PLAY: Titus Andronicus
ACT/SCENE: 5.2
SPEAKER: Titus Andronicus
CONTEXT:
TITUS ANDRONICUS
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 or 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,
Whilst 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 Centaurs’ feast.
So, now bring them in, for I’ll play the cook,
And see them ready ‘gainst their mother comes

DUTCH:
Komt, komt, dat nu een elk volijv’rig zij
Voor dit onthaal, dat gruw’lijker moog’ blijken
En bloediger dan der Centauren feest.

MORE:
CITED IN US LAW: Re. The definition of “Centaur”: Centaurian Club of Brooklyn, Inc. 196 Misc. 160, 91 NYS 2d 663, 664 (NY Supreme Court 1949)

Grace=Pardon, mercy
Coffin=Pie crust
Pasties=Pies
Increase=Offspring
Compleat:
Grace=Genade, gunst, bevalligheyd, fraajigheyd, aardige zwier
Pasty=Een groote pasty
An increase of family=Een vermeerdering van huiisgenooten of van kinderen

Burgersdijk notes:
En bloediger dan der Centauren feest. In Ovidius Metamorph. XII, 210 kon Shakespeare de beschrijving vinden van den gruwelijken strijd, die, op de bruiloft van Pirithous, tusschen de Lapithen, tot wier volk de bruid behoorde, en de mede uitgenoodigde Centauren ontstond, en met
de nederlaag der laatsten eindigde.

Topics: cited in law, mercy, punishment

PLAY: Titus Andronicus
ACT/SCENE: 5.2
SPEAKER: Titus Andronicus
CONTEXT:
TITUS ANDRONICUS
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 or 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,
Whilst 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. (…)

DUTCH:
Dit is de bron, door u met vuil besmet,
De lieve zomer, door uw vorst bedorven.

MORE:
CITED IN US LAW: Re. The definition of “Centaur”: Centaurian Club of Brooklyn, Inc. 196 Misc. 160, 91 NYS 2d 663, 664 (NY Supreme Court 1949)

Grace=Pardon, mercy
Coffin=Pie crust
Pasties=Pies
Increase=Offspring
Compleat:
Grace=Genade, gunst, bevalligheyd, fraajigheyd, aardige zwier
Pasty=Een groote pasty
An increase of family=Een vermeerdering van huiisgenooten of van kinderen

Burgersdijk notes:
En bloediger dan der Centauren feest. In Ovidius Metamorph. XII, 210 kon Shakespeare de beschrijving vinden van den gruwelijken strijd, die, op de bruiloft van Pirithous, tusschen de Lapithen, tot wier volk de bruid behoorde, en de mede uitgenoodigde Centauren ontstond, en met
de nederlaag der laatsten eindigde.

Topics: cited in law, mercy, punishment