NURSE.
Aaron, it must; the mother wills it so.
AARON.
What, must it, nurse? Then let no man but I
Do execution on my flesh and blood.
DEMETRIUS.
I’ll broach the tadpole on my rapier’s point.
Nurse, give it me; my sword shall soon dispatch it.
AARON.
Sooner this sword shall plough thy bowels up.
[Taking the baby.]
Stay, murderous villains, will you kill your brother?
Now, by the burning tapers of the sky
That shone so brightly when this boy was got,
He dies upon my scimitar’s sharp point
That touches this my first-born son and heir.
I tell you, younglings, not Enceladus,
With all his threatening band of Typhon’s brood,
Nor great Alcides, nor the god of war,
Shall seize this prey out of his father’s hands.
What, what, ye sanguine, shallow-hearted boys!
Ye white-limed walls, ye alehouse-painted signs!
Coal-black is better than another hue
In that it scorns to bear another hue;
For all the water in the ocean
Can never turn the swan’s black legs to white,
Although she lave them hourly in the flood.
Tell the empress from me, I am of age
To keep mine own, excuse it how she can.
DEMETRIUS.
Wilt thou betray thy noble mistress thus?
AARON.
My mistress is my mistress; this my self;
The vigour and the picture of my youth.
This before all the world do I prefer;
This maugre all the world will I keep safe,
Or some of you shall smoke for it in Rome.
DEMETRIUS.
By this our mother is for ever shamed.
CHIRON.
Rome will despise her for this foul escape.