Page:Titus Andronicus (1926) Yale.djvu/100

86

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 unhallow'd 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 us'd my daughter,

And worse than Progne I will be reveng'd.

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 bak'd.

Come, come, be every one officious

To make this banquet, which I wish might 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.

Exeunt [bearing the dead bodies].

 189 coffin: pie-crust; cf. n.

192 increase: offspring

196 worse than Progne; cf. n.

200 temper: mix

202 officious: active

204 Centaurs' feast; cf. n. 