And yet that Tamora is a fine figure, and I think it is an injustice that the English graver has not traced her portrait in this Gallery of Shakespearean ladies. She is a magnificently majestic woman, an enchanting and imperial figure, on whose brow are the marks of a fallen deity, in her eyes a world -devouring lust, splendidly vicious, panting with thirst for red blood. Pitying and far-seeing as our poet ever is, he has beforehand justified, in the first scene where Tamora appears, all the horrors which she at a later time inflicted on Andronicus.[1] For this grim Roman, unmoved by her most agonised mother's prayers, suffers her son to be put to death before her eyes; and as soon as she sees in the wooing favour of the young Emperor the rays of hope of future vengeance, there roll forth from her lips the exultant and darkly foreboding words :
" I'll find a day to massacre them all,
And raze their faction and their family,
The cruel father and his traitorous sons,
To whom I suéd for my dear son's life ;
And make them know what 'tis to let a queen
Kneel in the streets, and beg for grace in vain."[2]
- ↑ This sympathy with Tamora and her vindication are not creditable to Heine. It is difficult to understand how the sacrifice of Alarbus, in accordance with the custom of the times, justifies the outraging and mutilation of Lavinia. The traces of divinity in Tamora are indeed very faint.—Translator
- ↑ Titus Andronicus, act i. sc. 2.
