Dismiss your followers, and, as suitors should, Bas. Marcus Andronicus, so I do affy And so I love and honour thee and thine, [Exeunt the Followers of BASSIANUS. Sat. Friends, that have been thus forward in my right, I thank you all, and here dismiss you all; [Exeunt the Followers of SATURninus. Bas. Tribunes! and me, a poor competitor. [SAT. and BAS. go into the Capitol, and exeunt with Senators, MARCUS, &c. SCENE II. The same. Enter a Captain, and Others. Cap. Romans, make way; The good Andronicus, Patron of virtue, Rome's best champion, Successful in the battles that he fights, With honour and with fortune is return'd, From where he circumscribed with his sword, And brought to yoke, the enemies of Rome. Flourish of Trumpets, &c. Enter MUTIUS and MARTIUS; after them Two Men bearing a Coffin covered with black; then QUINTUS and LUCIUS. After them, TITUS ANDRONICUS; and then TAMORA, with ALARBUS, CHIRON, DEMETRIUS, AARON, and other Goths, prisoners; Soldiers and People following. The Bearers set down the Coffin, and TITUS speaks. Tit. Hail, Rome, victorious in thy mourning weeds! Lo, as the bark that hath discharg'd her fraught, From whence at first she weigh'd her anchorage, Stand gracious to the rights that we intend !— With burial amongst their ancestors: Here Goths have given me leave to sheath my sword. [The Tomb is opened. There greet in silence, as the dead are wont, Sweet cell of virtue and nobility, How many sons of mine hast thou in store, Luc. Give us the proudest prisoner of the Goths, That we may hew his limbs, and, on a pile, Ad manes fratrum sacrifice his flesh, Before this earthly 2 prison of their bones; That so the shadows be not unappeas'd, Nor we disturb'd with prodigies on earth 3. Tit. I give him you; the noblest that survives, The eldest son of this distressed queen. Tam. Stay, Roman brethren;-Gracious con queror, Victorious Titus, rue the tears I shed, Tit. Patient yourself, madam, and pardon me. These are their brethren, whom you Goths beheld 2 Earthy. Ed. 1600. 3 It was supposed that the ghosts of unburied people appeared to solicit the rites of funeral. 4 i. e. in grief. 5. This verb is used by other old dramatic writers. Thus in Arden of Feversham, 1592: 'Patient yourself, we cannot help it now.' Alive, and dead; and for their brethren slain, To this your son is mark'd; and die he must, Tam. O cruel, irreligious piety! Chi. Was ever Scythia half so barbarous? Dem. Oppose not Scythia to ambitious Rome. Alarbus goes to rest; and we survive To tremble under Titus' threatening look. Upon the Thracian tyrant in his tento, May favour Tamora, the queen of Goths Re-enter LUCIUS, QUINTUS, MARTIUS, and Luc. See, lord and father, how we have perform'd Whose smoke, like incense, doth perfume the sky. 6 Theobald says that we should read, in her tent;" i. e. in the tent where she and the other Trojan women were kept; for thither Hecuba by a wile had decoyed Polymnestor, in order to perpetrate her revenge. Steevens objects to Theobald's conclusion, that the writer gleaned this circumstance from the Hecuba of Euripides, and says, 'he may have been misled by the passage in Ovid-" vadit ad artificem;" and therefore took it for granted she found him in his tent.' Yet on another occasion he observes, that the writer has a plain allusion to the Ajax of Sophocles, of which no translation was extant in the time of Shakspeare. Remaineth nought, but to inter our brethren, [Trumpets sounded, and the Coffins laid in In peace and honour rest you here, my sons; Enter LAVINIA. In peace and honour rest you here, my sons ! Enter MARCUS ANDRONICUS, SATURNINUS, Mar. Long live Lord Titus, my beloved brother, Gracious triumpher in the eyes of Rome! Tit. Thanks, gentle tribune, noble brother Marcus. 7 To'outlive an eternal date' is, though not philosophical, yet poetical sense. He wishes that her life may be longer than his, and her praise longer than fame. |