Let me behold thy face. Surely this man
Was born of woman.
Forgive my general and exceptless rashness,
You perpetual sober gods! I do proclaim
One honest man—mistake me not, but one,
No more, I pray—and he’s a steward.
How fain would I have hated all mankind,
And thou redeem‘st thyself! But all save thee
I fell with curses.
Methinks thou art more honest now than wise,
For by oppressing and betraying me
Thou mightst have sooner got another service;
For many so arrive at second masters
Upon their first lord’s neck. But tell me true—
For I must ever doubt, though ne’er so sure—
Is not thy kindness subtle, covetous,
A usuring kindness, and, as rich men deal gifts,
Expecting in return twenty for one?
FLAVIUS
No, my most worthy master, in whose breast
Doubt and suspect, alas, are placed too late.
You should have feared false times when you did feast.
Suspect still comes where an estate is least.
That which I show, heaven knows, is merely love,
Duty and zeal to your unmatched mind,
Care of your food and living; and, believe it,
My most honoured lord,
For any benefit that points to me,
Either in hope or present, I’d exchange
For this one wish: that you had power and wealth
To requite me by making rich yourself.
TIMON
Look thee, ’tis so. Thou singly honest man,
⌈He gives Flavius gold⌉
Here, take. The gods, out of my misery,
Has sent thee treasure. Go, live rich and happy,
But thus conditioned: thou shalt build from men,
Hate all, curse all, show charity to none,
But let the famished flesh slide from the bone
Ere thou relieve the beggar. Give to dogs
What thou deniest to men. Let prisons swallow ‘em,
Debts wither ’em to nothing; be men like blasted woods,
And may diseases lick up their false bloods.
And so farewell, and thrive.
FLAVIUS O, let me stay
And comfort you, my master.
TIMON If thou hat’st curses,
Stay not. Fly whilst thou art blest and free.
Ne’er see thou man, and let me ne’er see thee.
Exeunt ⌈Timon into his cave, Flavius another way⌉
5.1 Enter Poet and Painter
PAINTER 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’s so full of gold?
PAINTER 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?
PAINTER 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 show honestly in us, and is very likely to load our purposes with what they travail for, if it be a just and true report that goes of his having.
POET What have you now to present unto him?
PAINTER 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.
PAINTER Good as the best.
⌈Enter Timon from his cave, unobserved⌉
Promising is the very air o’th’ time; it opens the eyes of expectation. Performance 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 judgement that makes it.
TIMON (aside) Excellent workman, thou canst not paint a man so bad as is thyself.
POET (to Painter) 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.
TIMON (aside) 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 (to Painter) Nay, let’s seek him. Then do we sin against our own estate When we may profit meet and come too late.
PAINTER True.
When the day serves, before black-cornered night,
Find what thou want’st by free and offered fight.
Come.
TIMON (aside)
I’ll meet you at the turn. What a god’s gold,
That he is worshipped in a baser temple
Than where swine feed!
‘Tis thou that rigg’st the barque and plough’st the foam,
Settlest admired reverence in a slave.
To thee be worship, and thy saints for aye
Be crowned with plagues, that thee alone obey.
Fit I meet them.
He comes forward to them
POET
Hail, worthy Timon!
PAINTER Our late noble master!
TIMON
Have I once lived to see two honest men?
POET
Sir, having often of your open bounty tasted,
Hearing you were retired, your friends fall’n off,
Whose thankless natures, O abhorred spirits,
Not all the whips of heaven are large enough—
What, to you,
Whose star-like nobleness gave life and infiuence
To their whole being! I am rapt, and cannot cover
The monstrous bulk of this ingratitude
With any size of words.
TIMON
Let it go naked; men may see’t the better.
You that are honest, by being what you are
Make them best seen and known.
PAINTER He and myself
Have travelled in the great show’r of your gifts,
And sweetly felt it.
TIMON Ay, you are honest men.
PAINTER
We are hither come to offer you our service.
TIMON
Most honest men. Why, how shall I requite you?
Can you eat roots and drink cold water? No.
POET and PAINTER
What we can do we’ll do to do you service.
TIMON
You’re honest men. You’ve heard that I have gold,
I am sure you have. Speak truth; you’re honest men.
PAINTER
So it is said, my noble lord, but therefor
Came not my friend nor I.
TIMON
Good honest men. (To Painter) Thou draw‘st a
counterfeit
Best in all Athens; thou’rt indeed the best;
Thou counterfeit’st most lively.
PAINTER
So so, my lord.
TIMON
E‘en so, sir, as I say. (To Poet) And for thy fiction,
Why, thy verse swells with stuff so fine and smooth
That thou art even natural in thine art.
But for all this, my honest-natured friends,
I must needs say you have a little fault.
Marry, ’tis not monstrous in you, neither wish I
You take much pains to mend.
POET and PAINTER
Beseech your honour
To make it known to us.
TIMON You’ll take it ill.
POET and PAINTER Most thankfully, my lord.
TIMON Will you indeed?
POET and PAINTER Doubt it not, worthy lord.
TIMON
; There’s never a one of you but trusts a knave
That mightily deceives you.
POET and PAINTER Do we, my lord?
TIMON
Ay, and you hear him cog, see him dissemble,
Know his gross patchery, love him, feed him,
Keep in your bosom; yet remain assured
That he’s a made-up villain.
PAINTER I know none such, my lord.
POET Nor I.
TIMON
Look you, I love you well. I’ll give you gold,
Rid me these villains from your companies.
Hang them or stab them, drown them in a draught,
Confound them by some course, and come to me,
I’ll give you gold enough.
POET and PAINTER
Name them, my lord, let’s know them.
TIMON
You that way and you this—but two in company-
Each man apart, all single and alone,
Yet an arch-villain keeps him company.
⌈To Painter⌉ If where thou art two villains shall not be,
Come not near him. ⌈To Poet⌉ If thou wouldst not
reside
But where one villain is, then him abandon.
Hence; pack! ⌈Striking him⌉ There’s gold. You came
for gold, ye slaves.
⌈Striking Painter⌉ You have work for me; there’s
payment. Hence!
⌈Striking Poet⌉ You are an alchemist; make gold of that.
Out, rascal dogs! Exeunt ⌈Poet and Painter one way,
Timon into his cave⌉
5.2 Enter Flavius and two Senators
FLAVIUS
It is in vain that you would speak with Timon,
For he is set so only to himself
That nothing but himself which looks like man
Is friendly with him.
FIRST SENATOR
Bring us to his cave.
It is our part and promise to th’ Athenians
To speak with Timon.
SECOND SENATOR
At all times alike
Men are not still the same. ’Twas time and griefs
That framed him thus. Time with his fairer hand
Offering the fortunes of his former days,
The former man may make him. Bring us to him,
And chance it as it may.
FLAVIUS
Here is his cave.
(Calling) Peace and content be here! Lord Timon,
Timon,
Look out and speak to friends. Th’Athenians
By two of their most reverend senate greet thee.
Speak to them, noble Timon.
Enter Timon out of his cave
TIMON
Thou sun that comforts, burn! Speak and be hanged.
For each true word a blister, and each false
Be as a cantherizing to the root o’th’ tongue,
Consuming it with speaking.
FIRST SENATOR
Worthy Timon—
TIMON
Of none but such as you, and you of Timon.
FIRST SENATOR
The senators of Athens greet thee, Timon.
TIMON
I thank them, and would send them back the plague
Could I but catch it for them.
FIRST SENATOR
O, forget
What we are sorry for, ourselves in thee.
The senators with one consent of love
Entreat thee back to Athens, who have thought
On special dignities which vacant lie
For thy best use and wearing.
SECOND SENATOR
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
Of it own fail, restraining aid to Timon;
And send forth us to make their sorrowed render,
Together with a recompense more fruitful
Than their offence can weigh down by the dram;
Ay, even such heaps and sums of love and wealth
As shall to thee blot out what wrongs were theirs,
And write in thee the figures of their love,
Ever to read them thine.
TIMON
You witch me in it,
Surprise me to the very brink of tears.
Lend me a fool’s heart and a woman’s eyes,
And I’ll beweep these comforts, worthy senators.
FIRST SENATOR
Therefore so please thee to return with us,
And of our Athens, thine and ours, to take
The captainship, thou shalt be met with thanks,
Allowed with absolute power, and thy good name
Live with authority. So soon we shall drive back
Of Alcibiades th’approaches wild,
Who, like a boar too savage, doth root up
His country’s peace.
SECOND SENATOR And shakes his threat’ning sword Against the walls of Athens.
FIRST SENATOR
Therefore, Timon—
TIMON
Well, sir, I will; therefore I will, sir, thus.
If Alcibiades kill my countrymen,
Let Alcibiades know this of Timon:
That Timon cares not. But if he sack fair Athens,
And take our goodly aged men by th’ beards,
Giving our holy virgins to the stain
Of contumelious, beastly, mad-brained war,
Then let him know, and tell him Timon speaks it
In pity of our aged and our youth,
I cannot choose but tell him that I care not;
And-let him take’t at worst—for their knives care
not
While you have throats to answer. For myself,
There’s not a whittle in th’ unruly camp
But I do prize it at my love before
The reverend’st throat in Athens. So I leave you
To the protection of the prosperous gods,
As thieves to keepers.
FLAVIUS (to Senators) Stay not; all’s in vain.
TIMON
Why, I was writing of my epitaph.
It will be seen tomorrow. 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.
FIRST SENATOR
We speak in vain.
TIMON
But yet I love my country, and am not
One that rejoices in the common wrack
As common bruit doth put it.
FIRST SENATOR
That’s well spoke.
TIMON
Commend me to my loving countrymen—
FIRST SENATOR
These words become your lips as they pass through
them.
SECOND SENATOR
And enter in our ears like great triumphers
In their applauding gates.
TIMON
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
In life’s uncertain voyage, I will some kindness do them.
I’ll teach them to prevent wild Alcibiades’ wrath.
FIRST SENATOR (aside)
I like this well; he will return again.
TIMON
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 t
ake his haste,
Come hither ere my tree hath felt the axe,
And hang himself. I pray you do my greeting.
FLAVIUS (to Senators)
Trouble him no further. Thus you still shall find him.
TIMON
Come not to me again, but say to Athens,
Timon hath made his everlasting mansion
Upon the beached verge of the salt flood,
Who once a day with his embossed froth
The turbulent surge shall cover. Thither come,
And let my gravestone be your oracle.
lips, let four 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 ⌈into his cave⌉
FIRST SENATOR
His discontents are unremovably
Coupled to nature.
SECOND SENATOR
Our hope in him is dead. Let us return,
And strain what other means is left unto us
In our dear peril.
FIRST SENATOR
It requires swift foot.
Exeunt
5.3 Enter two other Senators, with a Messenger
⌈THIRD⌉ SENATOR
Thou hast painfully discovered. Are his files
As full as thy report?
MESSENGER
I have spoke the least.
Besides, his expedition promises
Present approach.
⌈FOURTH⌉ SENATOR
We stand much hazard if they bring not Timon.
MESSENGER
I met a courier, one mine ancient friend,
Whom, though in general part we were opposed,
Yet our old love made a particular force
And made us speak like friends. This man was riding
From Alcibiades to Timon’s cave
With letters of entreaty which imported
His fellowship i’th’ cause against your city,
In part for his sake moved.
Enter the other Senators
⌈THIRD⌉ SENATOR
Here come our brothers.
⌈FIRST⌉ SENATOR
No talk of Timon; nothing of him expect.
The enemy’s drum is heard, and fearful scouring
Doth choke the air with dust. In, and prepare.
Ours is the fall, I fear, our foe’s the snare. Exeunt
5.4 Enter a Soldier, in the woods, seeking Timon
SOLDIER
By all description, this should be the place.
Who’s here? Speak, ho! No answer?
⌈He discovers a gravestone⌉
What is this?
Dead, sure, and this his grave. What’s on this tomb
The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works Page 311