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QUOTES FROM THE BARD

Here stands the spring whom you have stained with mud

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
Categories: , , |

Come, come, be every one officious to make this banquet; which I wish may prove more stern and bloody than the Centaurs’ feast

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

Categories: , , |

O, let me teach you how to knit again this scattered corn into one mutual sheaf

PLAY: Titus Andronicus
ACT/SCENE: 5.3
SPEAKER: Marcus Andronicus
CONTEXT:
MARCUS ANDRONICUS
You sad-faced men, people and sons of Rome,
By uproar severed, like a flight of fowl
Scattered by winds and high tempestuous gusts,
O, let me teach you how to knit again
This scattered corn into one mutual sheaf,
These broken limbs again into one body;
Lest Rome herself be bane unto herself,
And she whom mighty kingdoms court’sy to,
Like a forlorn and desperate castaway,
Do shameful execution on herself.
But if my frosty signs and chaps of age,
Grave witnesses of true experience,
Cannot induce you to attend my words,

Speak, Rome’s dear friend, as erst our ancestor,
When with his solemn tongue he did discourse
To love-sick Dido’s sad attending ear
The story of that baleful burning night
When subtle Greeks surprised King Priam’s Troy,
Tell us what Sinon hath bewitched our ears,
Or who hath brought the fatal engine in
That gives our Troy, our Rome, the civil wound.
My heart is not compact of flint nor steel;
Nor can I utter all our bitter grief,
But floods of tears will drown my oratory,
And break my utterance, even in the time
When it should move you to attend me most,
Lending your kind commiseration.
Here is a captain, let him tell the tale;
Your hearts will throb and weep to hear him speak.

DUTCH:
Ontstelde mannen, Romes volk en zonen,
Verstrooid door ‘t oproer als een vogelzwerm,
Dien wind en stormgeloei uiteen doen spatten
Laat mij u leeren, die verspreide halmen
Op nieuw tot éene garve saam te voegen,
Die stukgereten leden tot éen lijf (…)

MORE:
CITED IN US LAW: Re the definition of: “fowl”: State v Davis, 72 NJL 345, 61 A.2 (1905)

Corn=Grain
Mutual=Unified
Bane=Destroyer
Chaps=Cracks, wrinkles
Erst=Erstwhile, former
Dido=Queen of Carthage, abandoned by Aeneas
Sad-attending=Listening seriously
Sinon=Greek soldier who persuaded the Trojans to accept the wooden horse
Fatal=Deadly
Engine=Instrumenet of war
Civil wound=Wound inflicted in a civil war
Compleat:
Corn=Koorn, graan
Mutual=Onderling, wederzyds
Bane=Verderf, vergif
A chap=Een kooper, bieder
Erst=Voorheen
Sad=Droevig
Fatal=Noodlottig, noodschikkelyk, verderflyk, doodelyk
Engine=Een konstwerk, gereedschap, werktuig; Een list, konstgreep§

Topics: cited in law, mercy, remedy, leadership, order/society, conflict

Categories: , , , , |

By uproar severed, like a flight of fowl scattered by winds and high tempestuous gusts

PLAY: Titus Andronicus
ACT/SCENE: 5.3
SPEAKER: Marcus
CONTEXT:
MARCUS ANDRONICUS
You sad-faced men, people and sons of Rome,
By uproar severed, like a flight of fowl
Scattered by winds and high tempestuous gusts,
O, let me teach you how to knit again
This scattered corn into one mutual sheaf,
These broken limbs again into one body;
Lest Rome herself be bane unto herself,
And she whom mighty kingdoms court’sy to,
Like a forlorn and desperate castaway,
Do shameful execution on herself.
But if my frosty signs and chaps of age,
Grave witnesses of true experience,
Cannot induce you to attend my words,

Speak, Rome’s dear friend, as erst our ancestor,
When with his solemn tongue he did discourse
To love-sick Dido’s sad attending ear
The story of that baleful burning night
When subtle Greeks surprised King Priam’s Troy,
Tell us what Sinon hath bewitched our ears,
Or who hath brought the fatal engine in
That gives our Troy, our Rome, the civil wound.
My heart is not compact of flint nor steel;
Nor can I utter all our bitter grief,
But floods of tears will drown my oratory,
And break my utterance, even in the time
When it should move you to attend me most,
Lending your kind commiseration.
Here is a captain, let him tell the tale;
Your hearts will throb and weep to hear him speak.

DUTCH:
Ontstelde mannen, Romes volk en zonen,
Verstrooid door ‘t oproer als een vogelzwerm,
Dien wind en stormgeloei uiteen doen spatten
Laat mij u leeren, die verspreide halmen
Op nieuw tot éene garve saam te voegen,
Die stukgereten leden tot éen lijf (…)

MORE:
CITED IN US LAW: Re the definition of: “fowl”: State v Davis, 72 NJL 345, 61 A.2 (1905)

Corn=Grain
Mutual=Unified
Bane=Destroyer
Chaps=Cracks, wrinkles
Erst=Erstwhile, former
Dido=Queen of Carthage, abandoned by Aeneas
Sad-attending=Listening seriously
Sinon=Greek soldier who persuaded the Trojans to accept the wooden horse
Fatal=Deadly
Engine=Instrumenet of war
Civil wound=Wound inflicted in a civil war
Compleat:
Corn=Koorn, graan
Mutual=Onderling, wederzyds
Bane=Verderf, vergif
A chap=Een kooper, bieder
Erst=Voorheen
Sad=Droevig
Fatal=Noodlottig, noodschikkelyk, verderflyk, doodelyk
Engine=Een konstwerk, gereedschap, werktuig; Een list, konstgreep§

Topics: cited in law, mercy, remedy, leadership, order/society, conflict

Categories: , , , , |

My scars can witness, dumb although they are, that my report is just and full of truth

PLAY: Titus Andronicus
ACT/SCENE: 5.3
SPEAKER: Lucius
CONTEXT:
LUCIUS
Then, noble auditory, be it known to you,
That cursed Chiron and Demetrius
Were they that murdered our emperor’s brother;
And they it were that ravished our sister:
For their fell faults our brothers were beheaded;
Our father’s tears despised, and basely cozened
Of that true hand that fought Rome’s quarrel out,
And sent her enemies unto the grave.
Lastly, myself unkindly banished,
The gates shut on me, and turned weeping out,
To beg relief among Rome’s enemies:
Who drowned their enmity in my true tears.
And oped their arms to embrace me as a friend.
I am the turned forth, be it known to you,
That have preserved her welfare in my blood;
And from her bosom took the enemy’s point,
Sheathing the steel in my adventurous body.
Alas, you know I am no vaunter, I;
My scars can witness, dumb although they are,
That my report is just and full of truth.
But, soft! methinks I do digress too much,
Citing my worthless praise: O, pardon me;
For when no friends are by, men praise themselves.

DUTCH:
Litteekens mogen stom zijn, toch getuigen
De mijne, dat ik zuiv’re waarheid spreek.

MORE:
Auditory=Listeners
Fell=Cruel
Cozened=Cheated
Fought out=Fought and settled
Vaunter=Boastful person
Patience=Endurance
Ragged=Rugged
Closure=End
Compleat:
Auditory=Een hoorplaats, gehoorplaaats
To speak before a great auditory=Voor eene groote menigte van toehoorderen redenvoeren
Fell (cruel)=Wreede, fel
To cozen=Bedriegen
To close=Overeenstemmen; besluiten; eindigen
To vaunt=Pochen, snorken, opsnuiven
Patience=Geduld, lydzaamheid, verduldigheid
To fight it out=Een geschil vechtenderhand beslissen

Topics: order/society, revenge, honesty, pride

Categories: , , , |

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