Page:Titus Andronicus (1926) Yale.djvu/118

104 Cerberus at the Thracian poet's feet. Orpheus, when he descended into Hades to seek his wife, Eurydice, was able by his music to charm Cerberus, the triple-headed watch-dog of the infernal regions.

two-and-twenty sons. Is Titus here including among the two-and-twenty who died 'in honour's lofty bed' his son Mutius, whom he has slain (cf. I. i. 291) for what he considered a dishonorable deed? If not, he was the father of twenty-six sons instead of the five-and-twenty of I. i. 79. Baildon suggests (Arden Shakespeare) that 'Shakespeare had invented the Mutius episode and forgotten to alter the original number.'

They would not mark me tell my sorrows to the stones. This passage as it stands in the First Folio is manifestly corrupt, reading as follows:

The reading in our text is from the Quarto of 1600, and although perhaps slightly corrupt, seems the most nearly satisfactory of the various readings.

limbo. Popularly used for hell, but, in the strict sense of the term, limbo is not hell or any place of punishment, but, according to mediæval theology, a region bordering hell, where dwelt the patriarchs, who died before the resurrection of Christ. They were believed to have been carried to heaven with our Lord at his ascension. The souls of unbaptized infants are, according to other theories, also assigned to limbo.

Writing destruction on the enemy's castle. This line, as might be expected from the un-