AARON

Villain, I have done thy mother.

DEMETRIUS

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!

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.

Takes the Child from the Nurse, and draws

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 myself,
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 forever shamed.