To see perform'd the dreaded act, which thou Within. A way there, way for Cæsar! Enter CESAR, and Attendants. Dol. O, sir, you are too sure an augurer; That you did fear, is done. Cæs. Bravest at the last : She levell❜d at our purposes, and, being royal, Dol. Who was last with them? 1 Guard. A simple countryman, that brought her figs; This was his basket. Cas. Poison'd then. 1 Guard. O Cæsar, This Charmian lived but now; she stood, and spake : On her dead mistress; tremblingly she stood, Cæs. O noble weakness! If they had swallow'd poison, 'twould appear In her strong toil of grace. Dol. Here, on her breast, There is a vent of blood, and something blown : 1 Guard. This is an aspick's train; and these fig-leaves Have slime upon them, such as the aspick leaves Upon the caves of Nile. Cas. Most probable, That so she died; for her physician tells me, She hath pursu'd conclusions infinite Of easy ways to die.-Take up her bed; And bear her women from the monument :--- No grave upon the earth shall clip in it [Exeunt. TIMON OF ATHENS.] The story of the Misanthrope is told in almost every collection of the time, and particularly in two books, with which Shakespeare was intimately acquainted; the Palace of Pleasure, and the English Plutarch. Indeed from a passage in an old play, called Jack Drum's Entertainment, I conjecture that he had before made his appearance on the stage. FARMER. The passage in Jack Drum's Entertainment, or Pasquil and Katherine, 1601, is this: "Come, I'll be as sociable as Timon of Athens.” But the allusion is so slight, that it might as well have been borrowed from Plutarch or the novel. Mr. Strutt the engraver, to whom our antiquaries are under no inconsiderable obligations, has in his possession a MS. play on this subject. It appears to have been written, or transcribed, about the year 1600. There is a scene in it resembling Shakespeare's banquet given by Timon to his flatterers. Instead of warm water he sets before them stones painted like artichokes, and afterwards beats them out of the room. He then retires to the woods, attended by his faithful steward, who, (like Kent in King Lear) has disguised himself to continue his services to his master. Timon, in the last act, is followed by his fickle mistress, &c. after he was reported to have discovered a hidden treasure by digging. The piece itself (though it appears to be the work of an academick) is a wretched one. persona dramatis are as follows: The Shakespeare undoubtedly formed this play on the passage in Plutarch's Life of Antony relative to Timon, and not on the twenty-eighth novel of the first volume of Painter's Palace of Pleasure; because he is there merely described as 66 a man-hater, of a strange and beastly nature," without any cause assigned; whereas Plutarch furnished our author with the following hint to work upon : "Antonius forsook the citie, and companie of his friendes,-saying, that he would lead Timon's life, because he had the like wrong offered him, that was offered unto Timon; and for the unthankfulness of those he had done good unto, and whom he tooke to be his friendes, he was angry with all men, and would trust no man.' To the manuscript play mentioned by Mr. Steevens, our author, I have no doubt, was also indebted for some other circumstances. Here he found the faithful steward, the banquet-scene, and the story of Timon's being possessed of great sums of gold which he had dug up in the woods a circumstance which he could not have had from Lucian, there being then no translation of the dialogue that relates to this subject. Spon says, there is a building near Athens, yet remaining, called Timon's Tower. Timon of Athens was written, I imagine, in the year 1610. See An Attempt to ascertain the order of Shakespeare's Plays, Vol. II, MALONE. PERSONS REPRESENTED. TIMON, a noble Athenian. LUCIUS, LUCULLUS, lords, and flatterers of Timon. SEMPRONIUS, VENTIDIUS, one of Timon's false friends. FLAVIUS, steward to Timon. Two Servants of VARRO, and the Servant of ISIDORE; iwe } mistresses to Alcibiades. Other Lords, Senators, Officers, Soldiers, Thieves, and Attendants. SCENE, Athens; and the woods adjoining. * Phrynia, (or as this name should have been written by Shakespeare, Phryne,) was an Athenian courtezan so exquisitely beautiful, that when her judges were proceeding to condemn her for numerous and enormous offences, a sight of her bosom (which, as we learn from Quintilian, had been artfully denuded by her advocate,) disarmed the court of its severity, and secured her life from the sentence of the law. STEEVENS. |