Act 5, Scene 3

Rome. A Pavilion in TITUS'S Gardens, with tables, &c.

[Enter LUCIUS, MARCUS, and GOTHS, with AARON prisoner.]
Lucius
2339 Uncle Marcus, since 'tis my father's mind
2340 That I repair to Rome, I am content.
First Goth
2341 And ours with thine, befall what fortune will.
Lucius
2342 Good uncle, take you in this barbarous Moor,
2343 This ravenous tiger, this accursed devil;
2344 Let him receive no sustenance, fetter him,
2345 Till he be brought unto the empress' face
2346 For testimony of her foul proceedings:
2347 And see the ambush of our friends be strong;
2348 I fear the emperor means no good to us.
Aaron
2349 Some devil whisper curses in my ear,
2350 And prompt me that my tongue may utter forth
2351 The venomous malice of my swelling heart!
Lucius
2352 Away, inhuman dog, unhallowed slave!—
2353 Sirs, help our uncle to convey him in.—
[Exeunt GOTHS with AARON. Flourish within. The trumpets show the emperor is at hand.]
[Enter SATURNINUS and TAMORA, with AEMILIUS, Tribunes, Senators, and others.]
Saturninus
2354 What, hath the firmament more suns than one?
Lucius
2355 What boots it thee to call thyself the sun?
Marcus Andronicus
2356 Rome's emperor, and nephew, break the parle;
2357 These quarrels must be quietly debated.
2358 The feast is ready, which the careful Titus
2359 Hath ordain'd to an honourable end,
2360 For peace, for love, for league, and good to Rome:
2361 Please you, therefore, draw nigh and take your places.
Saturninus
2362 Marcus, we will.
[Hautboys sound. The company sit at table.]
[Enter TITUS, dressed like a cook,LAVINIA, valed,YOUNG LUCIUS, and others. TITUS places the dishes on the table.]
Titus Andronicus
2363 Welcome, my lord; welcome, dread queen;
2364 Welcome, ye warlike Goths; welcome, Lucius;
2365 And welcome all: although the cheer be poor,
2366 'Twill fill your stomachs; please you eat of it.
Saturninus
2367 Why art thou thus attir'd, Andronicus?
Titus Andronicus
2368 Because I would be sure to have all well
2369 To entertain your highness and your empress.
Tamora
2370 We are beholden to you, good Andronicus.
Titus Andronicus
2371 An if your highness knew my heart, you were.
2372 My lord the emperor, resolve me this:
2373 Was it well done of rash Virginius
2374 To slay his daughter with his own right hand,
2375 Because she was enforc'd, stain'd, and deflower'd?
Saturninus
2376 It was, Andronicus.
Titus Andronicus
2377 Your reason, mighty lord.
Saturninus
2378 Because the girl should not survive her shame,
2379 And by her presence still renew his sorrows.
Titus Andronicus
2380 A reason mighty, strong, and effectual;
2381 A pattern, precedent, and lively warrant
2382 For me, most wretched, to perform the like:—
2383 Die, die, Lavinia, and thy shame with thee;
[Kills LAVINIA.]
Titus Andronicus
2384 And with thy shame thy father's sorrow die!
Saturninus
2385 What hast thou done, unnatural and unkind?
Titus Andronicus
2386 Kill'd her for whom my tears have made me blind.
2387 I am as woeful as Virginius was,
2388 And have a thousand times more cause than he
2389 To do this outrage;—and it now is done.
Saturninus
2390 What, was she ravish'd? tell who did the deed.
Titus Andronicus
2391 Will't please you eat? will't please your highness feed?
Tamora
2392 Why hast thou slain thine only daughter thus?
Titus Andronicus
2393 Not I; 'twas Chiron and Demetrius:
2394 They ravish'd her, and cut away her tongue;
2395 And they, 'twas they, that did her all this wrong.
Saturninus
2396 Go, fetch them hither to us presently.
Titus Andronicus
2397 Why, there they are, both baked in that pie,
2398 Whereof their mother daintily hath fed,
2399 Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred.
2400 'Tis true, 'tis true; witness my knife's sharp point.
[Kills Tamora.]
Saturninus
2401 Die, frantic wretch, for this accursed deed!
[Kills TITUS.]
Lucius
2402 Can the son's eye behold his father bleed?
2403 There's meed for meed, death for a deadly deed.
[Kills SATURNINUS. A great tumult. LUCIUS, MARCUS, and their partisans, ascend the steps before TITUS'S house.]
Marcus Andronicus
2404 You sad-fac'd men, people and sons of Rome,
2405 By uproar sever'd, as a flight of fowl
2406 Scatter'd by winds and high tempestuous gusts,
2407 O, let me teach you how to knit again
2408 This scattered corn into one mutual sheaf,
2409 These broken limbs again into one body:
2410 Lest Rome herself be bane unto herself,
2411 And she whom mighty kingdoms court'sy to,
2412 Like a forlorn and desperate castaway,
2413 Do shameful execution on herself.
2414 But if my frosty signs and chaps of age,
2415 Grave witnesses of true experience,
2416 Cannot induce you to attend my words,—
2417 Speak, Rome's dear friend,
[to Lucius]
Marcus Andronicus
2418 : as erst our ancestor,
2419 When with his solemn tongue he did discourse
2420 To love-sick Dido's sad attending ear
2421 The story of that baleful burning night,
2422 When subtle Greeks surpris'd King Priam's Troy,—
2423 Tell us what Sinon hath bewitch'd our ears,
2424 Or who hath brought the fatal engine in
2425 That gives our Troy, our Rome, the civil wound.
2426 My heart is not compact of flint nor steel;
2427 Nor can I utter all our bitter grief,
2428 But floods of tears will drown my oratory
2429 And break my very utterance, even in the time
2430 When it should move you to attend me most,
2431 Lending your kind commiseration.
2432 Here is a captain, let him tell the tale;
2433 Your hearts will throb and weep to hear him speak.
Lucius
2434 Then, noble auditory, be it known to you
2435 That cursed Chiron and Demetrius
2436 Were they that murdered our emperor's brother;
2437 And they it were that ravished our sister:
2438 For their fell faults our brothers were beheaded;
2439 Our father's tears despis'd, and basely cozen'd
2440 Of that true hand that fought Rome's quarrel out
2441 And sent her enemies unto the grave.
2442 Lastly, myself unkindly banished,
2443 The gates shut on me, and turn'd weeping out,
2444 To beg relief among Rome's enemies;
2445 Who drown'd their enmity in my true tears,
2446 And op'd their arms to embrace me as a friend:
2447 I am the turned-forth, be it known to you,
2448 That have preserv'd her welfare in my blood;
2449 And from her bosom took the enemy's point,
2450 Sheathing the steel in my adventurous body.
2451 Alas! you know I am no vaunter, I;
2452 My scars can witness, dumb although they are,
2453 That my report is just and full of truth.
2454 But, soft! methinks I do digress too much,
2455 Citing my worthless praise: O, pardon me;
2456 For when no friends are by, men praise themselves.
Marcus Andronicus
2457 Now is my turn to speak. Behold the child.
[Pointing to the CHILD in an Attendant's arms.]
Marcus Andronicus
2458 Of this was Tamora delivered;
2459 The issue of an irreligious Moor,
2460 Chief architect and plotter of these woes:
2461 The villain is alive in Titus' house,
2462 Damn'd as he is, to witness this is true.
2463 Now judge what cause had Titus to revenge
2464 These wrongs unspeakable, past patience,
2465 Or more than any living man could bear.
2466 Now have you heard the truth, what say you, Romans?
2467 Have we done aught amiss,—show us wherein,
2468 And, from the place where you behold us now,
2469 The poor remainder of Andronici
2470 Will, hand in hand, all headlong cast us down,
2471 And on the ragged stones beat forth our brains,
2472 And make a mutual closure of our house.
2473 Speak, Romans, speak; and if you say we shall,
2474 Lo, hand in hand, Lucius and I will fall.
Aemilius
2475 Come, come, thou reverend man of Rome,
2476 And bring our emperor gently in thy hand,
2477 Lucius our emperor; for well I know
2478 The common voice do cry it shall be so.
[Several speak.]
Romans
2479 Lucius, all hail, Rome's royal emperor!
Marcus Andronicus
2480 Go, go into old Titus' sorrowful house,
[To attendants, who go into the house.]
Marcus Andronicus
2481 And hither hale that misbelieving Moor
2482 To be adjudg'd some direful slaughtering death,
2483 As punishment for his most wicked life.
[LUCIUS, MARCUS, &c. descend.]
[Several speak.]
Romans
2484 Lucius, all hail, Rome's gracious governor!
Lucius
2485 Thanks, gentle Romans: may I govern so
2486 To heal Rome's harms and wipe away her woe!
2487 But, gentle people, give me aim awhile,—
2488 For nature puts me to a heavy task:—
2489 Stand all aloof;—but, uncle, draw you near,
2490 To shed obsequious tears upon this trunk.—
2491 O, take this warm kiss on thy pale cold lips.
[Kisses TITUS.]
Lucius
2492 These sorrowful drops upon thy blood-stain'd face,
2493 The last true duties of thy noble son!
Marcus Andronicus
2494 Tear for tear and loving kiss for kiss
2495 Thy brother Marcus tenders on thy lips:
2496 O, were the sum of these that I should pay
2497 Countless and infinite, yet would I pay them!
Lucius
2498 Come hither, boy; come, come, and learn of us
2499 To melt in showers: thy grandsire lov'd thee well:
2500 Many a time he danc'd thee on his knee,
2501 Sung thee asleep, his loving breast thy pillow;
2502 Many a matter hath he told to thee,
2503 Meet and agreeing with thine infancy;
2504 In that respect, then, like a loving child,
2505 Shed yet some small drops from thy tender spring,
2506 Because kind nature doth require it so:
2507 Friends should associate friends in grief and woe:
2508 Bid him farewell; commit him to the grave;
2509 Do him that kindness, and take leave of him.
Young Lucius
2510 O grandsire, grandsire! even with all my heart
2511 Would I were dead, so you did live again!—
2512 O Lord, I cannot speak to him for weeping;
2513 My tears will choke me, if I ope my mouth.
[Re-enter attendants with AARON.]
Aemilius
2514 You sad Andronici, have done with woes:
2515 Give sentence on the execrable wretch,
2516 That hath been breeder of these dire events.
Lucius
2517 Set him breast-deep in earth, and famish him;
2518 There let him stand and rave and cry for food:
2519 If any one relieves or pities him,
2520 For the offence he dies. This is our doom:
2521 Some stay to see him fasten'd in the earth.
Aaron
2522 Ah, why should wrath be mute and fury dumb?
2523 I am no baby, I, that with base prayers
2524 I should repent the evils I have done:
2525 Ten thousand worse than ever yet I did
2526 Would I perform, if I might have my will:
2527 If one good deed in all my life I did,
2528 I do repent it from my very soul.
Lucius
2529 Some loving friends convey the emperor hence,
2530 And give him burial in his father's grave:
2531 My father and Lavinia shall forthwith
2532 Be closed in our household's monument.
2533 As for that ravenous tiger, Tamora,
2534 No funeral rite, nor man in mournful weeds,
2535 No mournful bell shall ring her burial;
2536 But throw her forth to beasts and birds of prey:
2537 Her life was beast-like and devoid of pity;
2538 And, being so, shall have like want of pity.
2539 See justice done on Aaron, that damn'd Moor,
2540 By whom our heavy haps had their beginning:
2541 Then, afterwards, to order well the state,
2542 That like events may ne'er it ruinate.
[Exeunt.]

Reading mode

Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 2342cultural context
“barbarous Moor, This ravenous tiger”
'Barbarous' means both 'foreign/uncivilised' and 'cruel'; 'Moor' was a loose Elizabethan term for North or sub-Saharan Africans generally. Lucius stacks three dehumanising labels — 'barbarous,' 'ravenous tiger,' 'accursed devil' — onto Aaron. The play puts this racist contempt in the mouths of Roman characters; Aaron answers and complicates it elsewhere. Elizabethan audiences often associated the stage 'Moor' with villainy and the demonic.
historical The 'Moor' on the Elizabethan stage
TLN 2354rhetorical device
“more suns than one”
Saturninus arrives and challenges Lucius — who leads a Gothic army — by asking whether the sky has room for two suns. He means: there is only one emperor, and it is not Lucius. Lucius's retort ('What boots it thee to call thyself the sun?') denies Saturninus the royal sun-metaphor entirely. 'What boots it' = what does it profit / avail you.
TLN 2363stage direction note
“Welcome, my lord; welcome, dread queen”
Titus enters in a cook's apron or livery, personally serving the banquet at which he will murder Tamora with the meat of her own sons. Dressing as a servant is his disguise for the final revenge: it lets him carry and arrange the dishes without arousing suspicion. The role of the cook who prepares the cannibal-feast echoes Ovid's Procne, who cooks her son Itys and serves him to Tereus, and Seneca's Thyestes, in which Atreus makes Thyestes eat his sons.
classical Philomelahistorical Seneca and the revenge tragedy
TLN 2373historical topical
“rash Virginius To slay his daughter with his own right hand”
Virginius was a Roman centurion who stabbed his own daughter Virginia to death rather than let the corrupt magistrate Appius Claudius seize and violate her. The act was celebrated in Roman tradition as an extreme of paternal honour that helped overthrow a tyrannical government. Titus asks Saturninus whether Virginius was right to do this, then kills Lavinia on the same logic: she was 'enforced, stain'd, and deflower'd' — raped — and death is, in this Roman code, the only answer to that dishonour.
historical Virginius and the death of Virginia
TLN 2381rhetorical device
“A pattern, precedent, and lively warrant”
Titus stacks three near-synonyms — 'pattern,' 'precedent,' and 'lively warrant' — to turn Saturninus's casual assent into a death sentence on Lavinia. 'Lively warrant' means a vivid or fully alive justification, not a half-hearted excuse. The rhetorical accumulation of near-synonyms (tricolon with gradation) is a Senecan device; here it enacts the certainty with which Titus has already decided. He has manoeuvred the emperor into endorsing Lavinia's death without knowing it.
TLN 2397classical allusion
“both baked in that pie, Whereof their mother daintily hath fed”
Titus reveals that the pie Tamora has been eating contains the flesh of her own sons Chiron and Demetrius, whom he slaughtered and cooked. This is the play's central act of revenge: making a mother unknowingly devour her own children. The immediate model is Ovid's story of Procne, who killed and cooked her son Itys and served him to Tereus (who had raped and silenced Philomela). The Senecan model is Thyestes: Atreus feasts his brother on his own sons' flesh.
classical Philomelahistorical Seneca and the revenge tragedy
TLN 2403archaic vocab
“meed for meed, death for a deadly deed”
'Meed' means reward or recompense (here used in the sense of a repayment in kind). Lucius says the emperor has received the fitting payment for killing Titus: death in return for a deadly act. The line has an almost legal or proverbial ring — measure for measure, like for like — and closes the chain of retributive killings at the scene's heart.
TLN 2405rhetorical device
“as a flight of fowl Scatter'd by winds”
Marcus addresses the stunned Romans as 'sad-faced men' scattered like a flock of birds driven apart by a storm. He then asks them to help him gather these 'scattered corn into one mutual sheaf' and 'broken limbs again into one body.' The extended body-politic metaphor — Rome as a human body that can be dismembered (scattered limbs, scattered corn) and must be re-knit — frames the rest of his speech.
TLN 2410archaic vocab
“Rome herself be bane unto herself”
'Bane' means destruction, ruin, or poison — the cause of death. Marcus warns that if the Romans do not reconcile, Rome will be her own bane: self-destruction. The image of Rome as a castaway (a desperate shipwrecked person, or one thrown away as worthless) who performs 'shameful execution on herself' means Rome will commit suicide, killing herself as a worthless ruin.
TLN 2414archaic vocab
“frosty signs and chaps of age”
'Frosty signs' refers to Marcus's white hair (frost-white = aged). 'Chaps' (also spelled 'chops') means cracks or wrinkles — the deep lines of an old man's face. He is saying that his white hair and wrinkled face should serve as visible 'grave witnesses of true experience' — the physical marks of age that earn an elder's authority to speak.
TLN 2418classical allusion
“our ancestor, When with his solemn tongue he did discourse To love-sick Dido's sad attending ear The story of that baleful burning night”
Marcus asks Lucius to speak to the Romans as Aeneas once spoke to Dido, Queen of Carthage, telling her 'the story of that baleful burning night' — the fall and sack of Troy. In Virgil's Aeneid, Aeneas narrates the destruction of Troy to Dido over two books; 'love-sick Dido' had already fallen in love with him by then. Marcus implies that Lucius, like the ancestor-founder Aeneas, has a story of betrayal and ruin to tell an audience that needs to hear it.
classical Dido, queen of Carthage ('widow Dido')
TLN 2423classical allusion
“what Sinon hath bewitch'd our ears, Or who hath brought the fatal engine in That gives our Troy, our Rome”
Sinon was the Greek spy who persuaded the Trojans to drag the wooden horse inside Troy's walls, telling a false story that it was a sacred object; the horse concealed Greek soldiers who sacked the city at night. Marcus calls Tamora (or Aaron) the play's 'Sinon' — the deceiver who smuggled the enemy inside. The 'fatal engine' is the wooden horse itself. Calling Rome 'our Troy' is a pointed choice: Rome is founded from Troy's ruins, but here it has fallen by the same trick.
classical The fall of Troy: Pyrrhus and Priam
TLN 2439archaic vocab
“basely cozen'd Of that true hand that fought Rome's quarrel out”
'Cozen'd' means cheated or defrauded by trickery. Lucius says that Titus was basely cheated out of his right hand — the very hand that had fought for Rome. This refers to 2.4-3.1: Aaron tricked Titus into cutting off his own hand with the false promise that it would ransom his condemned sons; the hand was returned with the severed heads of those sons. The double betrayal (hand and sons together) is the specific fraud Lucius recalls.
TLN 2481cultural context
“misbelieving Moor To be adjudg'd some direful slaughtering death”
'Misbelieving' carries a specific Elizabethan religious charge: it means holding false or pagan beliefs, a term typically applied to non-Christians. Lucius uses it against Aaron alongside the ethnic label 'Moor,' identifying Aaron's colour, religious 'error,' and evil as one package — the same conflation of racial and religious difference that saturates the play's language about him. Aaron will be buried alive ('breast-deep in earth') and starved.
historical The 'Moor' on the Elizabethan stage
TLN 2487archaic vocab
“give me aim awhile”
'Give me aim' means 'give me space' or 'bear with me' — literally an archery term for directing a marksman toward the target, but used idiomatically to ask for a moment's indulgence or attention. Lucius asks the crowd to allow him a private moment of grief before public duty resumes: he wants to mourn his father. 'Obsequious tears' means the tears that properly belong to funeral obsequies (burial rites).
TLN 2505rhetorical device
“some small drops from thy tender spring”
Lucius asks his young son to shed tears by calling the boy's eyes a 'tender spring' — a water-source that is fresh, small, and newly begun (the boy is young). The word 'spring' carries both the water-source meaning and the season of youth, compressing two images. This kind of layered metaphor is characteristic of the play's high rhetorical style: grief, water, and the innocence of childhood all converge in one word.
TLN 2522rhetorical device
“why should wrath be mute and fury dumb? I am no baby, I, that with base prayers I should repent”
Aaron refuses to repent. His speech — 'If one good deed in all my life I did, / I do repent it from my very soul' — is a formal, theatrical defiance. The rhetorical question ('why should wrath be mute?') followed by the one-act confession that inverts normal repentance is a classic Vice-villain's final address. Aaron glories in his villainy rather than seeking mercy, a pose the stage Machiavel and the morality Vice both use.
historical The Vice of the morality plays
TLN 2533historical topical
“ravenous tiger, Tamora, No funeral rite, nor man in mournful weeds”
Lucius denies Tamora funeral rites: no mourning clothes, no passing bell, no burial — her body is to be thrown to 'beasts and birds of prey.' Denying proper burial was a profound punishment in Roman culture: the dead required the appropriate rites (coins for the ferryman Charon, prayers, burial) or the soul wandered the riverbank for a hundred years. Refusal of burial was the ultimate public condemnation. The most famous classical instance is Creon's refusal to bury Polynices in Sophocles' Antigone.