QUOTES FROM THE BARD

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