ALCIB.

Then there's my glove;

Descend, and open your uncharged ports:
Those enemies of Timon's, and mine own,
Whom you yourselves shall set out for reproof,
Fall, and no more: and, to atone your fears
With my more noble meaning, not a man
Shall pass
his quarter, or offend the stream
Of regular justice in your city's bounds,
But shall be render'd to your public laws
At heaviest answer.

Вотн.

"Tis most nobly spoken. ALCIB. Descend, and keep your words.

[The Senators descend, and open the gates.

Enter Soldier

SOLD. My noble general, Timon is dead;
Entomb'd upon the very hem o' the sea;
And on his grave-stone this insculpture, which

The senators are on They have been speak

55 Descend] The First Folio misprints Defend. the walls" (see stage direction, 1. 2, supra). ing from the balcony at the back of the stage (cf. Tit. Andr., I, i, 1, and note, and K. John, II, i, 201 seq.

uncharged ports] unassailed gates.

58 to atone] to reconcile.

62 render'd to your] Lord Chedworth's emendation of the difficult old readings remedied to your in the First Folio and remedied by your in the later Folios. "Remedied to" has been explained as “redressed according to." But the sense is rather strained.

63 At heaviest answer] To make fullest reparation.

66 the very hem] the extreme margin.

60

With wax I brought away, whose soft impression
Interprets for my poor ignorance.

ALCIB. [Reads]

"Here lies a wretched corse, of wretched soul bereft:

70

Seek not my name: a plague consume you wicked caitiffs left!
Here lie I, Timon; who, alive, all living men did hate:

Pass by and curse thy fill; but pass and stay not here thy gait."

These well express in thee thy latter spirits:
Though thou abhorr'dst in us our human griefs,
Scorn'dst our brain's flow and those our droplets which
From niggard nature fall, yet rich conceit

Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye
On thy low grave, on faults forgiven. Dead
Is noble Timon: of whose memory

Hereafter more. Bring me into your city,

70-73 Here lies a wretched corse . . . not here thy gait] In North's translation of the account of Timon given by Plutarch in his Life of M. Antonius, these four lines are found verbatim, with the difference that wretches there takes the place of caitiffs (1. 71), and that each of the two couplets is presented separately as an alternative epitaph on Timon of different authorship. Plutarch assigns the first two lines to Timon himself and the second two lines to the poet Callimachus. The dramatist could only have joined the two couplets together by an hasty oversight. There is no logical connection between them. The second line of the first couplet which bids the reader "Seek not my name," manifestly contradicts the first line of the second couplet which opens with "Here lie I, Timon."

76 brain's flow] flow of tears. "Brain" is not uncommonly found in this connection. Cf. Drayton's Miracles of Moses, Bk. 3, 1, 417: “the fountains of his brain."

77 rich conceit] a fruitful imagination.

80

And I will use the olive with my sword, Make war breed peace, make peace stint war, make each Prescribe to other as each other's leech.

Let our drums strike.

83 stint] stop.

[Exeunt.

84 leech] physician.

85 strike] strike up, sound.

Cf. Rich. III, IV, iv, 148: “strike

alarums, drums," and Hen. VIII, I, iv, 108: "Let the music knock it."