A monologue from the play by William Shakespeare
TAMORA: Have I not reason, think you, to look pale?These two have ticed me hither to this place,A barren detested vale you see it is;The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean,Overcome with moss and baleful mistletoe.Here never shines the sun; here nothing breeds,Unless the nightly owl or fatal raven:And when they showed me this abhorred pit,They told me, here, at dead time of the night,A thousand fiends, a thousand hissing snakes,Ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins,Would make such fearful and confused criesAs any mortal body hearing itShould straight fall mad, or else die suddenly.No sooner had they told this hellish taleBut straight they told me they would bind me hereUnto the body of a dismal yewAnd leave me to this miserable death.And then they called me foul adulteress,Lascivious Goth, and all the bitterest termsThat ever ear did hear to such effect;And had you not by wondrous fortune come,This vengeance on me had they executed.Revenge it, as you love your mother’s life,Or be ye not henceforth called my children.
