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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.

ΙΟ

[blocks in formation]

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

Have wander'd with our traversed arms and breathed

Our sufferance vainly; now the time is flush,

4. Some beast rear'd this, etc. So Warburton for Ff 'read.' The man - hater must have received these burial honours from his fellows, not from man. It is hardly possible to give a meaning to 'read' which does not involve glaring contradiction in what follows. 'There does not live a man who can [or is fit to] read it.' But the soldier

proceeds to take for granted
that Alcibiades can. For a
similar reason it cannot be
maintained that vv. 3, 4 represent
an inscription on or near the
tomb. The actual inscription
is given v. 4. 70, and the soldier
'cannot read.'

7. figure, handwriting.
8. flush, full, complete.

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.

Noble and young,

First Sen.
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.

Sec. Sen.

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 Sen.

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.

Sec. Sen.

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.

ΤΟ

20

30

First Sen.

All have not offended;

14. conceit, fancy.

28. Shame that they wanted

extreme

cunning, in excess,
shame that they lacked wisdom.

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.

Sec. Sen.

What thou wilt,

Thou rather shalt enforce it with thy smile

Than hew to 't with thy sword.

First Sen.

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.

Sec. Sen.

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.

Alcib.
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. Alcib. Descend, and keep your words.

[The Senators descend, and open the gates.

36. square, right.

50

60

47. rampired, fortified with ramparts.

Enter Soldier.

Sold. 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.

Alcib. [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.

70-73. The first two lines are a rendering of Timon's own epitaph; the last two were ascribed generally to the poet Callimachus. Lines 71-72 are contradictions. Both epitaphs,

[Exeunt.

70

80

however, occur in close succession in the Plutarchian narrative, whence they were doubtless copied by the author without reflection.

VENUS AND ADONIS

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