3 Lord. Pish! did you see my cap? 4 Lord. I have lost my gown. 3 Lord. He's but a mad lord, and nought but humour sways him. He gave me a jewel the other day, and now he has beat it out of my hat:-Did you see my jewel? 4 Lord. Did you see my cap? 2 Lord. Here 'tis. 4 Lord. Here lies my gown. 1 Lord. Let's make no stay. 2 Lord. Lord Timon's mad. 3 Lord. I feel't upon my bones. 4 Lord. One day he gives us diamonds, next day stones. [Exeunt. ACT IV. SCENE I. Without the Walls of Athens. Enter TIMON. Tim. Let me look back upon thee, O thou wall, Do't in your parents' eyes! bankrupts, hold fast; general filths-] i. e. common sewers. Thy mistress is o'the brothel! son of sixteen, On Athens, ripe for stroke! thou cold sciatica, Take thou that too, with multiplying banns!" confounding contraries,] i. e. contrarieties whose nature it is to waste or destroy each other. fusion. 7 8 yet confusion] Sir Thomas Hanmer reads, let con Multi liberty- Liberty is here used for libertinism multiplying banns!] i. e. accumulated curses. plying for multiplied: the active participle with a passive signifi cation. SCENE II. Athens. A Room in Timon's House. Enter FLAVIUS, with Two or Three Servants. 1 Serv. Hear you, master steward, where's our master? Are we undone? cast off? nothing remaining? I am as poor as you.. 1 Serv. Such a house broke! So noble a master fallen! All gone! and not One friend, to take his fortune by the arm, go along with him! And 2 Serv. As we do turn our backs From our companion, thrown into his So his familiars to his buried fortunes grave; Slink all away; leave their false vows with him, With his disease of all-shunn'd poverty, Enter other Servants. Flav. All broken implements of a ruin'd house. 3 Serv. Yet do our hearts wear Timon's livery. That see I by our faces; we are fellows still, Serving alike in sorrow: Leak'd is our bark; And we, poor mates, stand on the dying deck, Hearing the surges threat: we must all part Enter Flavius,] Nothing contributes more to the exaltation of Timon's character than the zeal and fidelity of his servants. Nothing but real virtue can be honoured by domesticks; nothing but impartial kindness can gain affection from dependants. Into this sea of air. Flav. Good fellows all, The latest of my wealth I'll share amongst you. Let's yet be fellows; let's shake our heads, and say, master's fortunes, Nay, put out all your hands. Exeunt Servants. O, the fierce wretchedness' that glory brings us! To have his pomp, and all what state compounds, I'll serve his mind with my best will; Whilst I have gold, I'll be his steward still. [Exit. 'O, the fierce wretchedness-] Fierce is here used for hasty, precipitate. Strange, unusual blood,] Strange, unusual blood, may mean, strange, unusual disposition. SCENE III. The Woods. Enter TIMON. Tim. O blessed breeding sun, draw from the earth Rotten humidity; below thy sister's orb3 Infect the air! Twinn'd brothers of one womb,Whose procreation, residence, and birth, Scarce is dividant,-touch them with several fortunes; The greater scorns the lesser: Not nature, To whom all sores lay siege, can bear great fortune, But by contempt of nature. 4 Raise me this beggar, and denude that lord; It is the pasture lards the brother's sides, The want that makes him lean. Who dares, who dares, In purity of manhood stand upright, 5 And say, This man's a flatterer? if one be, 3 below thy sister's orb—] That is, the moon's, this sub lunary world. Not nature, To whom all sores lay siege, can bear great fortune, But by contempt of nature,] Mr. M. Mason observes, that this passage "but by the addition of a single letter may be rendered clearly intelligible; by merely reading natures instead of nature." The meaning will then be-" Not even beings reduced to the utmost extremity of wretchedness, can bear good fortune, without contemning their fellow-creatures." 5 for every grize of fortune-] Grize for step or degree. |