For it is you that puts us to our shifts:

I'll make you feed on berries, and on roots,
And feed on curds and whey, and suck the goat,
And cabin in a cave; and bring you up
To be a warrior, and command a camp.

[Exit.

SCENE III.

The same. A publick Place.

Enter TITUS, bearing Arrows, with Letters at the ends of them; with him MARCUS, young LUCIUS, and other Gentlemen, with Bows.

TIT. Come, Marcus, come ;-Kinsmen, this is the way:

Sir boy, now1 let me see your archery;

Look ye draw home enough, and 'tis there straight: Terras Astræa reliquit:

Be

you remember'd, Marcus, she's gone, she's fled. Sir, take you to your tools. You, cousins, shall Go sound the ocean, and cast your nets; Happily you may find her in the sea;2

Yet there's as little justice as at land :— No; Publius and Sempronius, you must do it; 'Tis you must dig with mattock, and with spade,

And feed-] This verb having occurred in the line immediately preceding, Sir T. Hanmer, with great probability, reads: And feast on curds &c. STEEVENS.

now-] This syllable, which is necessary to the metre, but wanting in the first folio, is supplied by the second.

STEEVENS.

find her in the sea.] Edition 1600: Catch her &c. the

better reading, I think. TODD.

And pierce the inmost center of the earth:
Then, when you come to Pluto's region,
I pray you, deliver him this petition:
Tell him, it is for justice, and for aid:
And that it comes from old Andronicus,
Shaken with sorrows in ungrateful Rome.-
Ah, Rome!-Well, well; I made thee miserable,
What time I threw the people's suffrages
On him that thus doth tyrannize o'er me.-
Go, get you gone; and pray be careful all,
And leave you not a man of war unsearch'd;
This wicked emperor may have shipp'd her hence,
And, kinsmen, then we may go pipe for justice.
MAR. O, Publius, is not this a heavy case,
To see thy noble uncle thus distract?

PUB. Therefore, my lord, it highly us concerns,
By day and night to attend him carefully;
And feed his humour kindly as we may,
Till time beget some careful remedy.

MAR. Kinsmen, his sorrows are past remedy. Join with the Goths; and with revengeful war Take wreak on Rome for this ingratitude, And vengeance on the traitor Saturnine.

TIT. Publius, how now? how now, my masters? What,

Have you met with her?

PUB. No, my good lord; but Pluto sends you

word

If you will have revenge from hell, you shall:
Marry, for Justice, she is so employ'd,

He thinks, with Jove in heaven, or somewhere else,
So that perforce you must needs stay a time.

TIT. He doth me wrong, to feed me with delays. I'll dive into the burning lake below,

And pull her out of Acheron by the heels.

Marcus, we are but shrubs, no cedars we;
No big-bon❜d men, fram'd of the Cyclops' size:
But metal, Marcus, steel to the very back;

Yet wrung with wrongs,3 more than our backs can bear:

And, sith there is no justice in earth nor hell,
We will solicit heaven; and move the gods,
To send down justice for to wreak our wrongs:
Come, to this gear. You are a good archer, Mar-
[He gives them the Arrows.
Ad Jovem, that's for you:-Here, ad Apollinem:---
Ad Martem, that's for myself;-

cus.

Here, boy, to Pallas:-Here, to Mercury:
To Saturn, Caius,5 not to Saturnine,-
You were as good to shoot against the wind.-
To it, boy. Marcus, loose when I bid:

* Yet wrung with wrongs,] To wring a horse is to press or strain his back. JOHNSON.

So, in Hamlet:

"Our withers are unwrung." STEEVENS.

p. 105:

to wreak-] i. e. revenge. So, in
"Shall we be thus afflicted in his wreaks?"

66

Again, in Chapman's version of the fifth Iliad:
and justice might enforce
"The wreake he took on Troy." STEEVENS.

To Saturn, Caius, &c.] Old copies:

To Saturnine, to Caius, not to Saturnine. For Caius Mr. Rowe substituted-Cœlus.

STEEVENS.

Saturnine was corrected by Mr. Rowe. To was inadvertently repeated by the compositor. Caius appears to have been one of the kinsmen of Titus. Publius and Sempronius have been already mentioned. Publius and Caius, are again introduced in Act V. sc. ii:

"Tit. Publius, come hither; Caius and Valentine.". The modern editors read-To Saturn, to Cælum, &c.

MALONE.

I have always read-Cœlus, i. e. the Roman deity of that name. STEEVENS.

O' my word, I have written to effect;
There's not a god left unsolicited.

MAR. Kinsmen, shoot all your shafts into the court: 6

We will afflict the emperor in his pride.

TIT. Now, masters, draw. [They shoot.] O, well said, Lucius!

Good boy, in Virgo's lap; give it Pallas.

MAR. My lord, I aim a mile beyond the moon;" Your letter is with Jupiter by this.

TIT. Ha! Publius, Publius, what hast thou done!

See, see, thou hast shot off one of Taurus' horns. MAR. This was the sport, my lord: when Pub

6

lius shot,

shoot all your shafts into the court:] In the ancient ballad of Titus Andronicus's Complaint, is the following passage: "Then past reliefe I upp and downe did goe,

"And with my tears wrote in the dust my woe:
"I shot my arrows towards heaven hie,

"And for revenge to hell did often crye."

On this Dr. Percy has the following observation: "If the ballad was written before the play, I should suppose this to be only a metaphorical expression, taken from the Psalms: "They shoot out their arrows, even bitter words," Psalm lxiv. 3. Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, Vol. I. p. 228, third edition.

7

STEEVENS,

I aim a mile beyond the moon;] To" cast beyond the moon," is an expression used in Hinde's Eliosto Libidinoso, 1606. Again, in Mother Bombie, 1594: "Risio hath gone beyond himself in casting beyond the moon." Again, in A Woman kill'd with Kindness, 1617:

I talk of things impossible,

"And cast beyond the moon."

STEEVENS.

I aim a mile beyond the moon;] Thus the quarto and folio. Mr. Rowe for aim substituted am, which has been adopted by all the modern editors. MALONE.

The bull being gall'd, gave Aries such a knock That down fell both the ram's horns in the court; And who should find them but the empress' villain? She laugh'd, and told the Moor, he should not choose

But give them to his master for a present.

TIT. Why, there it goes: God give your lordship' joy.

Enter a Clown, with a Basket and Two Pigeons.

News, news from heaven! Marcus, the post is come.
Sirrah, what tidings? have you any letters?
Shall I have justice? what says Jupiter?

CLO. Ho! the gibbet-maker? he says, that he hath taken them down again, for the man must not be hanged till the next week.

TIT. But what says Jupiter, I ask thee?

CLO. Alas, sir, I know not Jupiter; I never drank with him in all my life."

TIT. Why, villain, art not thou the carrier? CLO. Ay, of my pigeons, sir; nothing else. TIT. Why, didst thou not come from heaven? CLO. From heaven? alas, sir, I never came there: God forbid, I should be so bold to press to heaven in my young days. Why, I am going with my

9

your lordship-] Edition 1600:-his lordship.

Todd.

I know not Jupiter; I never drank with him in all my life.] Perhaps, in this instance also, the Clown was designed to blunder, by saying, (as does the Dairy-maid in a modern farce) Jew Peter, instead of Jupiter. STEEVENS.