Here comes a parcel of our hopeful booty,Which dreads not yet their lives’ destruction.
TAMORA.
Ah, my sweet Moor, sweeter to me than life!
AARON.
No more, great empress: Bassianus comes:
Be cross with him; and I’ll go fetch thy sons
To back thy quarrels, whatsoe’er they be.
[Exit.]
[Enter BASSIANUS and LAVINIA.]
BASSIANUS.
Who have we here? Rome’s royal empress,
Unfurnish’d of her well-beseeming troop?
Or is it Dian, habited like her,
Who hath abandoned her holy groves
To see the general hunting in this forest?
TAMORA.
Saucy controller of my private steps!
Had I the power that some say Dian had,
Thy temples should be planted presently
With horns, as was Actaeon’s; and the hounds
Should drive upon thy new-transformed limbs,
Unmannerly intruder as thou art!
LAVINIA.
Under your patience, gentle empress,
‘Tis thought you have a goodly gift in horning;
And to be doubted that your Moor and you
Are singled forth to try experiments;
Jove shield your husband from his hounds to-day!
‘Tis pity they should take him for a stag.
BASSIANUS.
Believe me, queen, your swarth Cimmerian
Doth make your honour of his body’s hue,
Spotted, detested, and abominable.
Why are you sequester’d from all your train,
Dismounted from your snow-white goodly steed,
And wander’d hither to an obscure plot,
Accompanied but with a barbarous Moor,
If foul desire had not conducted you?
LAVINIA.
And, being intercepted in your sport,
Great reason that my noble lord be rated
For sauciness.—I pray you let us hence,
And let her joy her raven-coloured love;
This valley fits the purpose passing well.
BASSIANUS.
The king my brother shall have notice of this.
LAVINIA.
Ay, for these slips have made him noted long:
Good king, to be so mightily abus’d!
TAMORA.
Why have I patience to endure all this?
[Enter DEMETRIUS and CHIRON.]
DEMETRIUS.
How now, dear sovereign, and our gracious mother!
Why doth your highness look so pale and wan?
TAMORA.
Have I not reason, think you, to look pale?
These two have ‘ticed me hither to this place:—
A barren detested vale you see it is:
The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean,
O’ercome with moss and baleful mistletoe:
Here never shines the sun; here nothing breeds,
Unless the nightly owl or fatal raven:—
And when they show’d me this abhorred pit,
They told me, here, at dead time of the night,
A thousand fiends, a thousand hissing snakes,
Ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins,
Would make such fearful and confused cries
As any mortal body hearing it
Should straight fall mad or else die suddenly.
No sooner had they told this hellish tale
But straight they told me they would bind me here
Unto the body of a dismal yew,
And leave me to this miserable death:
And then they call’d me foul adulteress,
Lascivious Goth, and all the bitterest terms
That ever ear did hear to such effect:
And had you not by wondrous fortune come,
This vengeance on me had they executed.
Revenge it, as you love your mother’s life,
Or be ye not henceforth call’d my children.
DEMETRIUS.
This is a witness that I am thy son.
[Stabs BASSIANUS.]
CHIRON.
And this for me, struck home to show my strength.
[Also stabs BASSIANUS, who dies.]
LAVINIA.
Ay, come, Semiramis,—nay, barbarous Tamora,
For no name fits thy nature but thy own!
TAMORA.
Give me thy poniard;—you shall know, my boys,
Your mother’s hand shall right your mother’s wrong.
DEMETRIUS.
Stay, madam; here is more belongs to her;
First thrash
