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Enter Attendants, with AARON.

1 Rom. You sad Andronici, have done with woes; Give sentence on this execrable wretch,

That hath been breeder of these dire events.

Luc. Set him breast-deep in earth, and famish

him;

There let him stand, and rave and cry for food:

If any one relieves or pities him,

For the offence he dies. This is our doom:

Some stay, to see him fasten'd in the earth.

Aar. O, why should wrath be mute, and fury dumb?

I am no baby, I, that, with base prayers,

I should repent the evils I have done;

Ten thousand, worse than ever yet I did,

Would I perform, if I might have my will;

If one good deed in all my life I did,

I do repent it from my very soul.

Luc. Some loving friends convey the emperor hence,

And give him burial in his father's grave:
My father, and Lavinia, shall forthwith

Be closed in our houshold's monument.

As for that heinous tiger, Tamora,

No funeral rite, nor man in mournful weeds,
No mournful bell shall ring her burial;
But throw her forth to beasts, and birds of prey:

Her life was beast-like, and devoid of pity;

And, being so, shall have like want of pity.
See justice done to Aaron, that damn'd Moor,
By whom our heavy haps had their beginning:
Then, afterwards, to order well the state;

That like events may ne'er it ruinate.

[Exeunt.

ANNOTATIONS

UPON

TITUS ANDRONICUS.

1

-THOU great defender of this Capitol,] Jupiter, to whom the Capitol was dedicated.

2 And fame's eternal date,] This absurd wish is made sense of, by changing and into in.

WARBURTON.

To live in fame's date is, if an allowable, yet a harsh expression. 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.

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JOHNSON.

3 don this robe,-] To don is to do on, for, to put on. The word is still in use in the West of England.

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-changing-piece-] Spoken of Lavinia. Piece was then, as it is now, used personally as a word of contempt.

5

The Greeks, upon advice, did hury Ajax,

That slew himself; &c.] This passage alone would sufficiently convince me, that the play before us was

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the work of one who was conversant with the Greek tragedies in their original language. This is a plain allusion to the Ajax of Sophocles, of which no translation was extant in the time of Shakspeare. In that piece, Agamemnon consents at last to allow Ajax the rites of sepulture, and Ulysses is the pleader, whose arguments prevail in favour of his remains.

STEEVENS.

Enter AARON.] In the quarto, the direction is, Manet Aaron, and he is before made to enter with Tamora, though he says nothing. This scene ought to continue the first act.

JOHNSON.

7 To square for this.-] To square is to quarrel. So in the Midsummer-Night's Dream:

-they never meet

But they do square.

-file our engines with advice.] i. e. remove all impediments from our designs by advice. The allusion is to the operations of the file, which, by conferring smoothness, facilitates the motion of the wheels which compose an engine or piece of machinery.

STEEVENS.

9 Per Styga, per Manes vehor.] These scraps of Latin are, I believe, taken, though not exactly, from some of Seneca's tragedies.

STEEVENS.

10 Scene II.] The division of this play into acts, which was first made by the editors in 1623, is improper. There is here an interval of action, and here the second act ought to have begun. JOHNSON.

11 That have their alms, &c.] This is obscure. It

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