Enter ARIEL, driving in CALIBAN, STEPHANO and TRINCULO in their stolen apparel.
STEPHANO Every man shift for all the rest, and let no
man take care for himself, for all is but fortune.
Coraggio, bully monster, coraggio.
TRINCULO If these be true spies which I wear in my
260
head, here’s a goodly sight.
CALIBAN O Setebos, these be brave spirits indeed!
How fine my master is! I am afraid
He will chastise me.
SEBASTIAN Ha, ha!
What things are these, my lord Antonio?
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Will money buy ’em?
ANTONIO Very like. One of them
Is a plain fish and no doubt marketable.
PROSPERO
Mark but the badges of these men, my lords,
Then say if they be true. This misshapen knave,
His mother was a witch, and one so strong
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That could control the moon, make flows and ebbs,
And deal in her command without her power.
These three have robbed me, and this demi-devil
(For he’s a bastard one) had plotted with them
To take my life. Two of these fellows you
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Must know and own; this thing of darkness I
Acknowledge mine.
CALIBAN I shall be pinched to death.
ALONSO Is not this Stephano, my drunken butler?
SEBASTIAN He is drunk now. Where had he wine?
ALONSO
And Trinculo is reeling ripe! Where should they
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Find this grand liquor that hath gilded ’em?
How cam’st thou in this pickle?
TRINCULO I have been in such a pickle since I saw you
last, that I fear me will never out of my bones. I shall
not fear fly-blowing.
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SEBASTIAN Why, how now, Stephano?
STEPHANO O touch me not; I am not Stephano, but a
cramp!
PROSPERO You’d be king o’the isle, sirrah?
STEPHANO I should have been a sore one then.
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ALONSO This is a strange thing as e’er I looked on.
PROSPERO He is as disproportioned in his manners
As in his shape. Go, sirrah, to my cell;
Take with you your companions. As you look
To have my pardon, trim it handsomely.
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CALIBAN Ay, that I will; and I’ll be wise hereafter
And seek for grace. What a thrice-double ass
Was I to take this drunkard for a god,
And worship this dull fool!
PROSPERO Go to, away.
ALONSO [to Stephano and Trinculo]
Hence, and bestow your luggage where you found it.
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SEBASTIAN Or stole it, rather.
[Exeunt Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo.]
PROSPERO Sir, I invite your highness and your train
To my poor cell, where you shall take your rest
For this one night, which (part of it) I’ll waste
With such discourse as, I not doubt, shall make it
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Go quick away – the story of my life,
And the particular accidents gone by
Since I came to this isle – and in the morn
I’ll bring you to your ship, and so to Naples,
Where I have hope to see the nuptial
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Of these our dear-beloved solemnized;
And thence retire me to my Milan, where
Every third thought shall be my grave.
ALONSO I long
To hear the story of your life, which must
Take the ear strangely.
PROSPERO I’ll deliver all,
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And promise you calm seas, auspicious gales
And sail so expeditious that shall catch
Your royal fleet far off. [aside to Ariel] My Ariel, chick,
That is thy charge. Then to the elements
Be free, and fare thou well! [to the others]
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Please you, draw near.
Exeunt omnes.
EPILOGUE
spoken by PROSPERO
Now my charms are all o’erthrown,
And what strength I have’s mine own,
Which is most faint. Now, ’tis true
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
5
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardoned the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands.
10
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;
And my ending is despair,
15
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself, and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardoned be,
Let your indulgence set me free. Exit.
20
Timon of Athens
No reference to The Life of Timon of Athens is known to have survived from the years before its inclusion as the fourth of the tragedies in the First Folio of 1623. It is even questionable whether it would have been included in the Folio at all, had not need arisen to fill, at short notice, a gap in the sequence between Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar, created by the removal of Troilus and Cressida from that position after printing of it had started.
This is only the first of a succession of questions surrounding Timon. Others are: When was it written? Is it all by Shakespeare? Is it finished? Was it acted in Shakespeare’s time? Orthodox arguments for dating would place it either around 1604–5, on the basis of linguistic and thematic links with King Lear, of which Coleridge described it as the ‘stillborn twin’, or about 1606–7, as a companion piece to the Plutarchan tragedies on Shakespeare’s ‘tragic frontier’, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, but dates as late as 1613 have also been seriously proposed. Shakespeare’s sole authorship was much questioned in the later nineteenth century, at a time of general doubt and undisciplined speculation about dramatic authorship. Work on the plays of Thomas Middleton since the 1960s and Middleton’s marginal connection with Macbeth are currently leading to more substantial claims for Middleton as co-author of Timon (where his hand is most confidently identified in 1.2, 3.1–6, and in sections of 4.2 and 4.3, including those involving the steward Flavius). Act 1, scene 2 and the third act of Timon are close in tone and technique to the satirical comedies Middleton wrote for the boys’ companies in the early years of James I. The unfinished nature of Timon is variously defined, either on the evidence of such internal loose ends as confusion of names and the inconsistent epitaphs for Timon, or in terms of lack of development of some areas of the action, notably the role of Alcibiades in the first three acts. Ever since Thomas Shadwell wrote his own version of the subject in 1678, stagings of Timon have tended to entail major or minor reshaping and supplementation of the Folio text.
The story of ‘critic Timon’, as Shakespeare calls him in Love’s Labour’s Lost, is not the likeliest of tragic subjects. In 1605 Ben Jonson’s treatment of the social and economic manifestations of greed took the form of a dark comedy in Volpone. Timon of Athens combines anecdotes about Timon from Plutarch’s life of Mark Antony and more substantial matter from his life of Alcibiades (parallel to that of Coriolanus) with the satirical tradition originating in Lucian’s dialogue, Timon the Man-hater, (as represented in English by the Inns of Court comedy of Timon (c. 1602)). Shakespeare is alone and innovative in laying equal emphasis on the two phases of Timon’s career – a
s Lord Timon, the prodigal bankrupt, and as Timon misanthropos, the naked hermit ironically in command of a new store of gold. Timon begins as a mordant social satire and ends as a philosophical and political tragedy of pessimism. Like the character, described by the cynic philosopher Apemantus as lacking experience of ‘the middle of humanity’, the play itself seems to divide into two balancing and antithetical halves and to lack the expected enrichment of significance that might have arisen from more sustained development of human relationships. Even Timon’s own awareness shows no signs of cumulative development and his death, from unexplained causes, is presented merely as his final negation of human value.
The Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.
LIST OF ROLES
TIMON of Athens
flattering lords
VENTIDIUS
one of Timon’s false friends
ALCIBIADES
an Athenian captain
APEMANTUS
a churlish philosopher
STEWARD
to Timon
servants to Timon
several servants to usurers
SERVANTS
to Varro, Isidore and Lucius, usurers and Timon’s creditors
POET, PAINTER, JEWELLER, MERCHANT
HOSTILIUS and two other STRANGERS
OLD ATHENIAN
PAGE
FOOL
mistress to Alcibiades
Lords, Senators, Soldiers, Bandits and Attendants Cupid and the Amazons in the Masque
Timon of Athens
1.1 Enter Poet, Painter, Jeweller, Merchant at several doors.
POET Good day, sir.
PAINTER I am glad y’are well.
POET I have not seen you long; how goes the world?
PAINTER It wears, sir, as it grows.
POET Ay, that’s well known.
But what particular rarity, what strange,
Which manifold record not matches? See,
5
Magic of bounty, all these spirits thy power
Hath conjur’d to attend! I know the merchant.
PAINTER I know them both: th’other’s a jeweller.
MERCHANT O, ’tis a worthy lord.
JEWELLER Nay, that’s most fix’d.
MERCHANT
A most incomparable man, breath’d, as it were,
10
To an untirable and continuate goodness.
He passes.
JEWELLER I have a jewel here –
MERCHANT
O pray, let’s see’t. For the Lord Timon, sir?
JEWELLER If he will touch the estimate. But for that –
POET [aside to Painter]
When we for recompense have prais’d the vild,
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It stains the glory in that happy verse
Which aptly sings the good.
MERCHANT [looking at the jewel] ’Tis a good form.
JEWELLER And rich. Here is a water, look ye.
PAINTER
You are rapt, sir, in some work, some dedication
To the great lord.
POET A thing slipp’d idly from me.
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Our poesy is as a gum which oozes
From whence ’tis nourish’d; the fire i’th’ flint
Shows not till it be struck: our gentle flame
Provokes itself, and like the current flies
Each bound it chases. What have you there?
25
PAINTER A picture, sir. When comes your book forth?
POET Upon the heels of my presentment, sir.
Let’s see your piece.
PAINTER ’Tis a good piece.
POET So ’tis; this comes off well and excellent.
PAINTER Indifferent.
POET Admirable. How this grace
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Speaks his own standing! What a mental power
This eye shoots forth! How big imagination
Moves in this lip! To th’ dumbness of the gesture
One might interpret.
PAINTER It is a pretty mocking of the life.
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Here is a touch: is’t good?
POET I will say of it,
It tutors nature; artificial strife
Lives in these touches, livelier than life.
Enter certain senators, who go in to Timon.
PAINTER How this lord is followed!
POET The senators of Athens, happy men.
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PAINTER Look, moe!
POET
You see this confluence, this great flood of visitors.
I have in this rough work shap’d out a man,
Whom this beneath world doth embrace and hug
With amplest entertainment. My free drift
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Halts not particularly, but moves itself
In a wide sea of wax: no levell’d malice
Infects one comma in the course I hold,
But flies an eagle flight, bold, and forth on,
Leaving no tract behind.
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PAINTER How shall I understand you?
POET I will unbolt to you.
You see how all conditions, how all minds,
As well of glib and slipp’ry creatures as
Of grave and austere quality, tender down
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Their services to Lord Timon: his large fortune,
Upon his good and gracious nature hanging,
Subdues and properties to his love and tendance
All sorts of hearts; yea, from the glass-fac’d flatterer
To Apemantus, that few things loves better
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The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 480