Complete Plays, The (154 page)

Timon

’Tis, then, because thou dost not keep a dog,
Whom I would imitate: consumption catch thee!

Apemantus

This is in thee a nature but infected;
A poor unmanly melancholy sprung
From change of fortune. Why this spade? this place?
This slave-like habit? and these looks of care?
Thy flatterers yet wear silk, drink wine, lie soft;
Hug their diseased perfumes, and have forgot
That ever Timon was. Shame not these woods,
By putting on the cunning of a carper.
Be thou a flatterer now, and seek to thrive
By that which has undone thee: hinge thy knee,
And let his very breath, whom thou’lt observe,
Blow off thy cap; praise his most vicious strain,
And call it excellent: thou wast told thus;
Thou gavest thine ears like tapsters that bid welcome
To knaves and all approachers: ’tis most just
That thou turn rascal; hadst thou wealth again,
Rascals should have ’t. Do not assume my likeness.

Timon

Were I like thee, I’ld throw away myself.

Apemantus

Thou hast cast away thyself, being like thyself;
A madman so long, now a fool. What, think’st
That the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain,
Will put thy shirt on warm? will these moss’d trees,
That have outlived the eagle, page thy heels,
And skip where 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
Whose naked natures live in an the spite
Of wreakful heaven, whose bare unhoused trunks,
To the conflicting elements exposed,
Answer mere nature; bid them flatter thee;
O, thou shalt find —

Timon

A fool of thee: depart.

Apemantus

I love thee better now than e’er I did.

Timon

I hate thee worse.

Apemantus

 
Why?

Timon

Thou flatter’st misery.

Apemantus

I flatter not; but say thou art a caitiff.

Timon

Why dost thou seek me out?

Apemantus

To vex thee.

Timon

Always a villain’s office or a fool’s.
Dost please thyself in’t?

Apemantus

Ay.

Timon

What! a knave too?

Apemantus

If thou didst put this sour-cold habit on
To castigate thy pride, ’twere well: but thou
Dost it enforcedly; thou’ldst courtier be again,
Wert thou not beggar. Willing misery
Outlives encertain pomp, is crown’d before:
The one is filling still, never complete;
The other, at high wish: best state, contentless,
Hath a distracted and most wretched being,
Worse than the worst, content.
Thou shouldst desire to die, being miserable.

Timon

Not by his breath that is more miserable.
Thou art a slave, whom Fortune’s tender arm
With favour never clasp’d; but bred a dog.
Hadst thou, like us from our first swath, proceeded
The sweet degrees that this brief world affords
To such as may the passive drugs of it
Freely command, thou wouldst have plunged thyself
In general riot; melted down thy youth
In different beds of lust; and never learn’d
The icy precepts of respect, but follow’d
The sugar’d game before thee. But myself,
Who had the world as my confectionary,
The mouths, the tongues, the eyes and hearts of men
At duty, more than I could frame employment,
That numberless upon me stuck as leaves
Do on the oak, hive with one winter’s brush
Fell from their boughs and left me open, bare
For every storm that blows: I, to bear this,
That never knew but better, is some burden:
Thy nature did commence in sufferance, time
Hath made thee hard in’t. Why shouldst thou hate men?
They never flatter’d thee: what hast thou given?
If thou wilt curse, thy father, that poor rag,
Must be thy subject, who in spite put stuff
To some she beggar and compounded thee
Poor rogue hereditary. Hence, be gone!
If thou hadst not been born the worst of men,
Thou hadst been a knave and flatterer.

Apemantus

Art thou proud yet?

Timon

Ay, that I am not thee.

Apemantus

I, that I was
No prodigal.

Timon

 
I, that I am one now:
Were all the wealth I have shut up in thee,
I’ld give thee leave to hang it. Get thee gone.
That the whole life of Athens were in this!
Thus would I eat it.

Eating a root

Apemantus

Here; I will mend thy feast.

Offering him a root

Timon

First mend my company, take away thyself.

Apemantus

So I shall mend mine own, by the lack of thine.

Timon

’Tis not well mended so, it is but botch’d; if not, I would it were.

Apemantus

What wouldst thou have to Athens?

Timon

Thee thither in a whirlwind. If thou wilt,
Tell them there I have gold; look, so I have.

Apemantus

Here is no use for gold.

Timon

The best and truest;
For here it sleeps, and does no hired harm.

Apemantus

Where liest o’ nights, Timon?

Timon

Under that’s above me.
Where feed’st thou o’ days, Apemantus?

Apemantus

Where my stomach finds meat; or, rather, where I eat it.

Timon

Would poison were obedient and knew my mind!

Apemantus

Where wouldst thou send it?

Timon

To sauce thy dishes.

Apemantus

The middle of humanity thou never knewest, but the extremity of both ends: when thou wast in thy gilt and thy perfume, they mocked thee for too much curiosity; in thy rags thou knowest none, but art despised for the contrary. There’s a medlar for thee, eat it.

Timon

On what I hate I feed not.

Apemantus

Dost hate a medlar?

Timon

Ay, though it look like thee.

Apemantus

An thou hadst hated meddlers sooner, thou shouldst have loved thyself better now. What man didst thou ever know unthrift that was beloved after his means?

Timon

Who, without those means thou talkest of, didst thou ever know beloved?

Apemantus

Myself.

Timon

I understand thee; thou hadst some means to keep a dog.

Apemantus

What things in the world canst thou nearest compare to thy flatterers?

Timon

Women nearest; but men, men are the things themselves. What wouldst thou do with the world, Apemantus, if it lay in thy power?

Apemantus

Give it the beasts, to be rid of the men.

Timon

Wouldst thou have thyself fall in the confusion of men, and remain a beast with the beasts?

Apemantus

Ay, Timon.

Timon

A beastly ambition, which the gods grant thee t’ attain to! If thou wert the lion, the fox would beguile thee; if thou wert the lamb, the fox would eat three: if thou wert the fox, the lion would suspect thee, when peradventure thou wert accused by the ass: if thou wert the ass, thy dulness would torment thee, and still thou livedst but as a breakfast to the wolf: if thou wert the wolf, thy greediness would afflict thee, and oft thou shouldst hazard thy life for thy dinner: wert thou the unicorn, pride and wrath would confound thee and make thine own self the conquest of thy fury: wert thou a bear, thou wouldst be killed by the horse: wert thou a horse, thou wouldst be seized by the leopard: wert thou a leopard, thou wert german to the lion and the spots of thy kindred were jurors on thy life: all thy safety were remotion and thy defence absence. What beast couldst thou be, that were not subject to a beast? and what a beast art thou already, that seest not thy loss in transformation!

Apemantus

If thou couldst please me with speaking to me, thou mightst have hit upon it here: the commonwealth of Athens is become a forest of beasts.

Timon

How has the ass broke the wall, that thou art out of the city?

Apemantus

Yonder comes a poet and a painter: the plague of company light upon thee! I will fear to catch it and give way: when I know not what else to do, I’ll see thee again.

Timon

When there is nothing living but thee, thou shalt be welcome. I had rather be a beggar’s dog than Apemantus.

Apemantus

Thou art the cap of all the fools alive.

Timon

Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon!

Apemantus

A plague on thee! thou art too bad to curse.

Timon

All villains that do stand by thee are pure.

Apemantus

There is no leprosy but what thou speak’st.

Timon

If I name thee.
I’ll beat thee, but I should infect my hands.

Apemantus

I would my tongue could rot them off!

Timon

Away, thou issue of a mangy dog!
Choler does kill me that thou art alive;
I swound to see thee.

Apemantus

Would thou wouldst burst!

Timon

Away,
Thou tedious rogue! I am sorry I shall lose
A stone by thee.

Throws a stone at him

Apemantus

 
Beast!

Timon

Slave!

Apemantus

Toad!

Timon

Rogue, rogue, rogue!
I am sick of this false world, and will love nought
But even the mere necessities upon ’t.
Then, Timon, presently prepare thy grave;
Lie where the light foam the sea may beat
Thy grave-stone daily: make thine epitaph,
That death in me at others’ lives may laugh.

To the gold

O thou sweet king-killer, and dear divorce
’Twixt natural son and sire! thou bright defiler
Of Hymen’s purest bed! thou valiant Mars!
Thou ever young, fresh, loved and delicate wooer,
Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow
That lies on Dian’s lap! thou visible god,
That solder’st close impossibilities,
And makest them kiss! that speak’st with every tongue,
To every purpose! O thou touch of hearts!
Think, thy slave man rebels, and by thy virtue
Set them into confounding odds, that beasts
May have the world in empire!

Apemantus

Would ’twere so!
But not till I am dead. I’ll say thou’st gold:
Thou wilt be throng’d to shortly.

Timon

Throng’d to!

Apemantus

Ay.

Timon

Thy back, I prithee.

Apemantus

Live, and love thy misery.

Timon

Long live so, and so die.

Exit Apemantus

I am quit.
Moe things like men! Eat, Timon, and abhor them.

Enter Banditti

First Bandit

Where should he have this gold? It is some poor fragment, some slender sort of his remainder: the mere want of gold, and the falling-from of his friends, drove him into this melancholy.

Second Bandit

It is noised he hath a mass of treasure.

Third Bandit

Let us make the assay upon him: if he care not for’t, he will supply us easily; if he covetously reserve it, how shall’s get it?

Second Bandit

True; for he bears it not about him, ’tis hid.

First Bandit

Is not this he?

Banditti

Where?

Second Bandit

’Tis his description.

Third Bandit

He; I know him.

Banditti

Save thee, Timon.

Timon

Now, thieves?

Banditti

Soldiers, not thieves.

Timon

Both too; and women’s sons.

Banditti

We are not thieves, but men that much do want.

Timon

Your greatest want is, you want much of meat.
Why should you want? Behold, the earth hath roots;
Within this mile break forth a hundred springs;
The oaks bear mast, the briers scarlet hips;
The bounteous housewife, nature, on each bush
Lays her full mess before you. Want! why want?

First Bandit

We cannot live on grass, on berries, water,
As beasts and birds and fishes.

Timon

Nor on the beasts themselves, the birds, and fishes;
You must eat men. Yet thanks I must you con
That you are thieves profess’d, that you work not
In holier shapes: for there is boundless theft
In limited professions. Rascal thieves,
Here’s gold. Go, suck the subtle blood o’ the grape,
Till the high fever seethe your blood to froth,
And so ’scape hanging: trust not the physician;
His antidotes are poison, and he slays
Moe than you rob: take wealth and lives together;
Do villany, do, since you protest to do’t,
Like workmen. I’ll example you with thievery.
The sun’s a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea: the moon’s an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun:
The sea’s a thief, whose liquid surge resolves
The moon into salt tears: the earth’s a thief,
That feeds and breeds by a composture stolen
From general excrement: each thing’s a thief:
The laws, your curb and whip, in their rough power
Have uncheque’d theft. Love not yourselves: away,
Rob one another. There’s more gold. Cut throats:
All that you meet are thieves: to Athens go,
Break open shops; nothing can you steal,
But thieves do lose it: steal no less for this
I give you; and gold confound you howsoe’er! Amen.

Third Bandit

Has almost charmed me from my profession, by persuading me to it.

First Bandit

’Tis in the malice of mankind that he thus advises us; not to have us thrive in our mystery.

Second Bandit

I’ll believe him as an enemy, and give over my trade.