wish for such an hour,
2293 And now I find it; therefore bind them sure;
2294 And stop their mouths if they begin to cry.
[Exit. PUBLIUS &c., lay hands on CHIRON and DEMETRIUS.]
Chiron
2295 Villains, forbear! we are the empress' sons.
Publius
2296 And therefore do we what we are commanded.—
2297 Stop close their mouths, let them not speak a word.
2298 Is he sure bound? look that you bind them fast.
[Re-enter TITUS ANDRONICUS, with LAVINIA; he bearing a knife and she a basin.]
Titus Andronicus
2299 Come, come, Lavinia; look, thy foes are bound.—
2300 Sirs, stop their mouths, let them not speak to me;
2301 But let them hear what fearful words I utter.—
2302 O villains, Chiron and Demetrius!
2303 Here stands the spring whom you have stain'd with mud;
2304 This goodly summer with your winter mix'd.
2305 You kill'd her husband; and for that vile fault
2306 Two of her brothers were condemn'd to death,
2307 My hand cut off and made a merry jest;
2308 Both her sweet hands, her tongue, and that, more dear
2309 Than hands or tongue, her spotless chastity,
2310 Inhuman traitors, you constrain'd and forc'd.
2311 What would you say, if I should let you speak?
2312 Villains, for shame you could not beg for grace.
2313 Hark, wretches! how I mean to martyr you.
2314 This one hand yet is left to cut your throats,
2315 Whiles that Lavinia 'tween her stumps doth hold
2316 The basin that receives your guilty blood.
2317 You know your mother means to feast with me,
2318 And calls herself Revenge, and thinks me mad:—
2319 Hark, villains! I will grind your bones to dust,
2320 And with your blood and it I'll make a paste;
2321 And of the paste a coffin I will rear,
2322 And make two pasties of your shameful heads;
2323 And bid that strumpet, your unhallow'd dam,
2324 Like to the earth, swallow her own increase.
2325 This is the feast that I have bid her to,
2326 And this the banquet she shall surfeit on;
2327 For worse than Philomel you us'd my daughter,
2328 And worse than Progne I will be reveng'd:
2329 And now prepare your throats. Lavinia, come
[He cuts their throats.]
Titus Andronicus
2330 Receive the blood: and when that they are dead,
2331 Let me go grind their bones to powder small,
2332 And with this hateful liquor temper it;
2333 And in that paste let their vile heads be bak'd.
2334 Come, come, be every one officious
2335 To make this banquet; which I wish may prove
2336 More stern and bloody than the Centaurs' feast.
2337 So, now bring them in, for I will play the cook,
2338 And see them ready against their mother comes.
[Exeunt, bearing the dead bodies.]

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Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 2134archaic vocab
“strange and sad habiliment”
'Habiliment' means clothing or costume (from Old French habillement). Tamora is dressed in an unusual and mournful disguise, which she is about to claim is the garb of Revenge herself.
TLN 2136cultural context
“I am Revenge, sent from below”
Tamora impersonates Revenge as if she were a classical deity or allegorical figure dispatched from the underworld. Personified Revenge was a stock figure in Elizabethan revenge tragedy, often imagined as a supernatural force from below the earth, as in Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, where a similar figure called Revenge frames the whole play.
historical Seneca and the revenge tragedy
TLN 2151rhetorical device
“Wanting a hand to give it action”
'Give it action' means to gesture with the hands while speaking — the classical art of delivery (Latin actio). Cicero and Quintilian both listed hand gesture as essential to oratory. Titus, who had his right hand cut off at Saturninus's demand in Act 3, bitterly refuses to talk because he literally cannot use the rhetorical gestures that dignify speech.
TLN 2155rhetorical device
“Witness this wretched stump, witness these crimson lines”
Titus accumulates the word 'Witness' at the start of five consecutive clauses (TLN 2155-2158) — a rhetorical figure called anaphora (repetition of the same word at the start of successive phrases). Here it makes his body, his grief, and the passage of suffering testify like sworn witnesses in a Roman court that he does know who Tamora is.
TLN 2163archaic vocab
“sent from the infernal kingdom”
'Infernal kingdom' means the underworld — Hades or Hell — the realm of the dead beneath the earth. 'Wreakful' (TLN 2165) is an archaic adjective meaning 'vengeful' or 'causing punishment'; it survives only in poetic use by Shakespeare's time.
TLN 2164classical allusion
“gnawing vulture of thy mind”
The vulture gnawing at a man's innards is the punishment of Prometheus (or, in some traditions, Tityus), condemned by Jupiter to have his liver eternally torn by a bird. Tamora compares Titus's obsessive grief and desire for revenge to this mythological torment — a suffering that renews itself without end.
TLN 2178cultural context
“by thy side where Rape and Murder stands”
Titus names Chiron and Demetrius as the allegorical personifications Rape and Murder, slotting them into Tamora's disguise as Revenge's attendants. Allegorical vice-figures with abstract names appearing alongside a personification of a virtue or supernatural force — like a devil's retinue — was a familiar pattern from the morality plays that preceded Shakespeare on the English stage.
historical The Vice of the morality plays
TLN 2183archaic vocab
“two proper palfreys, black as jet”
A 'palfrey' was a saddle-horse suitable for a lady or for ordinary riding, as opposed to a destrier (war-horse). 'Jet' is a glossy black semi-precious stone. The classical chariot of Night or the Furies was typically drawn by black horses — here Titus elaborates the Revenge-chariot imagery with a detail that suits the underworld symbolism.
TLN 2189classical allusion
“from Hyperion's rising in the east”
Hyperion was a Titan of light, often used as a name for the sun itself. 'Hyperion's rising in the east... until his very downfall in the sea' means from sunrise to sunset — the full arc of one day. Titus is vowing to serve as Revenge's footman for the whole of every day, from dawn to dusk.
classical Hyperion
TLN 2197rhetorical device
“how like the empress' sons they are! And you the empress! But we worldly men Have miserable, mad, mistaking eyes.”
Titus's exclamations are ironic acting: he sees through the disguise perfectly but pretends to doubt his own eyes by blaming them for 'mistaking.' This is the aside-without-a-stage-direction — Titus's aside to himself at TLN 2275 confirms that he 'knew them all.' The apparent credulity ('mad, mistaking eyes') is the theatrical performance that lets him keep Chiron and Demetrius where he wants them.
TLN 2218cultural context
“Well are you fitted, had you but a Moor: Could not all hell afford you such a devil?”
Titus observes that the disguise would be complete only if Aaron were with them, calling him 'a devil' from hell — language that reflects the Elizabethan stage convention linking dark skin with the demonic. The remark is voiced by Titus, not by the play or its author; annotating it means registering that this is exactly the racist code the play gives to its characters while giving Aaron, in other scenes, wit and a father's love that complicate the stereotype.
historical The 'Moor' on the Elizabethan stage
TLN 2220archaic vocab
“for well I wot the empress never wags”
'Wot' is an archaic first-person singular form of the verb 'to wit' (to know): 'I wot' means 'I know.' 'Wags' means 'stirs' or 'moves.' The line means: 'I know for a fact that the empress never moves [from her place] without a Moor in her company.'
TLN 2275stage direction note
“I knew them all, though they suppose me mad, And will o'er reach them in their own devices”
This is an aside — spoken to the audience while Tamora's party cannot hear. It confirms that Titus has seen through the disguise from the start. 'O'er reach' means to get the better of someone by cunning (literally 'to reach over,' to go past them). 'Devices' means plots or schemes. 'Their dam' (TLN 2277) is their mother — 'dam' being the standard term for an animal's mother, here used contemptuously.
TLN 2303rhetorical device
“Here stands the spring whom you have stain'd with mud; This goodly summer with your winter mix'd.”
Titus addresses Chiron and Demetrius directly, describing Lavinia through two parallel metaphors: a clear spring fouled with mud, and a summer ruined by winter. Both images say: her natural purity was violated by your destructive intrusion. The figure is antithesis (pure spring / mud; summer / winter), giving the accusation a formal, rhetorical shape appropriate to an indictment before execution.
TLN 2319historical topical
“I will grind your bones to dust, And with your blood and it I'll make a paste; And of the paste a coffin I will rear”
Titus describes the mechanics of a meat pie: 'coffin' here is the pastry case (the shell or crust of a pie) — a standard cookery term of the period, not a burial box. 'Pasties' (TLN 2322) are baked pastry-encased meat pies. Titus will grind the bones of Chiron and Demetrius, mix them with their blood to make the filling, encase their heads in pastry, and serve them to their mother.
historical Seneca and the revenge tragedy
TLN 2327classical allusion
“worse than Philomel you us'd my daughter, And worse than Progne I will be reveng'd”
Philomela was raped by King Tereus, who also cut out her tongue. Her sister Procne (here 'Progne') avenged the rape by killing her own son Itys, cooking him, and serving him to Tereus. Titus says what was done to Lavinia was worse than Philomela's fate, and his revenge will be worse than Procne's — because he is serving Tamora her sons, not a single child. The Ovid story is the play's explicit mythological model for both the crime and the punishment.
classical Philomela
TLN 2336classical allusion
“More stern and bloody than the Centaurs' feast”
The 'Centaurs' feast' refers to the Lapiths-and-Centaurs brawl (the Centauromachy) at the wedding of the Lapith king Pirithous: the Centaurs, half-man and half-horse guests at the feast, grew drunk and tried to carry off the Lapith women. The resulting battle was one of the canonical classical images of violent disruption — a feast that turned into a slaughter. Titus wishes his banquet will outdo even this legendary bloodshed.