TIMON OF ATHENS. THIS Play is without any decided notes of time, external or internal. It was first printed in the collection of 1623. The composition of it is referred to about the same period when the three Roman Plays were produced, on the very uncertain ground that Shakespeare took the hint of the subject from Plutarch. The story must have been before him in many forms from an early period of his life. I consider the time of its composition very uncertain. He has contrived to introduce everything that Plutarch says of Timon in the two Lives in which he occurs, Alcibiades and Mark Anthony. He seems also to have been acquainted with Lucian's Dialogue. There is an Italian play, the title of which is Timone, which it may be presumed is on the same story. Oldys, in his manuscript notes on Langbain, refers from this play to Fenton's Tragical Discourses, Painter's Palace of Pleasure, and Fortescue's Forest of Histories. It was quite a story for all writers such as these. The important point here is not so much how or where Shakespeare gained his acquaintance with the existence of such a person as Timon, and the main features in his character, but whether he owed anything to any previous writer in the structure of this Play. There is something approaching to characteristic difference between this Play and the rest; a kind of coldness, so to speak; a sardonic touch, unlike Shakespeare's natural turn of mind; something which reminds of Lucian. But then the subject may be said to have called for it, and there was no style of sentiment or expression in which this versatile man could not write and excel. The story had been told in the following manner by an author who wrote a little before Shakespeare undertook to make it the subject of one of his dramas. This was Sir Richard Barckley, who wrote a long and tedious book, printed in 1598, under the title, A Discourse of the Felicity of Man, or his Summum Bonum. The book is not common, and I shall therefore extract the whole passage, which has never before been brought forward as an illustration of this drama. Another company there were of a most strange disposition, that would not only murmur and grudge at the nature and condition of men, but were as hateful enemies to their own kind, supposing that Nature had set up man as a butt or mark, against which she would discharge all the bullets of her wrath and indignation; amongst which sort of men was one called Tymon, a philosopher of Athens, who professed himself openly an enemy of mankind, and performed it in effect. But he would never dwell or keep among men, but withdrew himself into the deserts, and led his life among beasts, that he might not be seen of men; and, passing his life in this solitary sort, he would speak to no man, saving only with Alcibiades, a valiant gentleman of Athens, neither with him for any love be had to the man, but for that he did foresee that he would be one day a plague and scourge to men, and especially to the Athenians; and it was not sufficient for him to abhor and detest the company of men as furious wild beasts, but he sought all the means he could, if it could have been possible, to destroy mankind, and for that purpose he set up a great many gibbets in his garden, that desperate folks and such as were weary of their lives might hang themselves; and after certain years, meaning to enlarge his little cottage where he dwelt, he determined to cut down those gibbets for his building; and being loath the lack of them should be any hindrance to his citizens' death, he went to Athens, and openly in the market place he caused the people to be assembled that he might deliver some news to them, who, knowing his humour that used to speak to no man, ran to the place out of all parts, expecting attentively some strange matter. When they were come together, he cried out with his hoarse voice, "My citizens of Athens, if any of you be disposed to hang yourselves do it quickly, for I mean shortly to cut down the gibbets for my necessary building." And when he had ended his charitable motion, he departed home to his house without speaking any word more, where he lived many years, continuing in the same opinion, detesting the miserable state and condition of men. And when Tymon perceived that death approached, he took order for his burial to be at the low-water mark in the very brink of the sea, that the waves might not suffer any man to come near him to see his bones or ashes, and caused this epitaph to be written upon his tomb, made Latin thus: Hic sum post vitam miseramque inopemque sepultus; Nomen non quæras; Dii, lector, te male perdant. And as another of his condition that lived solitarily in the woods, eschewing likewise the company of men, came to him to supper; in the midst of the banquet, O Tymon (quoth he) what a'pleasant supper is this that hath no more guests than thou and I. So were it (said Tymon) if thou were away. He was so hateful to the condition of men that he could not endure the company of him that was of his own disposition. I. 1. POET. Our poesy is as a gum, which oozes From whence 'tis nourish'd; the fire i'the flint Provokes itself, and, like the current, flies Each bound it chafes. I cannot but be of a different opinion from the commentators respecting this passage, which appears to me neither obscure nor absurd. The general idea is that fine poetry flows spontaneously from gifted minds. It is first likened to the oozing of some odoriferous gum. It is then illustrated by contrast; the flint requires to be struck before the flame is produced, but this is not the case with the flame of poetry; it originates itself, it blazes out, caring as little for the things which would restrain and confine it as the current does for the banks between which it flows, which it just chafes and passes on. Milton has the same notion of poetry Thoughts which voluntary move, Harmonious numbers, P. L. Book iii. line 37. and perhaps had this passage in his mind when he wrote the words. Shakespeare's own poetry is throughout an example of this spontaneity. Dr. Johnson has missed the sense of this passage. Shakespeare is alluding to the hyperbolical compliments of the time, one of the common-place phrases being that, through the person addressed it is that we live, that we breathe the free air. "You are the breath of our nostrils " was a complimentary expression addressed to King James on a remarkable occasion. III. 3. SEMPRONIUS. I had such a cOURAGE to do him good. Courage" is here used in a sense which was expiring in the days of Shakespeare. We find it in Chaucer Suche a great corage Had thys knyghte to ben a wedded man. THE MERCHANT'S TALE. and it may be traced easily to the etymon of the word, which is plainly cœur. Courage was doing anything with the heart; now it means doing anything in the face of danger. So words are perpetually changing. III. 3. SERVANT. Excellent! your lordship's a goodly villain. The devil knew not what he did when he made man politick; he cross'd himself by it: and I cannot think, but, in the end, the villainies of man will set him clear. How fairly this lord strives to appear foul! takes virtuous copies to be wicked; like those that, under hot ardent zeal, would set whole realms on fire. Perhaps the meaning of this much contested passage may be this, that the devil crossed himself by making men politick, in that he would lose his reputation as the most accomplished designer and actor of wickedness. The speaker then proceeds a step beyond this, and says that the villainies of men will at length rise to such a height, that those of the devil will be so little esteemed as that he will be thought an innocent personage. The latter part of the sentence is quite clear. "Copies" is used in the sense of examples, and in reference to the taking examples from scripture for acts of mere zealotism. Warburton says that it was a reflection on the Puritans. But with equal justice it might be said that it was a reflection on the Catholics, the Jesuits especially. Both, in the extravagancies of their zeal, professed to follow "virtuous copies," and both to gain their objects were not averse to "setting whole realms on fire." In fact the remark is general. Excessive religious zeal is one of the most blind, blinding, heedless, and mischievous of passions, whether it appear in the person of a Puritan or a Papist. IV. 2. SECOND SERVANT. And his poor self, A DEDICATED beggar to the air, With his disease of all-shunn'd poverty, The word dedicated receives no notice from the commentators. I add from Arthur Wilson's Life of himself a passage in which it is used as a mere expletive, "He was crook'dback't and ill-visaged, shapt to avoid scandal, a piece of deformity dedicated." IV. 3. TIMON. SHE, whom the Spital-house and ulcerous sores This invites us once more to the charge against Shakespeare of writing ungrammatically. It ought to be "Her" some critics would say, and undoubtedly it ought according to modern notions of the structure of the English language, |