Began to crack. Twice then the trumpets sounded,
And there I left him tranced.
ALBANY But who was this?
EDGAR
Kent, sir, the banished Kent, who in disguise
Followed his enemy king, and did him service
Improper for a slave.
Enter [Second] Gentleman with a bloody knife
FSECONDl GENTLEMEN Help, help!
ALBANY What kind of help?
What means that bloody knife?
⌈SECOND⌉ GENTLEMAN It’s hot, it smokes. It came even from the heart of—
ALBANY Who, man? Speak.
[SECOND] GENTLEMAN
Your lady, sir, your lady; and her sister
By her is poisonèd—she hath confessed it.
EDMUND
I was contracted to them both; all three
Now marry in an instant.
ALBANY
Produce their bodies, be they alive or dead.
This justice of the heavens, that makes us tremble,
Touches us not with pity.
Enter Kent as himself
EDGAR Here comes Kent, sir.
ALBANY
O, ’tis he; the time will not allow
The compliment that very manners urges.
KENT I am come
To bid my king and master aye good night.
Is he not here?
ALBANY Great thing of us forgot!—
Speak, Edmund; where’s the King, and where’s
Cordelia?
The bodies of Gonoril and Regan are brought in
Seest thou this object, Kent?
KENT Alack, why thus?
EDMUND Yet Edmund was beloved.
The one the other poisoned for my sake,
And after slew herself.
ALBANY Even so.—Cover their faces.
EDMUND
I pant for life. Some good I mean to do,
Despite of my own nature. Quickly send,
Be brief in’t, to th’ castle; for my writ
Is on the life of Lear and on Cordelia.
Nay, send in time.
ALBANY Run, run, O run!
EDGAR
To who, my lord? Who hath the office? Send
Thy token of reprieve.
EDMUND
Well thought on! Take my sword. The captain,
Give it the captain.
ALBANY Haste thee for thy life.
Exit [Second Captain]
EDMUND
He hath commission from thy wife and me
To hang Cordelia in the prison, and
To lay the blame upon her own despair,
That she fordid herself.
ALBANY
The gods defend her!—Bear him hence a while.
Exeunt some with Edmund
Enter King Lear with Queen Cordelia in his arms,
[followed by the Second Captain]
LEAR
Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones.
Had I your tongues and eyes, I would use them so
That heaven’s vault should crack. She’s gone for ever.
I know when one is dead and when one lives.
She’s dead as earth.
[He lays her down]
Lend me a looking-glass.
If that her breath will mist or stain the stone,
Why, then she lives.
KENT Is this the promised end?
EDGAR
Or image of that horror?
ALBANY Fall and cease.
LEAR
This feather stirs. She lives. If it be so,
It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows
That ever I have felt.
KENT [kneeling] Ah, my good master!
LEAR
Prithee, away.
EDGAR w’Tis noble Kent, your friend.
LEAR
A plague upon you, murderous traitors all.
I might have saved her; now she’s gone for ever.—
Cordelia, Cordelia: stay a little. Ha?
What is’t thou sayst?—Her voice was ever soft,
Gentle, and low, an excellent thing in women.—
I killed the slave that was a-hanging thee.
[SECOND] CAPTAIN
’Tis true, my lords, he did.
LEAR Did I not, fellow?
I have seen the day with my good biting falchion
I would have made them skip. I am old now,
And these same crosses spoil me. (To Kent) Who are you?
Mine eyes are not o’ the best, I’ll tell you straight.
KENT
If fortune bragged of two she loved or hated,
One of them we behold.
LEAR Are not you Kent?
KENT
The same, your servant Kent. Where is your servant
Caius?
LEAR
He’s a good fellow, I can tell you that.
He’ll strike, and quickly too. He’s dead and rotten.
KENT
No, my good lord, I am the very man—
LEAR I’ll see that straight.
KENT
That from your first of difference and decay
Have followed your sad steps.
LEAR You’re welcome hither.
KENT
Nor no man else. All’s cheerless, dark, and deadly.
Your eldest daughters have fordone themselves,
And desperately are dead.
LEAR So think I, too.
ALBANY
He knows not what he sees; and vain it is
That we present us to him.
EDGAR
Very bootless.
Enter another Captain
[THIRD] CAPTAIN (to Albany)
Edmund is dead, my lord.
ALBANY That’s but a trifle here.—
You lords and noble friends, know our intent.
What comfort to this great decay may come
Shall be applied; for us, we will resign
During the life of this old majesty
To him our absolute power; (to Edgar and Kent) you
to your rights,
With boot and such addition as your honours
Have more than merited. All friends shall taste
The wages of their virtue, and all foes
The cup of their deservings.—O see, see!
LEAR
And my poor fool is hanged. No, no life.
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life,
And thou no breath at all? O, thou wilt come no more.
Never, never, never.—Pray you, undo
This button. Thank you, sir. O, O, O, O!
EDGAR He faints. (To Lear) My lord, my lord!
LEAR Break, heart, I prithee break.
EDGAR Look up, my lord.
KENT
Vex not his ghost. O, let him pass. He hates him
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer.
[Lear dies]
EDGAR O, he is gone indeed.
KENT
The wonder is he hath endured so long.
He but usurped his life.
ALBANY (to attendants)
Bear them from hence. Our present business
Is to general woe. (To Kent and Edgar) Friends of my
soul, you twain
Rule in this kingdom, and the gored state sustain.
KENT
I have a journey, sir, shortly to go:
My master calls, and I must not say no.
ALBANY
The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest have borne most. We that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.
Exeunt carrying the bodies
TIMON OF ATHENS
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AND THOMAS MIDDLETON
WE know no more of Timon of Athens than we can deduce from the tex
t printed in the 1623 Folio. Some episodes, such as the emblematic opening dialogue featuring a Poet and a Painter, are elegantly finished, but the play has more unpolished dialogue and loose ends of plot than usual: for example, the episode (3.6) in which Alcibiades pleads for a soldier’s life is only tenuously related to the main structure; and the final stretch of action seems imperfectly worked out. Various theories of collaboration and revision have been advanced to explain the play’s peculiarities. During the 1970s and 1980s strong linguistic and other evidence was adduced in support of the belief that it is a product of collaboration between Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton, a dramatist born in 1580 and educated at Queen’s College, Oxford, who was writing for the stage by 1602 and was to develop into a great playwright. The major passages for which Middleton seems to have taken prime responsibility are Act 1. Scene 2; all of Act 3 except for parts of Scene 7; and the closing episode (4.3.460-537) of Act 4. The theory of collaboration explains some features of the text—Middleton’s verse, for example, was less regular than Shakespeare’s. There is no record of early performance; the play is conjecturally assigned to 1605-6.
The story of Timon was well known and had been told in an anonymous play which seems to have been acted at one of the Inns of Court in 1602 or 1603. The classical sources of Timon’s story are a brief, anecdotal passage in Plutarch’s Life of Mark Antony, and a Greek dialogue by Lucian, who wrote during the second century AD, the former was certainly known to the authors of Timon of Athens; the latter influences them directly or indirectly. Plutarch records two epitaphs, one written by Timon himself, which recur, conflated as one epitaph, almost word for word in the play. In Lucian, as in the play, Timon is a misanthrope because his friends flattered and sponged on him in prosperity but abandoned him in poverty. The first part of the play dramatizes this process; in the second part, as in Lucian, Timon finds gold and suddenly becomes attractive again to his old friends.
Timon of Athens is an exceptionally schematic play falling into two sharply contrasting parts, the second a kind of mirror image of the first. Many of the characters are presented two-dimensionally, as if the dramatists were more concerned with the play’s pattern of ideas than with psychological realism. The overall tone is harsh and bitter; there are passages of magnificent invective along with brilliant satire, but there is also tenderness in the portrayal of Timon’s servants, especially his ‘one honest man’, Flavius. In the play’s comparatively rare performances some adaptation has usually been found necessary; but the exceptionally long role of Timon offers great opportunities to an actor who can convey his vulnerability as well as his virulence, especially in the strange music of the closing scenes which suggests in him a vision beyond the ordinary.
THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY
The Life of Timon of Athens
1.1 Enter Poet ⌈at one door⌉, Painter carrying a picture [at another door], [followed by] Jeweller, Merchant, and Mercer, at several doors
POET
Good day, sir.
PAINTER I am glad you’re 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,
Magic of bounty, all these spirits thy power
Hath conjured to attend.
⌈Merchant and Jeweller meet. Mercer passes over
the stage, and exits⌉
I know the merchant.
PAINTER
I know them both. Th’other’s a jeweller.
MERCHANT (to Jeweller)
O, ’tis a worthy lord!
JEWELLER Nay, that’s most fixed.
MERCHANT
A most incomparable man, breathed, as it were,
To an untirable and continuate goodness.
He passes.
JEWELLER (showing a jewel) 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 (to himself)
‘When we for recompense have praised the vile,
It stains the glory in that happy verse
Which aptly sings the good.’
MERCHANT (to Jeweller) ’Tis a good form.
JEWELLER
And rich. Here is a water, look ye.
PAINTER (to Poet)
You are rapt, sir, in some work, some dedication
To the great lord.
POET A thing slipped idly from me.
Our poesy is as a gum which oozes
From whence ‘tis nourished. The fire i’th’ flint
Shows not till it be struck; our gentle flame
Provokes itself, and like the current flies
Each bound it chafes. What have you there?
PAINTER
A picture, sir. When comes your book forth?
POET
Upon the heels of my presentment, sir.
Let’s see your piece.
PAINTER (showing the picture) ’Tis a good piece.
POET
So ’tis. This comes off well and excellent.
PAINTER
Indifferent.
POET Admirable. How this grace
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.
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
PAINTER How this lord is followed!
POET
The senators of Athens. Happy man!
PAINTER Look, more.
⌈The Senators pass over the stage, and exeunt]
POET
You see this confluence, this great flood of visitors.
I have in this rough work shaped out a man
Whom this beneath world doth embrace and hug
With amplest entertainment. My free drift
Halts not particularly, but moves itself
In a wide sea of tax. No levelled malice
Infects one comma in the course I hold,
But flies an eagle flight, bold and forth on,
Leaving no tract behind.
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
Their service 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-faced flatterer
To Apemantus, that few things loves better
Than to abhor himself; even he drops down
The knee before him, and returns in peace,
Most rich in Timon’s nod.
PAINTER I saw them speak together.
POET
Sir, I have upon a high and pleasant hill
Feigned Fortune to be throned. The base o’th’ mount
Is ranked with all deserts, all kind of natures
That labour on the bosom of this sphere
To propagate their states. Amongst them all
Whose eyes are on this sovereign lady fixed
One do I personate of Lord Timon’s frame,
Whom Fortune with her ivory hand wafts to her,
Whose present grace to present slaves and servants
Translates his rivals.
PAINTER ’Tis conceived to scope.
Th
is throne, this Fortune, and this hill, methinks,
With one man beckoned from the rest below,
Bowing his head against the steepy mount
To climb his happiness, would be well expressed
In our condition.
POET Nay, sir, but hear me on.
All those which were his fellows but of late,
Some better than his value, on the moment
Follow his strides, his lobbies fill with tendance,
Rain sacrificial whisperings in his ear,
Make sacred even his stirrup, and through him
Drink the free air.
PAINTER Ay, marry, what of these?
POET
When Fortune in her shift and change of mood
Spurns down her late beloved, all his dependants,
Which laboured after him to the mountain’s top
Even on their knees and hands, let him fall down,
Not one accompanying his declining foot.
PAINTER ’Tis common.
A thousand moral paintings I can show
That shall demonstrate these quick blows of Fortune’s
More pregnantly than words. Yet you do well
To show Lord Timon that mean eyes have seen
The foot above the head.
Trumpets sound. Enter Timon [wearing a rich
jewell, with a Messenger from Ventidius; Lucilius
⌈and other Servants] attending. Timon addresses
himself courteously to every suitor, then speaks to
the Messenger
TIMON Imprisoned is he, say you?
MESSENGER
Ay, my good lord. Five talents is his debt,
His means most short, his creditors most strait.
Your honourable letter he desires
To those have shut him up, which failing,
Periods his comfort.
TIMON Noble Ventidius! Well,
I am not of that feather to shake off
My friend when he must need me. I do know him
A gentleman that well deserves a help,
Which he shall have. I’ll pay the debt and free him.
MESSENGER Your lordship ever binds him.
TIMON
Commend me to him. I will send his ransom;
And, being enfranchised, bid him come to me.
’Tis not enough to help the feeble up,
But to support him after. Fare you well.
MESSENGER All happiness to your honour. Exit
Enter an Old Athenian
OLD ATHENIAN
The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works Page 304
