given us over.
Why do the emperor's trumpets flourish thus?
Belike, for joy the emperor hath a son.
Soft! who comes here?
Good morrow, lords:
O, tell me, did you see Aaron the Moor?
Well, more or less, or ne'er a whit at all,
Here Aaron is; and what with Aaron now?
O gentle Aaron, we are all undone!
Now help, or woe betide thee evermore!
Why, what a caterwauling dost thou keep!
What dost thou wrap and fumble in thine arms?
O, that which I would hide from heaven's eye,
Our empress' shame, and stately Rome's disgrace!
She is deliver'd, lords; she is deliver'd.
To whom?
I mean, she is brought a-bed.
Well, God give her good rest! What hath he sent her?
A devil.
Why, then she is the devil's dam; a joyful issue.
A joyless, dismal, black, and sorrowful issue:
Here is the babe, as loathsome as a toad
Amongst the fairest breeders of our clime:
The empress sends it thee, thy stamp, thy seal,
And bids thee christen it with thy dagger's point.
'Zounds, ye whore! is black so base a hue?
Sweet blowse, you are a beauteous blossom, sure.
Villain, what hast thou done?
That which thou canst not undo.
Thou hast undone our mother.
Villain, I have done thy mother.
And therein, hellish dog, thou hast undone.
Woe to her chance, and damn'd her loathed choice!
Accursed the offspring of so foul a fiend!
It shall not live.
It shall not die.
Aaron, it must; the mother wills it so.
What, must it, nurse? then let no man but I
Do execution on my flesh and blood.
I'll broach the tadpole on my rapier's point:
Nurse, give it me; my sword shall soon dispatch it.
Sooner this sword shall plough thy bowels up.
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