The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare (book suggestions TXT) 📖

all my heart, gentlemen both! And how fare you?

FIRST LORD. Ever at the best, hearing well of your lordship.

SECOND LORD. The swallow follows not summer more willing than we your lordship.

TIMON. [Aside] Nor more willingly leaves winter; such summer-birds are men-Gentlemen, our dinner will not recompense this long stay; feast your ears with the music awhile, if they will fare so harshly o’ th’ trumpet’s sound; we shall to’t presently.

FIRST LORD. I hope it remains not unkindly with your lordship that I return’d you an empty messenger.

TIMON. O sir, let it not trouble you.

SECOND LORD. My noble lord—

TIMON. Ah, my good friend, what cheer?

SECOND LORD. My most honourable lord, I am e’en sick of shame that, when your lordship this other day sent to me, I was so unfortunate a beggar.

TIMON. Think not on’t, sir.

SECOND LORD. If you had sent but two hours before-TIMON. Let it not cumber your better remembrance. [The banquet brought in] Come, bring in all together.

SECOND LORD. All cover’d dishes!

FIRST LORD. Royal cheer, I warrant you.

THIRD LORD. Doubt not that, if money and the season can yield it.

FIRST LORD. How do you? What’s the news?

THIRD LORD. Alcibiades is banish’d. Hear you of it?

FIRST AND SECOND LORDS. Alcibiades banish’d!

THIRD LORD. ‘Tis so, be sure of it.

FIRST LORD. How? how?

SECOND LORD. I pray you, upon what?

TIMON. My worthy friends, will you draw near?

THIRD LORD. I’ll tell you more anon. Here’s a noble feast toward.

SECOND LORD. This is the old man still.

THIRD LORD. Will’t hold? Will’t hold?

SECOND LORD. It does; but time will-and so-THIRD LORD. I do conceive.

TIMON. Each man to his stool with that spur as he would to the lip of his mistress; your diet shall be in all places alike. Make not a city feast of it, to let the meat cool ere we can agree upon the first place. Sit, sit. The gods require our thanks: You great benefactors, sprinkle our society with thankfulness.

For your own gifts make yourselves prais’d; but reserve still to give, lest your deities be despised. Lend to each man enough, that one need not lend to another; for were your godheads to borrow of men, men would forsake the gods. Make the meat be beloved more than the man that gives it. Let no assembly of twenty be without a score of villains. If there sit twelve women at the table, let a dozen of them be-as they are. The rest of your foes, O gods, the senators of Athens, together with the common lag of people, what is amiss in them, you gods, make suitable for destruction. For these my present friends, as they are to me nothing, so in nothing bless them, and to nothing are they welcome.

 

Uncover, dogs, and lap. [The dishes are uncovered and seen to he full of warm water]

SOME SPEAK. What does his lordship mean?

SOME OTHER. I know not.

TIMON. May you a better feast never behold, You knot of mouth-friends! Smoke and lukewarm water Is your perfection. This is Timon’s last; Who, stuck and spangled with your flatteries, Washes it off, and sprinkles in your faces [Throwing the water in their faces]

Your reeking villainy. Live loath’d and long, Most smiling, smooth, detested parasites, Courteous destroyers, affable wolves, meek bears, You fools of fortune, trencher friends, time’s flies, Cap and knee slaves, vapours, and minute-lacks!

Of man and beast the infinite malady

Crust you quite o’er! What, dost thou go?

Soft, take thy physic first; thou too, and thou.

Stay, I will lend thee money, borrow none. [Throws the dishes at them, and drives them out]

What, all in motion? Henceforth be no feast Whereat a villain’s not a welcome guest.

Burn house! Sink Athens! Henceforth hated be Of Timon man and all humanity! Exit Re-enter the LORDS

 

FIRST LORD. How now, my lords!

SECOND LORD. Know you the quality of Lord Timon’s fury?

THIRD LORD. Push! Did you see my cap?

FOURTH LORD. I have lost my gown.

FIRST LORD. He’s but a mad lord, and nought but humours sways him.

He gave me a jewel th’ other day, and now he has beat it out of my hat. Did you see my jewel?

THIRD LORD. Did you see my cap?

SECOND LORD. Here ‘tis.

FOURTH LORD. Here lies my gown.

FIRST LORD. Let’s make no stay.

SECOND LORD. Lord Timon’s mad.

THIRD LORD. I feel’t upon my bones.

FOURTH LORD. One day he gives us diamonds, next day stones.

Exeunt

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ACT IV. SCENE I.

Without the walls of Athens

 

Enter TIMON

 

TIMON. Let me look back upon thee. O thou wall That girdles in those wolves, dive in the earth And fence not Athens! Matrons, turn incontinent.

Obedience, fail in children! Slaves and fools, Pluck the grave wrinkled Senate from the bench And minister in their steads. To general filths Convert, o’ th’ instant, green virginity.

Do’t in your parents’ eyes. Bankrupts, hold fast; Rather than render back, out with your knives And cut your trusters’ throats. Bound servants, steal: Large-handed robbers your grave masters are, And pill by law. Maid, to thy master’s bed: Thy mistress is o’ th’ brothel. Son of sixteen, Pluck the lin’d crutch from thy old limping sire, With it beat out his brains. Piety and fear, Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth, Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood, Instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades, Degrees, observances, customs and laws, Decline to your confounding contraries And let confusion live. Plagues incident to men, Your potent and infectious fevers heap On Athens, ripe for stroke. Thou cold sciatica, Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt As lamely as their manners. Lust and liberty, Creep in the minds and marrows of our youth, That ‘gainst the stream of virtue they may strive And drown themselves in riot. Itches, blains, Sow all th’ Athenian bosoms, and their crop Be general leprosy! Breath infect breath, That their society, as their friendship, may Be merely poison! Nothing I’ll bear from thee But nakedness, thou detestable town!

Take thou that too, with multiplying bans.

Timon will to the woods, where he shall find Th’ unkindest beast more kinder than mankind.

The gods confound-hear me, you good gods all-The Athenians both within and out that wall!

And grant, as Timon grows, his hate may grow To the whole race of mankind, high and low!

Amen. Exit

SCENE II.

Athens. TIMON’s house

 

Enter FLAVIUS, with two or three SERVANTS

 

FIRST SERVANT. Hear you, Master Steward, where’s our master?

Are we undone, cast off, nothing remaining?

FLAVIUS. Alack, my fellows, what should I say to you?

Let me be recorded by the righteous gods, I am as poor as you.

FIRST SERVANT. Such a house 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?

SECOND SERVANT. As we do turn our backs From our companion, thrown into his grave, So his familiars to his buried fortunes Slink all away; leave their false vows with him, Like empty purses pick’d; and his poor self, A dedicated beggar to the air,

With his disease of all-shunn’d poverty, Walks, like contempt, alone. More of our fellows.

 

Enter other SERVANTS

 

FLAVIUS. All broken implements of a ruin’d house.

THIRD SERVANT. 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 Into this sea of air.

FLAVIUS. Good fellows all,

The latest of my wealth I’ll share amongst you.

Wherever we shall meet, for Timon’s sake, Let’s yet be fellows; let’s shake our heads and say, As ‘twere a knell unto our master’s fortune, ‘We have seen better days.’ Let each take some.

[Giving them money]

Nay, put out all your hands. Not one word more!

Thus part we rich in sorrow, parting poor.

[Embrace, and part several ways]

O the fierce wretchedness that glory brings us!

Who would not wish to be from wealth exempt, Since riches point to misery and contempt?

Who would be so mock’d with glory, or to live But in a dream of friendship,

To have his pomp, and all what state compounds, But only painted, like his varnish’d friends?

Poor honest lord, brought low by his own heart, Undone by goodness! Strange, unusual blood, When man’s worst sin is he does too much good!

Who then dares to be half so kind again?

For bounty, that makes gods, does still mar men.

My dearest lord-blest to be most accurst, Rich only to be wretched-thy great fortunes Are made thy chief afflictions. Alas, kind lord!

He’s flung in rage from this ingrateful seat Of monstrous friends; nor has he with him to Supply his life, or that which can command it.

I’ll follow and enquire him out.

I’ll ever serve his mind with my best will; Whilst I have gold, I’ll be his steward still. Exit

SCENE III.

The woods near the sea-shore. Before TIMON’S cave Enter TIMON in the woods

 

TIMON. O blessed breeding sun, draw from the earth Rotten humidity; below thy sister’s orb 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.

Raise me this beggar and deny’t that lord: The senator shall bear contempt hereditary, The beggar native honour.

It is the pasture lards the rother’s sides, The want that makes him lean. Who dares, who dares, In purity of manhood stand upright,

And say ‘This man’s a flatterer’? If one be, So are they all; for every grise of fortune Is smooth’d by that below. The learned pate Ducks to the golden fool. All’s oblique; There’s nothing level in our cursed natures But direct villainy. Therefore be abhorr’d All feasts, societies, and throngs of men!

His semblable, yea, himself, Timon disdains.

Destruction fang mankind! Earth, yield me roots.

[Digging]

Who seeks for better of thee, sauce his palate With thy most operant poison. What is here?

Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold? No, gods, I am no idle votarist. Roots, you clear heavens!

Thus much of this will make black white, foul fair, Wrong right, base noble, old young, coward valiant.

Ha, you gods! why this? What, this, you gods? Why, this Will lug your priests and servants from your sides, Pluck stout men’s pillows from below their heads-This yellow slave

Will knit and break religions, bless th’ accurs’d, Make the hoar leprosy ador’d, place thieves And give them title, knee, and approbation, With senators on the bench. This is it That makes the wappen’d widow wed again-She whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores Would cast the gorge at this embalms and spices To th ‘April day again. Come, damn’d earth, Thou common whore of mankind, that puts odds Among the rout of nations, I will make thee Do thy right nature. [March afar off]

Ha! a drum? Th’art quick,

But yet I’ll bury thee. Thou’t go, strong thief, When gouty keepers of thee cannot stand.

Nay, stay thou out for earnest. [Keeping some gold]

 

Enter ALCIBIADES, with drum and fife, in warlike manner; and