SCENE L.-The same. Before Timon's Cave. Enter Poet and Painter; TIMON behind, unseen. Pain. As I took note of the place, it cannot be far where he abides. Poet. What's to be thought of him? Does the rumour hold for true, that he is so full of gold? Pain. Certain Alcibiades reports it; Phrynia and Timandra had gold of him : he likewise enriched poor straggling soldiers with great quantity: 'Tis said, he gave unto his steward a mighty sum. Poet. Then this breaking of his has been but a try for his friends. Pain. Nothing else: you shall see him a palm in Athens again, and flourish with the highest. Therefore, 'tis not amiss, we tender our loves to him, in this supposed distress of his: it will shew honestly in us; and is very likely to load our purposes with what they travel for, if it be a just and true report that goes of his having. Poet. What have you now to present unto him? Pain. Nothing at this time but my visitation: only I will promise him an excellent piece. Poet. I must serve him so too; tell him of an intent that's coming toward him. With any size of words. Tim. Let it go naked, men may see't the better: He, and myself, have gold; I am sure, you have: speak truth: you are honest men. Tim. Good honest men:-Thou draw'st a counterfeit Pain. So, so, my lord. Both. Pain. Good as the best. Promising is the very air o'the time; it opens the eyes of expectation: perfor-You take much pains to mend. mance is ever the duller for his act; and, but in the plainer and simpler kind of people, the deed of saying is quite out of use. To promise is most courtly and fashionable: performance is a kind of will, or testament, which argues a great sickness in his judgment that makes it. Tim. Excellent workman! Thou canst not paint a man so bad as is thyself. Poet. I am thinking, what I shall say I have provided for him: It must be a personating of himself: a satire against the softness of prosperity; with a discovery of the infinite flatteries, that follow youth and opulency. Tim. Must thou needs stand for a villain in thine own work? Wilt thou whip thine own faults in other men? Do so, I have gold for thee. Poet. Nay, let's seek him: Then do we sin against our own estate, When we may profit meet, and come too late. When the day serves, before black-corner'd night, Tim. I'll meet you at the turn. What a god's gold, 'Tis thou that rigg'st the bark, and plough'st the foam; To thee be worship! and thy saints for aye [Advancing. Beseech your honour, To make it known to us. Will you, indeed? Both. Pain. I know none such, my lord. Nor I. Both. Name them, my lord, let's know them. [To the Painter. You are an alchymist, make gold of that :- That-Timon cares not. But if he sack fair Athens Tim. Of none but such as you, and you of Timon. 2 Sen. The senators of Athens greet thee, Timon. Tim. I thank them; and would send them back the Could I but catch it for them. [plague, 1 Sen. 2 Sen. They confess, Toward thee, forgetfulness too general, gross: Which now the public body,-which doth seldom Play the recanter,-feeling in itself A lack of Timon's aid, hath sense withal Tim. 2 Sen. And shakes his threat'ning sword Against the walls of Athens. 1 Sen. Therefore, Timon, Tim. Well, sir, I will; therefore, I will, sir; Thus, If Alcibiades kill my countrymen, Let Alcibiades know this of Timon, Giving our holy virgins to the stain Of contumelious, beastly, mad-brain'd war; But I do prize it at my love, before The reverend'st throat in Athens. So I leave you Flav. Stay not, all's in vain. Tim. Why, I was writing of my epitaph, It will be seen to-morrow: My long sickness Of health, and living, now begins to mend, And nothing brings me all things. Go, live still Be Alcibiades your plague, you his, And last so long enough! 1 Sen. We speak in vain. Tim. But yet I love my country, and am not One that rejoices in the common wreck, As common bruit doth put it. 1 Sen. That's well spoke. Tim. Commend me to my loving countrymen,1 Sen. These words become your lips as they pass through them. 2 Sen. And enter in our ears, like great triumphers In their applauding gates. Tim. Commend me to them; And tell them, that, to ease them of their griefs, Their fears of hostile strokes, their aches, losses, Their pangs of love, with other incident throes That nature's fragile vessel doth sustain [them In life's uncertain voyage, I will some kindness de I'll teach them to prevent wild Alcibiades' wrath. 2 Sen. I like this well, he will return again. Tim. I have a tree, which grows here in my close, That mine own use invites me to cut down, And shortly must I fell it; Tell my friends, Tell Athens, in the sequence of degree, From high to low throughout, that whoso please To stop affliction, let him take his haste, Come hither, ere my tree hath felt the axe, And hang himself:-I pray you, do my greeting. Flav. Trouble him no further, thus you still shall find him. Tim. Come not to me again: but say to Athens, Timon hath made his everlasting mansion Upon the beached verge of the salt flood; Which once a day with his embossed froth The turbulent surge shall cover; thither come, And let my grave-stone be your oracle.Lips, let sour words go by, and language end: What is amiss, plague and infection mend! Graves, only be men's works; and death, their gain! Sun, hide thy beams! Timon hath done his reign. [Exit TIMON. 1 Sen. His discontents are unremoveably Coupled to nature. 2 Sen. Our hope in him is dead let us return, And strain what other means is left unto us In our dear peril. 1 Sen. It requires swift foot. [Exeunt SCENE III.-The Walls of Athens. 1 Sen. Thou hast painfully discover'd; are his files As full as thy report. 1 Sen. Enter Senators from TIMON. Here come our brothers. 3 Sen. No talk of Timon, nothing of him expect. The enemies' drum is heard, and fearful scouring Doth choke the air with dust: In, and prepare; Ours is the fall, I fear; our foes the snare. [Exeunt. SCENE IV. The Woods. Timon's Cave, and a Tomb-stone seen. Enter a Soldier, seeking TIMON. Sold. By all description this should be the place. Who's here? speak, ho!-No answer?-What is this? Timon is dead, who hath outstretch'd his span: Some beast rear'd this; there does not live a man. Dead, sure; and this his grave. What's on this tomb I cannot read; the character Our captain hath in every figure skill; [Exit. SCENE V. Before the walls of Athens. Have wander'd with our travers'd arms, and breath'd 2 Sen. So did we woo Who were the motives that you first went out; 1 Sen. All have not offended; For those that were, it is not square, to take, On those that are, revenges: crimes, like lands, Are not inherited. Then, dear countryman, Bring in thy ranks, but leave without thy rage: Which, in the bluster of thy wrath, must fall Spare thy Athenian cradle, and those kin, With those that have offended: like a shepherd, Approach the fold, and cull the infected forth, But kill not all together. 2 Sen 1 Sen. Set but thy foot Against our rampir'd gates, and they shall ope; So thou wilt send thy gentle heart before, To say thou'lt enter friendly. 2 Sen. Throw thy glove, Or any token of thine honour else, Alcib. Then there's my glove; Both. Sol. My noble general, Timon is dead, Alcib. [Reads.] Here lies a wretched corse, of [Exeunt. THI play & Timon is a domestic tragedy, and therefore strongly fastens on the attention of the reader. In the plan there is not much art, b the incidents are natural, and the characters various and exact. The catastrophe affords a very powerfu warsing again that ostentations liberality, which scatters bounty, but confers no benefits, and buys dattery, but not friendship.-JouNSON. Cit. Resolved, resolved. from which he has taken many passages with only such slight alterations as were necessary to throw them into blank verse. The play comprehends a period of about four years, commencing with the secession to the Mons Sacer in the year of Rome 262, and ending with the death of Coriolanus, A. U. C. 266. 2 Cit. Consider you what services he has done for his country? 1 Cit. Very well; and could be content to give him good report for't, but that he pays himself with being proud. 2 Cit. Nay, but speak not maliciously. 1 Cit. I say unto you, what he hath done famously, he did it to that end; though soft conscienc'd men can be content to say, it was for his country, he did it to please his mother, and to be partly proud; which he is, even to the altitude of his virtue. 2 Cit. What he cannot help in his nature, you account a vice in him: You must in no way say, he is Where go you With bats and clubs? The matter? Speak, I pray you. 1 Cit. Our business is not unknown to the senate; they have had inkling, this fortnight, what we intend to do, which now we'll shew 'em in deeds. They say, poor suitors have strong breaths; they shall know, we have strong arms too. Men. Why, masters, my good friends, mine honest Will you undo yourselves? [neighbours, 1 Cit. We cannot, sir, we are undone already. Men. I tell you, friends, most charitable care 1 Cit. First you know, Caius Marcius is chief ene- Have the patricians of you. For your wants, my to the people. Cit. We know't, we know't. 1 Cit. Let us kill him, and we'll have corn at our own price. Is't a verdict? Cit. No more talking on't: let it be done: away, away. Cit. One word, good citizens. 1 Cit. We are accounted poor citizens; the patricians good: What authority surfeits on, would relieve us; If they would yield us but the superfluity, while it were wholesome, we might guess, they relieved us humanely; but they think, we are too dear: the leanness that afflicts us, the object of our misery, is an inventory to particularize their abundance; our sufferance is a gain to them.-Let us revenge this with our pikes, ere we become rakes: for the gods know, I speak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge. 2 Cit. Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius? Cit. Against him first; he's a very dog to the commonalty. Your suffering in this dearth, you may as well 1 Cit. Care for us!-True, indeed!-They ne'er cared for us yet. Suffer us to famish, and their storehouses crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to support usurers: repeal daily any wholesome act established against the rich; and provide more piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and there's all the love they bear us. Men. Either you must Confess yourselves wondrous malicious, 1 Cit. Well, I'll hear it, sir: yet you must not think to fob off our disgrace with a tale: but, an 't please you, deliver. Men. There was a time, when all the body's members I' the midst o' the body, idle and inactive, Like labour with the rest; where the other instruments 1 Cit. Well, sir, what answer made the belly? 1 Cit. Your belly's answer: What! The kingly-crowned head, the vigilant eye, The counsellor heart, the arm our soldier, Our steed the leg, the tongue our trumpeter, With other muniments and petty helps In this our fabric, if that they Men. Well, what then? 1 Cit. The former agents, if they did complain, What could the belly answer? Men. I will tell you; If you'll bestow a small (of what you have little,) Patience, a while, you'll hear the belly's answer. 1 Cit. You are long about it. Even to the court, the heart,-to the seat o' the brain; And no way from yourselves.-What do you think? You, the great toe of this assembly ?— 1 Cit. I the great toe? Why the great toe? But make you ready your stiff bats and clubs; Mar. Thanks. What's the matter, you dissentious rogues, That rubbing the poor itch of your opinion, 1 Cit. We have ever your good word. Mar. He that will give good words to thee, will flatter Beneath abhorring.-What would you have, you curs, Or hailstone in the sun. Your virtue is, Hang 'em! They say? They'll sit by the fire, and presume to know What's done i' the Capitol who's like to rise, Who thrives, and who declines: side factions, and give out Conjectural marriages; making parties strong, Men. Nay, these are almost thoroughly persuaded; Mar. They are dissolved: Hang 'em! They said, they were an-hungry; sigh'd forth proverbs ; That, hunger broke stone walls; that, dogs must eat; That, meat was made for mouths: that, the gods |