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🕑 Added 2025-04-30 16:00:20 +0000 UTCNURSE. Good morrow, lords.
O, tell me, did you see Aaron the Moor?
AARON. Well, more or less, or ne'er a whit at all,
Here Aaron is; and what with Aaron now?
NURSE. O gentle Aaron, we are all undone!
Now help, or woe betide thee evermore!
AARON. Why, what a caterwauling dost thou keep!
What dost thou wrap and fumble in thy arms?
NURSE. O, that which I would hide from heaven's eye:
Our Empress' shame and stately Rome's disgrace!
She is delivered, lord; she is delivered.
AARON. To whom?
NURSE. I mean she is brought a-bed.
AARON. Well, God give her good rest! What hath he sent her?
NURSE. A devil.
AARON. Why, then she is the devil's dam;
A joyful issue.
NURSE. A joyless, dismal, black, and sorrowful issue!
Here is the babe, as loathsome as a toad
Amongst the fair-fac'd breeders of our clime;
The Empress sends it thee, thy stamp, thy seal,
And bids thee christen it with thy dagger's point.
AARON. Zounds, ye whore! Is black so base a hue?
Sweet blowse, you are a beauteous blossom sure.
DEMETRIUS. Villain, what hast thou done?
AARON. That which thou canst not undo.
CHIRON. Thou hast undone our mother.
AARON. Villain, I have done thy mother.
DEMETRIUS. And therein, hellish dog, thou hast undone her.
Woe to her chance, and damn'd her loathed choice!
Accurs'd the offspring of so foul a fiend!
CHIRON. It shall not live.
AARON. It shall not die.
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.
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