Titus Andronicus: Act V, Scene i

Titus Androncus.         Act 5, Scene 1.      Aaron

(This text is featured in our interview with Jesse Berger and McKinley Belcher III)

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126 Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.

127 Even now I curse the day—and yet, I think,

128 Few come within the compass of my curse—

129 Wherein I did not some notorious ill,

130 As kill a man, or else devise his death;

131 Ravish a maid or plot the way to do it;

132 Accuse some innocent and forswear myself;

133 Set deadly enmity between two friends;

134 Make poor men’s cattle break their necks;

135 Set fire on barns and haystalks in the night,

136 And bid the owners quench them with their tears.

137 Oft have I digged up dead men from their graves

138 And set them upright at their dear friends’ door,

139 Even when their sorrows almost was forgot,

140 And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,

141 Have with my knife carvèd in Roman letters

142 “Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.”

143 But I have done a thousand dreadful things

144 As willingly as one would kill a fly,

145 And nothing grieves me heartily indeed

146 But that I cannot do ten thousand more.