Complete Plays, The (156 page)

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Authors: William Shakespeare

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Flavius

Stay not, all’s in vain.

Timon

Why, I was writing of my epitaph;
It will be seen to-morrow: 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 wreck,
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 thorough 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

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 take his haste,
Come hither, ere my tree hath felt the axe,
And hang himself. I pray you, do my greeting.

Flavius

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 grave-stone be your oracle.
Lips, let sour 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.

Retires to his cave

First Senator

His discontents are unremoveably
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

S
CENE
II. B
EFORE
THE
WALLS
OF
A
THENS
.

Enter two Senators and a Messenger

First Senator

Thou hast painfully discover’d: are his files
As full as thy report?

Messenger

have spoke the least:
Besides, his expedition promises
Present approach.

Second 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’ the cause against your city,
In part for his sake moved.

First Senator

Here come our brothers.

Enter the Senators from Timon

Third Senator

No talk of Timon, nothing of him expect.
The enemies’ drum is heard, and fearful scouring
Doth choke the air with dust: in, and prepare:
Ours is the fall, I fear; our foes the snare.

Exeunt

S
CENE
III. T
HE
WOODS
. T
IMON
’
S
CAVE
,
AND
A
RUDE
TOMB
SEEN
.

Enter a Soldier, seeking Timon

Soldier

By all description this should be the place.
Who’s here? speak, ho! No answer! What is this?
Timon is dead, who hath outstretch’d his span:
Some beast rear’d this; there does not live a man.
Dead, sure; and this his grave. What’s on this tomb
I cannot read; the character I’ll take with wax:
Our captain hath in every figure skill,
An aged interpreter, though young in days:
Before proud Athens he’s set down by this,
Whose fall the mark of his ambition is.

Exit

S
CENE
IV. B
EFORE
THE
WALLS
OF
A
THENS
.

Trumpets sound. Enter Alcibiades with his powers

Alcibiades

Sound to this coward and lascivious town
Our terrible approach.

A parley sounded

Enter Senators on the walls

Till now you have gone on and fill’d the time
With all licentious measure, making your wills
The scope of justice; till now myself and such
As slept within the shadow of your power
Hav e wander’d with our traversed arms and breathed
Our sufferance vainly: now the time is flush,
When crouching marrow in the bearer strong
Cries of itself ‘No more:’ now breathless wrong
Shall sit and pant in your great chairs of ease,
And pursy insolence shall break his wind
With fear and horrid flight.

First Senator

Noble and young,
When thy first griefs were but a mere conceit,
Ere thou hadst power or we had cause of fear,
We sent to thee, to give thy rages balm,
To wipe out our ingratitude with loves
Above their quantity.

Second Senator

So did we woo
Transformed Timon to our city’s love
By humble message and by promised means:
We were not all unkind, nor all deserve
The common stroke of war.

First Senator

These walls of ours
Were not erected by their hands from whom
You have received your griefs; nor are they such
That these great towers, trophies and schools should fall
For private faults in them.

Second Senator

Nor are they living
Who were the motives that you first went out;
Shame that they wanted cunning, in excess
Hath broke their hearts. March, noble lord,
Into our city with thy banners spread:
By decimation, and a tithed death —
If thy revenges hunger for that food
Which nature loathes — take thou the destined tenth,
And by the hazard of the spotted die
Let die the spotted.

First Senator

All have not offended;
For those that were, it is not square to take
On those that are, revenges: crimes, like lands,
Are not inherited. Then, dear countryman,
Bring in thy ranks, but leave without thy rage:
Spare thy Athenian cradle and those kin
Which in the bluster of thy wrath must fall
With those that have offended: like a shepherd,
Approach the fold and cull the infected forth,
But kill not all together.

Second Senator

What thou wilt,
Thou rather shalt enforce it with thy smile
Than hew to’t with thy sword.

First Senator

Set but thy foot
Against our rampired gates, and they shall ope;
So thou wilt send thy gentle heart before,
To say thou’lt enter friendly.

Second Senator

Throw thy glove,
Or any token of thine honour else,
That thou wilt use the wars as thy redress
And not as our confusion, all thy powers
Shall make their harbour in our town, till we
Have seal’d thy full desire.

Alcibiades

Then there’s my glove;
Descend, and open your uncharged ports:
Those enemies of Timon’s and mine own
Whom you yourselves shall set out for reproof
Fall and no more: and, to atone your fears
With my more noble meaning, not a man
Shall pass his quarter, or offend the stream
Of regular justice in your city’s bounds,
But shall be render’d to your public laws
At heaviest answer.

Both

’Tis most nobly spoken.

Alcibiades

Descend, and keep your words.

The Senators descend, and open the gates

Enter Soldier

Soldier

My noble general, Timon is dead;
Entomb’d upon the very hem o’ the sea;
And on his grave-stone this insculpture, which
With wax I brought away, whose soft impression
Interprets for my poor ignorance.

Alcibiades

[Reads the epitaph]

‘Here lies a wretched corse, of wretched soul bereft:
Seek not my name: a plague consume you wicked caitiffs left!
Here lie I, Timon; who, alive, all living men did hate:
Pass by and curse thy fill, but pass and stay not here thy gait.’
These well express in thee thy latter spirits:
Though thou abhorr’dst in us our human griefs,
Scorn’dst our brain’s flow and those our droplets which
From niggard nature fall, yet rich conceit
Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye
On thy low grave, on faults forgiven. Dead
Is noble Timon: of whose memory
Hereafter more. Bring me into your city,
And I will use the olive with my sword,
Make war breed peace, make peace stint war, make each
Prescribe to other as each other’s leech.
Let our drums strike.