The lamentable tragedy of Titus Andronicus. Edited by H. Bellyse ...

sc.ii.] TITUS ANDRONICUS 85Enter a Nurse, with a blackamoor Child.Nurse. Good morrow, lords. O ! tell me, did you seeAaron the Moor?Aar. Well, more or less, or ne'er a whit at all,Here Aaron is ;and what with Aaron now ?55Nurse. O gentle Aaron ! we are all undone.Now help, or woe betide thee evermore !Aar. Why, what a caterwauling dost thou keep !What dost thou wrap and fumble in thine arms ?Nurse. O ! that which I would hide from heaven's eye, 60Our empress' shame, and stately Rome's disgrace.She is deliver'd, lords, she is deliver'd.Aar. To whom ?Nurse. I mean she 'sbrought a-bed.Aar. Well, God give her good rest ! What hath he senther?Nurse. A devil.Aar. Why, then she is the devil's dam: 65Nurse.A joyful issue.A joyless, dismal, black, and sorrowful issue.54. Well, more or less, etc.] The iv. i.150, "Let the devil and his damwhole that follows to the end of the haunt you " ": This expression belongsscene is very fine, and well worthy the to Shakespeare's earlier plays. Thecreator of lago. The union of un- last (excepting Othello itself) in whichmatched effrontery and cruelty with it occurs is in the Merry Wives (l. i.natural paternal feeling is one which 151). It is derived from a mediaevalonly Shakespeare could have carried legend (Wright, Domestic Manners,out so triumphantly. Very Shake- p. 4), and seems to have becomespearian is the dwelling on the colour obsolete about this time. The exblack,as in the Sonnets and in Othello, pression occurs in the York MysterySee Introduction, p. xlv. Plays (ed. Toulmin Smith, p. 300),59. fumble'] fumble with. 'What the deuyll and his dam schall65. devil's dam] Dam was a universal I doo ? ' (circa 1400). I find it in Roy,word for mother, used of animals, even G. Harvey, T. Heywood, and Greene,birds, as a hen, Macbeth, IV. iii. 218. but nowhere so commonly as inMr. H. C. Hart has the following note Shakespeare."in the Arden Shakespeare to Othello,