TITUS ANDRONICUS
A monologue from the
play by William
Shakespeare
- TITUS: Come, come, Lavinia; look, thy foes are bound.
- Sirs, stop their mouths, let them not speak to me,
- But let them hear what fearful words I utter.
- O villains, Chiron and Demetrius!
- Here stands the spring whom you have stained with mud,
- This goodly summer with your winter mixed.
- You killed her husband, and for that vile fault
- Two of her brothers were condemned to death,
- My hand cut off and made a merry jest;
- Both her sweet hands, her tongue, and that more dear
- Than hands our tongue, her spotless chastity,
- Inhuman traitors, you constrained and forced.
- What would you say if I should let you speak?
- Villains, for shame you could not beg for grace.
- Hark, wretches, how I mean to martyr you.
- This one hand yet is left to cut your throats
- Whiles that Lavinia 'tween her stumps doth hold
- The basin that receives your guilty blood.
- You know your mother means to feast with me,
- And calls herself Revenge, and thinks me mad.
- Hark, villains, 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,
- And make two pasties of your shameful heads,
- And bid that strumpet, your unhallowed dam,
- Like to the earth, swallow her own increase.
- This is the feast that I have bid her to,
- And this the banquet she shall surfeit on;
- For worse than Philomel you used my daughter,
- And worse than Progne I will be revenged.
- And now prepare your throats. Lavinia, come,
- Receive the blood; and when that they are dead,
- Let me go grind their bones to powder small
- And with this hateful liquor temper it;
- And in that paste let their vile heads be baked.
- Come, come, be every one officious
- To make this banquet, which I wish may prove
- More stern and bloody than the Centaur's feast.
MORE MONOLOGUES BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE |
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