Page 2203 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

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. [180]
This one hand yet is left to cut your throats,
Whiles 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, [190]
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. [200]
Come, come, be every one officious
To make this banquet, which I wish may prove
More stern and bloody than the Centaurs’ feast.

[He cuts their throats.]

So, now bring them in, for I’ll play the cook,
And see them ready against their mother comes.

Exeunt.

Scene III IT

Enter Lucius, Marcus, and the Goths [with Aaron].

LUCIUS

Uncle Marcus, since ’tis my father’s mind