ter? 21 [Voice.] (Within.) Do you hear, master por Port. I shall be with you presently, good master puppy. - Keep the door close, sirrah. Man. What would you have me do? Port. What should you do, but knock 'em down by the dozens? Is this Moorfields to muster in? Or have we some strange Indian with the great tool come to court, the women so besiege us? Bless me, what a fry of fornication is at door! On my Christian conscience, this one christening will beget a thousand; here will be father, godfather, and all together. 獎 Man. The spoons will be the bigger, sir. There is a fellow somewhat near the door, he should be a brazier by his face, for, o' my conscience, twenty of the dog-days now reign in 's nose; all that stand about him are under the line, they need no other penance: that firedrake did I hit three times on the head, and [45 three times was his nose discharged against me; he stands there, like a mortar-piece, to blow us. There was a haberdasher's wife of small wit near him, that rail'd upon me till her pink'd porringer fell off her head, for_kin- [50 dling such a combustion in the state. I miss'd the meteor once, and hit that woman; who cried out "Clubs!" when I might see from far some forty truncheoners draw to her succour, which were the hope o' the Strand, where [55 she was quartered. They fell on; I made good my place; at length they came to the broomstaff to me; I defi'd 'em still; when suddenly a file of boys behind 'em, loose shot, deliver'd such a shower of pebbles, that I was fain to draw mine honour in, and let 'em win the work. The devil was amongst 'em, I think, surely. 62 Port. These are the youths that thunder at a playhouse, and fight for bitten apples; that no audience but the tribulation of Tower-hill or the limbs of Limehouse, their dear brothers, are able to endure. I have some of 'em in Limbo Patrum, and there they are like to dance these three days; besides the running banquet of two beadles that is to come. Enter LORD CHAMBERLAIN. 70 SCENE [V. The palace.] Enter trumpets, sounding; then two Aldermen, Lord Mayor, GARTER, CRANMER, Duke of Norfolk with his marshal's staff, Duke of Suffolk, two Noblemen bearing great standing-bowls for the christening-gifts; then four Noblemen bearing a canopy, under which the Duchess of Norfolk, godmother, bearing the child richly habited in a mantle, etc., train borne by a Lady; then follows the Marchioness Dorset, the other godmother, and Ladies. The troop pass once about the stage, and Garter speaks. Gart. Heaven, from thy endless goodness, send prosperous life, long, and ever happy, to the high and mighty Princess of England, Elizabeth! Flourish. Enter KING and Guard. Cran. [Kneeling.] And to your royal Grace, and the good queen, My noble partners, and myself, thus pray: King. Thank you, good Lord Archbishop. What is her name? Elizabeth. Cran. King. Stand up, lord. [The King kisses the child. With this kiss take my blessing: God protect thee! Into whose hand I give thy life. Cran. Amen. 11 But few now living can behold that goodness- 25 That mould up such a mighty piece as this is, King. O Lord Archbishop, Thou hast made me now a man! Never, before I thank ye all. To you, my good Lord Mayor, And you, good brethren, I am much beholding; I have receiv'd much honour by your presence, And ye shall find me thankful. Lead the way, lords. Ye must all see the Queen, and she must thank THE TRAGEDY OF TITUS ANDRONICUS IN Henslowe's Diary, under the date April 11, 1591, is recorded the performance of a play called "tittus and Vespacia," marked "ne," i. e., new, or newly revised. Among the plays in the volume of Englische Comedien und Tragedien (1620), performed by English actors in Germany, there is a tragedy of Tito Andronico, which is apparently a degraded form of some version of the present play. In it Lucius is named Vespasian, and this affords a hint, corroborated by other evidence, that this German play is based on "tittus and Vespacia." In 1641 there appeared in Holland a Dutch play by Jan Vos, entitled Aran en Titus, the plot of which is essentially that of Titus Andronicus. Both this and a lost German play, acted in 1699, of which only a program is preserved, seem to be based on a Dutch translation of an English original. A comparison of the extant German, Dutch, and English plays points to the conclusion that the Shakespearean tragedy was a recasting of two English originals, on which, directly or indirectly, Tito Andronico and Aran en Titus were respectively founded. 66 On January 23, 1594, Henslowe records that a new" play, "Titus and Ondronicus," was produced by the servants of the Earl of Sussex. On February 6, 15934, there was entered in the Stationers' Register to J. Danter " A Noble Roman Historye of Tytus Andronicus." Later in the same year appeared a quarto edition of our Titus Andronicus, as it was plaide by the Right Honourable the Earle of Darbie, Earle of Pembrooke, and Earle of Sussex their servants... printed by John Danter." A second quarto with some changes appeared in 1600, and a third quarto, printed from the second, appeared in 1611. On none of these Quartos does the name of Shakespeare appear; nor is there any external evidence to connect the play with him before its inclusion in the First Folio, except its occurrence in Meres's list of Shakespeare's tragedies in Palladis Tamia (1598). The text of the First Folio is derived from the Third Quarto; and the text of the present edition is based on the Second Quarto, the unique copy of the newly discovered First Quarto being inaccessible. It is not agreed whether Henslowe's "Titus and Ondronicus" was the present play or one of its predecessors; but if the play entered to Danter on February 6, 1593⁄4, was, as seems most likely, the First Quarto, printed by him in the same year, it places the date of the composition of Titus Andronicus not later than 1593. From the evidence gathered from the German and Dutch versions, it becomes apparent that the question of Shakespeare's authorship narrows itself down to one of the amount of re-writing implied in the re-casting of the older dramatic versions of the story. The main features of the Shakespearean play which cannot be proved to have existed in the earlier dramas are the rivalry between Saturninus and Bassianus for the throne; the funeral of Titus's sons killed in war; the sacrifice of Alarbus; the kidnapping of Lavinia by Bassianus, with the death of Mutius; the sending of young Lucius with presents to the sons of Tamora; and the whole of III. ii., which appears only in the First Folio, and is, perhaps, a later addition. These, with some minor details, and a revision of phraseology and metre which cannot be exactly estimated, seem to indicate the extreme limit of Shakespeare's responsibility. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that other hands may have worked on the play between the stages represented by the Continental versions and that in which it is here printed; and some students still limit Shakespeare's share to some master-touches to one or two of the principal characters," accepting the late seventeenth-century tradition, reported by Ravenscroft, that this was all Shakespeare added to the work of "a private author." 66 Evidences of the authorship of the earlier dramatic versions are purely internal. Attempts have been made to associate the play with nearly every contemporary dramatic author of note; but traces of the style of Peele and Greene point to the possibility of these writers' having had a share in it, although at what stage it is not possible to determine. |