Confounded be thyself! Speak not, be gone. Alcib. Hast thou gold yet? I'll take the gold thou giv'st me, Not all thy counsel. Tim. Dost thou, or dost thou not, heaven's curse up- Phry, and Timan. Give us some gold, good Timon: -- Tim. Enough to make a whore forswear her trade, And be no turncoats: Yet may your pains, six months, A pox of wrinkles! Phyr. & Timan. Well, more gold ;-What then?→ Believe't, that we'll do any thing for gold. Tim. Consumptions sow In hollow bones of man; strike their sharp shins, Nor sound his quillets shrilly: Hoar the flamen, 3 And not believes himself: down with his nose, [9] You need not swear to continue whores, I will trust to your inclinations. JOHNS. [1] I believe this means, Yet for half the year at least, may you suffer such punishment as is inflicted on strumpets in houses of correction' STEE. [2] About the year 1595, when the fashion was first introduced in England of wearing more hair than was ever the produce of a single head, it was dangercus for any child to go about, as nothing was more common than for women to entice such as had fine locks into private places,and there to cut them off. I have this information from Stubbs' Anatomy of Abuses, which I have often quoted on the article of dress. STEEV. [3] This may mean, Give the flamen the hoar leprosy. As before in this play, "Make the hoar leprosy ador'd." STEEV. Smells from the general weal :4 Make curl'd-pate ruf fians bald; And let the unscarr'd braggarts of the war And ditches grave you all !5 Phr. and Timan. More counsel with more money, bounteous Timon. Tim. More whore, more mischief first; I have given you earnest. Alcib. Strike up the drum towards Athens. Farewell, Timon; If I thrive well, I'll visit thee again. Tim. If I hope well, I'll never see thee more. Tim. Yes, thou spok'st well of me. Alcib. Call'st thou that harm? Tim. Men daily find it such. Get thee away, And take thy beagles with thee. Alcib. We but offend him. Strike. [Drum beats. Exe.ALCIB. PHRY. and TIMA. [4] The metaphor is apparently incongruous, but the sense is good. To foresee his particular, is to provide for his private advantage, for which he leaves the right scent of public good. In hunting, when hares have cross'd one another, it is common for some of the hounds to smell from the general weal, and foresee their own particular. Shakspeare, who appears to have been a skilful sportsman, and has alluded often to falconry, perhaps, alludes here to hunting. JOHNS. [5] To grave is to entomb. The word in now obsolete, though sometimes used by Shakspeare and his contemporary authors, To ungrave, was likewise to turn out of a grave. STEEV. [6] Eyeless venom'd worm ;-the serpent, which we, from the smallness of his eyes, call the blind worm and the Latin, cecilia. JOHNS. [7] By crisp, perhaps Shakspeare means curl'd, from the appearance of the clouds. In the Tempest, Ariel talks of riding "On the curl'd clouds," STEEV. Let it no more bring out ingrateful man! Go great with tigers, dragons, wolves, and bears; Never presented !-O, a root,-Dear thanks! Enter APEMANTUS. Apem. I was directed hither. Men report, From change of fortune. Why this spade? this place? [8] The sense is this; "O nature! cease to produce men, ensear thy womb; but if thou wilt continue to produce them, at least cease to pamper them; dry up thy marrows, on which they fatten with unctuous morsels, thy vines, which give them liquorish draughts, and thy plough-torn leas." JOHNS. [9] Diseased, perfumed mistresses. MALONE. [1] The cunning of a carper is the insidious art of a critick. Shame not these woods by coming here to find fault. STEEV. [2] Aquila senectus is a proverb. The great age of this bird has been as And skip when thou point'st out? Will the cold brook, Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste, To cure thy o'er-night's surfeit? call the creatures,- Of wreakful heaven; whose bare unhoused trunks, Answer mere nature,-bid them flatter thee; O thou shalt find Tim. A fool of thee: Depart. Apem. I love thee better now than e'er I did. Apem. Why? Tim. Thou flatter'st misery. Apem. I flatter not; but say, thou art a caitiff. Tim. Why dost thou seek me out? Apem. To vex thee. Tim. Always a villain's office, or a fool's. Dost please thyself in't? Apem. Ay. Tim. What! a knave too? Apem. If thou didst put this sour-cold habit on The other, at high wish. Best state, contentless, Thou shouldst desire to die, being miserable. Hadst thou, like us, from our first swath,7 proceeded certained from the circumstance of its always building its eyrie or nest in the same place. STEEV. [3] Arrives sooner at high wish; that is, at the completion of its wishes. JOHNS. [4] Best states contentless have a wretched being, a being worse than that of the worst states that are content. JOHNS. [5] Alluding to the word Cynic, of which sect Apemantus was: WARB. [6] There is in this speech a sullen haughtiness, and malignant dignity, suitable at once to the lord and the man-hater. The impatience with which he bears to have his luxury reproached by one that never had luxury within his reach, is natural and graceful.There is in a letter, written by the earl of Essex, just before his execution, to another nobleman, a passage some. what resembling this, with which, I believe every reader will be pleased, though it is so serious and solemn that it can scarcely be inserted without irreverence, "God grant your lordship may quickly feel the comfort Inow The sweet degrees that this brief world affords Freely command, thou wouldst have plung'd thyself In different beds of lust; and never learn'd The mouths, the tongues, the eyes, and hearts of men Tim. Ay, that I am not thee. No prodigal. Tim. I, that I am one now; Were all the wealth I have, shut up in thee, enjoy in my unfeigned conversion, but that you may never feel the torments I have suffered for my long delaying it. I had none but deceivers to call upon me, to whom I said, if my ambition could have entered into their narrow breasts, they would not have been so humble; or if my delights had been once tasted by them they would not have been so precise. But your lordship hath one to call upon you, that knoweth what it is you now enjoy ; and what the greatest fruit and end is of all contentment that this world can afford. Think, therefore, dear earl, that I have staked and buoyed all the ways of pleasure unto you, and left them as sea-marks for you to keep the channel of religious virtue. For shut your eyes never so long, they must be open at the last, and then you must say with me, there is no peace to the ungodly." JOHNS. [7] From infancy. Swath is the dress of a new-born child. JOHNS. [8] The lowest of the people are yet called tag, rag, &c. MAL. [9] Dryden has quoted two verses of Virgil to show how well he could have written satires. Shakspeare has here given a specimen of the same power by a line beyond all bitterness, in which Timon tells Apemantus, that he had not virtue enough for the vices which he condemns. I have heard Mr. Burke commend the subtilty of discrimination with which Shakspeare distinguishes the present character of Timon from that of A pemantus, whom to vulgar eyes he would now resemble. JOHNS. |