Alcib. I am thy friend, and pity thee, dear Timon. Tim. How dost thou pity him, whom thou dost trouble? Alcib. When I have laid proud Athens on a heap, Tim. Warr'st thou 'gainst Athens? Alcib. Ay, Timon, and have cause. Tim. The gods confound them all i'thy conquest; By killing villains, thou wast born to conquer Put up thy gold; Go on,-here's gold,—go on; Will o'er some high-vic'd city hang his poison Herself's a bawd: Let not the virgin's cheek paps, That through the window-bars 19 bore at men's eyes, 17 Warburton justly observes, that this passage is 'wonderfully sublime and picturesque.' The same image occurs in King Richard II.: 19 By window-bars the poet probably means the partlet, gorget, or kerchief, which women put about their neck, and pin down over their paps,' sometimes called a niced, and translated Are not within the leaf of pity writ, But set them down horrible traitors: Spare not the babe, 21; Whose dimpled smiles from fools exhaust their mercy: Not all thy counsel. Tim. Dost thou, or durst thou not, heaven's curse upon thee! Phr. & Timan. Give us some gold, good Timon: Hast thou more? Tim. Enough to make a whore forswear her trade, And to make whores, a bawd 22. Hold up, you sluts, Your aprons mountant: You are not oathable,— Although, I know, you'll swear, terribly swear, Mamillare or fascia pectoralis; and described as made of fine linen: from its semitransparency arose the simile of window bars. This is the best explanation I have to offer. The late Mr. Boswell thought that windows were used to signify a woman's breasts, in a passage he has cited from Weaver's Plantagenet's Tragical Story, but it seems to me doubtful. I can hardly think the passage warrants Johnson's explanation, 'The virgin shows her bosom through the lattice of her chamber.' 20 An allusion to the tale of Edipus. 21 i. e. against objects of charity and compassion. So in Troilus and Cressida, Ulysses says: 'For Hector, in his blaze of wrath, subscribes To tender objects.' 6 22 That is enough to make whores leave whoring, and a bawd leave making whores.' Into strong shudders, and to heavenly agues, And be no turncoats: Yet may your pains, six months, Be quite contrary 24: And thatch your poor thin roofs With burdens of the dead;-some that were hang'd25, No matter:-wear them, betray with them: whore still; Paint till a horse may mire upon your face: pox of wrinkles! A 23 Conditions for dispositions. See vol. iii. p. 15 and 123. 24 The meaning of this passage appears to be as Steevens explains it-Timon had been exhorting them to follow constantly their trade of debauchery, but he interrupts himself and impreerates upon them that for half the year their pains may be quite contrary, that they may suffer such punishment as is usually inflicted upon harlots. He then continues his exhortations.' 25 The fashion of periwigs for women, which Stowe informs us' were brought into England about the time of the massacre of Paris,' seems to have been a fertile source of satire. Stubbes, in his Anatomy of Abuses, says that it was dangerous for any child to wander, as nothing was more common than for women to entice such as had fine locks into private places, and there to cut them off. In A Mad World my Masters, 1608, the custom is decried as unnatural, To wear periwigs made of another's hair, is not this against kind?' So Drayton, in his Mooncalf: And with large sums they stick not to procure Shakspeare has reflected upon the custom in his sixty-eighth 'Before the golden tresses of the dead, The right of sepulchres, were shorn away Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay.' Warner, in his Albion's England, 1602, b. ix. c. xlvii. is likewise very severe on this fashion. Phr.& Timan. Well, more gold;—What then?— Believe't, that we'll do any thing for gold. Tim. Consumptions sow In hollow bones of man; strike their sharp shins, And mar men's spurring. Crack the lawyer's voice, That he may never more false title plead, Nor sound his quillets 26 shrilly: hoarse the flamen 27, And not believes himself: down with the nose, Smells from the general weal 28: make curl'd pate ruffians bald; And let the unscarr'd braggarts of the war Phr. & Timan. More counsel with more money, Tim. More whore, more mischief first; I have given you earnest. 26 Quillets are subtleties, nice and frivolous distinctions. See Hamlet, Act v. Sc. 1. 27 The old copy reads hoar the flamen,' which Steevens suggests may mean, give him the hoary leprosy. I have not scrupled to insert Upton's reading of hoarse into the text, because I think the whole construction of the speech shows that is the word the poet wrote. To afflict him with leprosy would not prevent his scolding, to deprive him of his voice by hoarseness might. 28 To 'foresee his particular' is to provide for his private advantage, for which he leaves the right scent of public good.' 29 To grave is to bury. The word is now obsolete, but was familiar to our old writers. Thus Chapman in his version of the fifteenth Iliad: the throtes of dogs shall grave His manless limbs.' See vol. v. p. 64, note 11. Alcib. Strike up the drum towards Athens. Fare well, Timon; If I thrive well, I'll visit thee again. Tim. If I hope well, I'll never see thee more. Tim. Yes, thou spok'st well of me. Call'st thou that harm? PHRYNIA, and TIMANDRA. Tim. That nature, being sick of man's unkindness, Should yet be hungry!—Common mother, thou, [Digging. Whose womb unmeasurable, and infinite breast 30, Teems, and feeds all; whose self-same mettle, Whereof thy proud child, arrogant man, is puff'd, Engenders the black toad, and adder blue, The gilded newt, and eyeless venom'd worm With all the abhorred births below crisp 32 heaven Whereon Hyperion's quickening fire doth shine; Yield him, who all thy human sons doth hate, 31 30 This image (as Warburton ingeniously supposes) would almost make one imagine that Shakspeare was acquainted with some personifications of nature similar to the ancient statues of Diana Ephesia Multimammia. Hesiod calls the earth Tať Ευρύστερνος. 31 The serpent which we, from the smallness of the eye, call the blind-worm, and the Latins cæcilia. So in Macbeth : Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting.' 32 Perhaps Shakspeare meant curled (which with crisp) from the appearance of the clouds. Ariel talks of sitting on the curl'd clouds.' House of Fame, says: ་ was synonymous In The Tempest Chaucer, in his 'Her heare that was oundie and crips.' i. e. wavy and curled. Again, in The Philosopher's Satires, by Robert Anton: 'Her face as beauteous as the crisped morn.' |