C But yet I'll bury thee : Thou'lt go, strong thief*, [Keeping some gold. Enter ALCIBIADES, with Drum and Fife, in war like manner; Phrynia and TIMANDRA. Alcib. What art thou there? Speak. Tim. A beast, as thou art. The canker gnaw thy heart, For showing me again the eyes of man! I To the APRIL day again.] That is, to the wedding day, called by the poet, satirically, April day, or fool's day. JOHNSON. The April day does not relate to the widow, but to the other diseased female, who is represented as the outcast of an hospital. She it is whom gold embalms and spices to the April day again : i. e. gold restores her to all the freshness and sweetness of youth. Such is the power of gold, that it will make black, white; foul, fair; “ Wrong, right;" &c. A quotation or two may perhaps support this interpretation. So, in Sidney's Arcadia, p. 262, edit. 1633 : “Do you see how the spring time is full of flowers, decking itself with them, and not aspiring to the fruits of autumn? What lesson is that unto you, but that in the April of your age you should be like April.” Again, in Stephens's Apology for Herodotus, 1607 : “ He is a young man, and in the April of his age.” Peacham's Compleat Gentleman, chap. iii. calls youth “the April of man's life.” Shakspeare's Sonnet entitled Love's Cruelty, has the same thought : “ Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee “ Calls back the lovely April of her prime.” Daniel's 31st Sonnet has, 66 the April of my years.” Master Fenton “smells April and May.” TOLLET. 2 Do thy right nature.] Lie in the earth where nature laid thee. Johnson. 3 - Thou'rt quick,] Thou hast life and motion in thee. Johnson. 4 - strong thief,] Thus, Chaucer, in the Pardonere's Tale : “ Men wolden say that we were theeves strong." STEEVENS. ALCIB. What is thy name ? Is man so hateful to thee, Tim. I am misanthropos', and hate mankind. I know thee well; know thee, I not desire to know. Follow thy drum; With man's blood paint the ground, gules, gules : Religious canons, civil laws are cruel; Then what should war be? This fell whore of thine Hath in her more destruction than thy sword, For all her cherubin look. PHRY. Thy lips rot off! . s I am misanthropos,] A marginal note in the old translation of Plutarch’s Life of Antony, furnished our author with this epithet: “ Antonius followeth the life and example of Timon Misanthropus, the Athenian." Malone. 6 - gules, gules :] Might we not repair the defective metre of this line, by adopting a Shakspearian epithet, and reading gules, total gules ; " as in the following passage in Hamlet : “ Now is he total gules.” Steevens. 7 I will not kiss thee;] This alludes to an opinion in former times, generally prevalent, that the venereal infection transmitted to another, left the infecter free. I will not, says Timon, take the rot from thy lips, by kissing thee. Johnson. Thus, The Humourous Lieutenant says : “ He has some wench, or such a toy, to kiss over, “ To draw this foolish pain down." 2 B Tim. As the moon does, by wanting light to give : Noble Timon, None, but to What is it, Timon ? Tim. Promise me friendship, but perform none: if thou wilt not promise, the gods plague thee, for thou art a man! if thou dost perform, confound thee, for thou art a man! ALCIB. I have heard in some sort of thy miseries. . Tim. Thou saw'st them, when I had pros perity. ALCIB. I see them now; then was a blessed time! Tim. As thine is now, held with a brace of har lots. Timan. Is this the Athenian minion, whom the world Art thou Timandra ? use thee; 8 IL Thou wilt not promise, &c.] That is, however thou may'st act, since thou art a man, hated man, I wish thee evil. JOHNSON. Then was a blessed time.] I suspect, from Timon's answer, that'Shakspeare wrote thine was a blessed time. Malone. I apprehend no corruption. Now, and then, were designedly. opposed to each other. STEEVENS. 9 Fot tubs, and baths'; bring down rose-ehčeked youth To the tub-fast, and the diet '. a 66 2 3 * Be a whore still ! they love thee not, that use thee; Give them diseases, leaving with thee their lust. Make use of thy salt hours : &c.] There is here a slight transposition. I would read : they love thee not that use thee. bring down Rose-CHEEKED youth -] This expressive epithet our author might have found in Marlowe's Hero and Leander : “Rose-cheek'd Adonis kept a solemn feast." Malone. - To the TUB-fast, and the diet.] [Old copy-füb-fast.] One might make a very long and vain search, yet not be able to meet with this preposterous word fub-fast, which has notwithstanding passed current with all the editors. We should read tub-fast. The author is alluding to the lues venerea and its effects. At that time the cure of it was performed either by guaiacum, or mercurial unctions: and in both cases the patient was kept up. very warm and close; that in the first application the sweat might be promoted ; and lest, in the other, he should take cold, which was fatal. “The regimen for the course of guaiacum (says Dr. Friend, in his History of Physick, vol. ii. p. 380,) was at first strangely circumstantial ; and so rigorous, that the patient was put into a dungeon in order to make him sweat; and in that manner, as Fallopius expresses it, the bones, and the very man himself was macerated.” Wiseman says, in England they used a tub for this purpose, as abroad, a cave, or oven, or dungeon. And as for the unction, it was sometimes continued for thirty-seven days, (as he observes, p. 375,) and during this time there was necessarily an extraordinary abstinence required. Hence the term of the tub-fast. WARBURTON. So, in Jasper Maine's City Match, 1639 : « You had better match a ruin'd bawd, “One ten times cur'd by sweating, and the tub." Again, in The Family of Love, 1608, a doctor says : O for one of the hoops of my Cornelius' tub, 1 shall burst myself with laughing else. Again, in Monsieur D'Olive, 1606 : bassage is into France, there may be employnient for thee: Hast thou a tub? The diet was likewise a customary term for the regimen pre « Our em Timan. Hang thee, monster! ALCIB. Pardon him, sweet Timandra ; for his wits Are drown'd and lost in his calamities.I have but little gold of late, brave Timon, The want whereof doth daily make revolt In my penurious band : I have heard, and griev'd, How cursed Athens, mindless of thy worth, Forgetting thy great deeds, when neighbour states, scribed in these cases. So, in Springes to Catch Woodcocks, a collection of Epigrams, 1606 : “ Priscus gave out, &c. “ Priscus had tane the diet all the while.” Again, in another collection of ancient Epigrams called The Mastive, &c. “ She took not diet nor the sweat in season." Thus also, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle : whom I in diet keep “ And in a tub that's heated smoaking hot,” &c. Again, in the same play: caught us, and put us in a tub, STEEVENS. The preceding lines, and a passage in Measure for Measure, fully support the emendation : Truly, sir, she [the bawd] hath eaten up all her beef, and she is herself in the tub." Malone. In the Latin comedy of Cornelianum Dolium, which was probably written by T. Randolph, there is a frontispiece representing the sweating-tub. Some account of the sweating-tub with a eut of it may be seen in Ambrose Paræus's Works, by Johnson, p. 48. Another very particular representation of it may be likewise found in the Recueil de Proverbes par Jacques Lagniet, with the following lines : Pour un petit plaisir je soufre mille maux ; Je ne croy jamais voir la fin de mes travaux. Douce. a |
