תמונות בעמוד
PDF
ePub

Do't in your parents' eyes. Bankrupts, hold fast;
Rather than render back, out with your knives,
And cut your trufters' throats. Bound fervants, fteal;
Large-handed robbers your grave masters are,
And pill by law. Maid, to thy master's bed;
Thy miftrefs is i'th' brothel. Son of fixteen,
Pluck the lin'd crutch from thy old limping fire,
With it beat out his brains. Fear and Piety,
Religion to the Gods, peace, juftice, truth,
Domestick awe, night reft, and neighbourhood,
Instruction, manners, myfteries and trades,
Degrees, obfervances, cuftoms and laws,
Decline to your confounding contraries!
And ' yet confufion live!-Plagues, incident to men,
Your potent and infectious fevers heap

On Athens, ripe for ftroke! Thou cold Sciatica,
Cripple our fenators, that their limbs may halt
As lamely as their manners. Luft and Liberty
Creep in the minds and marrows of our youth,
That 'gainst the ftream of virtue they may strive,
And drown themfelves in riot! Itches, Blains,
Sow all the Athenien bofms, and their Crop
Be general Leprofy. Breath intect breath,
That their fociety, as their friendfh p, may'
Be meerly poifon. Nothing I'll bear from thee,
But nakedness, thou deteitable town!

Take thou that too, with multiplying banns.
Timon will to the Woods, where he shall find
Th'unkindeft beaft much kinder than mankind.
The Gods confound (hear me, ye good Gods all)
Th'Athenians both within and out that wal;
And grant, as Timon grows, his hate may grow,
To the whole race of Mankind, high and low! [Exit.

9-i'th brothel.] So Hanmer. The old copies read, o'th' brothel.

-yet confufion] Hanmer reads, let confufion; but the meaning may be, though by fuch

confufion all things feem to haften to affolution, yet let not diffolution come, but the mijeries of confusion continue,

SCENE

1 Serv.

[blocks in formation]

Changes to TIMON's Houfe.

* Enter Flavius, with two or three fervants.

EAR you, good master steward? Where's our master?

HEAR

Are we undone, caft off, nothing remaining?

Flav. Alack, my fellows, what should I fay to you? Let me be recorded by the righteous Gods,

I am as poor as you.

1 Serv. Such a Houfe broke!

So noble a master fall'n! all gone! and not
One friend to take his fortune by the arm,
And go along with him!

2 Serv. As we do turn our backs

From our companion, thrown into his grave,
So his familiars from his buried fortunes
Slink all away; leave their falfe vows with him,
Like empty purses pick'd: and his poor self,
A dedicated beggar to the air,

With his difeafe of all fhun'd poverty,

Walks, like Contempt, alone.-More of our fellows. Enter other fervants.

Flav. All broken implements of a ruin'd house! 3 Serv. Yet do our hearts wear Timon's livery, That fee I by our faces; we are fellows still, Serving alike in forrow. Leak'd is our bark, And we poor mates, ftand on the dying deck, Hearing the furges threat; we must all part

Into the fea of air.

* Enter Flavius,] Nothing contributes more to the exaltation of Timon's character than the zeal and fidelity of his fervants. Nothing but real virtue can be honoured by domesticks; no

thing but impartial kindness can gain affection from dependants.

2 from his buried for une] The old copies have to instead of from. The correction is idan

m.r's.

Q4

Fiav.

Flav. Good fellows all,

The latest of my wealth i'll fhare amongst you.
Where-ever we fhall meet, for Timon's lake,
Let's yet be fellows; let's fhake our heads, and fay,
As 'twere a knell unto our maiter's fortunes,

We have feen better days. Let each take fome;

[Giving them money, -Nay put out all your hands-not one word more. Thus part we rich in forrow, parting poor.

[They embrace, and part feveral ways. Oh, the fierce wretchedness that glory brings us! Who would not wish to be from wealth exempt, Since riches point to mifery and contempt? Who'd be fo mock'd with glory, as to live But in a dream of friendship,

[ocr errors]

To have his Pomp, and all what State compounds,
But only painted, like his varnifh'd friends?
Poor honeft Lord! brought low by his own heart,
Undone by goodnefs; ftrange unusual blood,
When man's worst fin is, he does too much good.
Who then dares to be half fo kind again?
For bounty, that makes Gods, does still mar men,
My dearest Lord, bleft to be most accurs'd,
Rich only to be wretched; thy gr at fortunes
Are made thy chief afflictions. Alas, kind Lord!
He's flung in rage from this ungrateful Seat
Of monftrous friends;

Nor has he with him to fupply his life,
Or that which can command it.
I'll follow and enquire him out;

beft will;

I'll ever ferve his mind with my
Whilst I have gold, I'll be his Steward ftill.

[Exit,

3 -frange unufual blood,] introduction. I know not what Of this parage, I fuppofe, every to propofe. Perhaps, reader would with for a correction; but the word, harsh as it is, ftands fortified by the rhyme, to which, perhaps, it owes its

frange unusual mood, may, by fome, be thought better, and by others worse,

SCENE

Find

[ocr errors]
[blocks in formation]

Bleffed, breeding Sun, draw from the earth

Rotten humidity; below thy fifter's orb

Infect the air. Twinn'd brothers of one womb,
Whofe procreation, refidence, and birth

Scarce is dividant, touch with feveral fortunes;
The greater fcorns the leffer. Not ev'n nature,

[blocks in formation]

6

To

whofe uninterrupted courfe of fucceffes, as we learn from history, turned his head, and made him fancy himself a God, and contemn his human origin. The Poet fays, ev'n nature, meaning nature in its greatest perfection: And Alexander is represented by the ancients as the most accomplish'd perfon that ever was, both for his qualities of mind and body, a kind of masterpiece of nature. He adds,

To whom all fores lay fiege,i.e. Although the imbecility of the human condition might eafily have informed him of his error. Here Shakespear seems to have had an eye to Plutarch, who, in his life of Alexander, tells us, that it was that which stagger'd him in his fober moments concerning the belief of his Divinity. Ἔλεγεν δὲ μάλισα συνιέναι θνητὸς ὢν ἐκ τὸ καθεύδειν καὶ συνεσίαζειν· ὡς ἀπὸ μιᾶς ἐ[γινόμενον αἰσθενείας τῇ φύσει καὶ τὸ πονῦν καὶ τὸ ἠδό

r.

ως

WARB.

To whom all fores lay fiege, can bear great fortune But by contempt of nature.

7 Raife me this beggar, and denude that Lord, The fenator fhall bear contempt hereditary, The beggar native honour.

It is the Paftour lards the brother's fides,

I have preferved this note rather for the fake of the commentator than of the authour. How nature, to whom all fores lay fiege, can fo emphatically exprefs nature in its greatest perfection, I fhall not endeavour to explain. The meaning I take to be this: Brother when his fortune is inlarged will feern brother; for this is the general depravity of human nature, which befuged as it ts by mifery, admonished as it is of want and imperfection, when elevated by fortune, will defpife beings of nature like its own.

7 Raife me this Beggar, and deny't that Lord,] Where is the fenfe and English of deny't that Lord? Deny him what? What preceding Noun is there to which the pronoun It is to be referr'd? And it would be abfurd to think the Poet meant, deny to raise that Lord. The Antithefis muft be, let fortune raise this beggar, and let her ftrip and defpoil that lord of all his pomp and ornaments, &. which fenfe is compleated by this flight alteration,

-and denude that lord. So lord Rea in his relation of M. Hamilton's plot, written in 1630, All thefe Hamiltons had denuded themselves of their fortunes and eftates. And Charles the First, in his meffage to the parliament,

The

fays, Denude ourselves of all. Clar. Vol. 3. p. 15. Octavo Edit.

WARBURTON.

8 It is the Pafture lards the

Beggar's fides,] This, as the editors have order'd it, is an idle repetition at the beft; fup. pofing it did, indeed, contain the fame fentiment as the foregoing lines. But Shakespear meant a quite different thing: and having, like a fenfible writer, made a fmart obfervation, he illuftrates it by a fimilitude thus:

It is the Pafture lards the Weather's fides,

The Want that makes him lean.

And the fimilitude is extremely beautiful, as conveying this fatírical reflexion; there is no more difference between man and man in the esteem of fuperficial or corrupt judgments, than between a fat sheep and a lean one.

[blocks in formation]
« הקודםהמשך »