TIMON OF ATHENS.
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TIMON OF ATHENS always appeared to us to
be written with as intense a feeling of his subject
as any one play of Shakespear. It is one
of the few in which he seems to be in earnest
throughout, never to bide nor go out of his way.
He does not relax in his efforts, nor lose sight
of the unity of his design. It is the only play
of our author in which spleen is the predominant
feeling of the mind. It is as much a satire
as a play: and contains some of the finest
pieces of invective possible to be conceived,
both in the snarling, captious answers of the
cynic Apemantus, and in the impassioned and
more terrible imprecations of Timon. The
latter remind the classical reader of the force
and swelling impetuosity of the moral declamations
in Juvenal, while the former have all
the keenness and caustic severity of the old
Stoic philosophers. The soul of Diogenes appears
to have been seated on the lips of Apemantus.
The churlish profession of misanthropy
in the cynic is contrasted with the profound
feeling of it in Timon, and also with the soldier-like
and determined resentment of Alcibiades
against his countrymen, who have banished him,
though this forms only an incidental episode in
the tragedy.
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The fable consists of a single event;--of the
transition from the highest pomp and profusion
of artificial refinement to the most abject state
of savage life, and privation of all social intercourse.
The change is as rapid as it is complete;
nor is the description of the rich and
generous Timon, banquetting in gilded palaces,
pampered by every luxury, prodigal of his hospitality,
courted by crowds of flatterers, poets,
painters, lords, ladies, who--
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"Follow his strides, his lobbies fill with tendance,
Rain sacrificial whisperings in his ear;
And through him drink the flee air"--
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more striking than that of the saddled falling off
of his friends and fortune, and his naked exposure
in a wild forest digging roots from the
earth for his sustenance, with a lofty spirit of
self-denial, and bitter scorn of the world, which
raise him higher in our esteem than the dazzling
gloss of prosperity could do. He grudges
himself the means of life, and is only busy in
preparing his grave. How forcibly is the difference
between what he was, and what he is
described in Apemantus's taunting questions,
when he comes to reproach him with the change
in his way of life!
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----"What, thickest thou,
That the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain,
Will put thy shirt on warm? will these moist trees
That have out-liv'd the eagle, page thy heels,
And skip when thou point'st out? will the cold brook,
Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste
To cure thy o'er-night's surfeit? Call the creatures,
Whose naked natures live in all the spight
Of wreakful heav'n, whose bare unhoused trunks,
To the conflicting elements expos'd,
Answer mere nature, bid them flatter thee."
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The manners are every where preserved with
distinct truth. The poet and painter are very
skilfully played off against one another, both
affecting great attention to the other, and each
taken up with his own vanity, and the superiority
of his own art. Shakespear has put into
the mouth of the former a very lively description
of the genius of poetry and of his own in
particular.
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----"A thing slips idly from me.
Our poesy is as a gum, which issues
From whence 'tis nourish'd. The fire i' th' flint
Shews not till it be struck: our gentle flame
Provokes itself--and like the current flies
Each bound it chafes."
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The hollow friendship and shuffling evasions
of the Athenian lords, their smooth professions
and pitiful ingratitude, are very satisfactorily exposed,
as well as the different disguises to which
the meanness of self-love resorts in such cases
to hide a want of generosity and good faith. The
lurking selfishness of Apemantus does not pass
undetected amidst the grossness of his sarcasms
and his contempt for the pretensions of others.
Even the two courtesans who accompany Alcibiades
to the cave of Timon are very characteristically
sketched; and the thieves who come to
visit him are also "true men" in their way.--An
exception to this general picture of selfish
depravity is found in the old and honest steward
Flavius, to whom Timon pays a full tribute of
tenderness. Shakespear was unwilling to draw
a picture "all over ugly with hypocrisy." He
owed this character to the good-natured solicitations
of his Muse. His mind was well said
by Ben Jonson to be the "sphere of humanity."
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The moral sententiousness of this play equals
that of Lord Bacon's Treatise on the Wisdom
of the Ancients, and is indeed seasoned with
greater variety. Every topic of contempt or
indignation is here exhausted; but while the
sordid licentiousness of Apemantus, which turns
every thing to gall and bitterness, shews only
the natural virulence of his temper and antipathy
to good or evil alike. Timon does not utter
an imprecation without betraying the extravagant
workings of disappointed passion, of love
altered to hate. Apemantus sees nothing good
in any object, and exaggerates whatever is disgusting:
Timon is tormented with the perpetual
contrast between things and appearances,
between the fresh, tempting outside and the
rottenness within, and invokes mischiefs on the
heads of mankind proportioned to the sense of
his wrongs and of their treacheries. He impatiently
cries out, when he finds the gold,
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"This yellow slave
Will knit and break religions; bless the accursed;
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
Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices
To th' April day again."
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One of his most dreadful imprecations is
that which occurs immediately on his leaving
Athens.
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"Let me look back upon thee, O thou wall,
That girdlest 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 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,
And with it beat his brains out! Fear and piety,
Religion to the Gods, peace, justice, truth,
Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood,
Instructions, 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!"
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Timon is here just as ideal in his passion for
ill as he had before been in his belief of good.
Apemantus was satisfied with the mischief existing
in the world, and with his own ill-nature.
One of the most decisive intimations of
Timon's morbid jealousy of appearances is in
his answer to Apemantus, who asks him,
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"What things in the world can'st thou nearest compare with thy
flatterers?
Timon. Women nearest: but men, men are the things themselves."
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Apemantus, it is said, "loved few things better
than to abhor himself." This is not the case
with Timon, who neither loves to abhor himself
nor others. All his vehement misanthropy is
forced, up-hill work. From the slippery turns of
fortune, from the turmoils of passion and adversity,
he wishes to sink into the quiet of the grave.
On that subject his thoughts are intent, on that
he finds time and place to grow romantic. He
digs his own grave by the sea-shore; contrives his
funeral ceremonies amidst the pomp of desolation,
and builds his mausoleum of the elements.
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"Come not to me again; but say to Athens,
Timon hath made his everlasting mansion
Upon the beached verge of the salt flood;
Which once a-day with his embossed froth
The turbulent surge shall cover.--Thither come,
And let my grave-stone be your oracle."
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And again, Alcibiades, after reading his epitaph,
says of him,
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"These well express in thee thy latter spirits:
Though thou abhorred'st in us our human griefs,
Scorn'd'st 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"--
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thus making the winds his funeral dirge, his
mourner the murmuring ocean; and seeking in
the everlasting solemnities of nature oblivion of
the transitory splendour of his life-time.
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