Making the mother, wife and child to see Whereto we are bound? alack, or we must lose The country, our dear nurse, or else thy person, 110 Our comfort in the country. We must find Must, as a foreign recreant, be led : With manacles thorough our streets, or else Triumphantly tread on thy country's ruin, And bear the palm for having bravely shed Thy wife and children's blood. For myself, do ope, The gods look down, and this unnatural scene If not most mortal to him. But, let it come. Were you in my stead, would you have heard What peace you'll make, advise me for my part, I'll not to Rome, I'll back with you; and pray you, A better witness back than words, which we, On like conditions, will have counter-seal'd. Come, enter with us. Ladies, you deserve To have a temple built you all the swords In Italy, and her confederate arms, Could not have made this peace. [Exeunt. 209 SCENE IV. Rome. A public place. Enter MENENIUS and SICINIUS. Men. See you yond coign o' the Capitol, yond corner-stone? Sic. Why, what of that? Men. If it be possible for you to displace it with your little tinger, there is some hope the ladies of Rome, especially his mother, may prevail with him. But I say there is no hope in't our throats are sentenced and stay upon execution. Sie. Is't possible that so short a time can alter the condition of a man! 10 Men. There is differency between a grub and a butterfly; yet your butterfly was a grub. This Marcius is grown from man to dragon : he has wings; he's more than a creeping thing. Sic. He loved his mother dearly. Men. So did he me: and he no more remembers his mother now than an eight-yearold horse. The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes: when he walks, he moves like an engine, and the ground shrinks before his treading he is able to pierce a corslet with his eye; talks like a knell, and his hum is a battery. He sits in his state, as a thing made for Alexander. What he bids be done is finished with his bidding. He wants nothing of a god but eternity and a heaven to throne in. Mark Sic. Yes, mercy, if you report him truly. Men. I paint him in the character. what mercy his mother shall bring from him : there is no more mercy in him than there is milk in a male tiger; that shall our poor city find: and all this is long of you. Sic. The gods be good unto us! Men. No, in such a case the gods will not be good unto us. When we banished him, we respected not them; and, he returning to break our necks, they respect not us. Enter a Messenger. Mess. Sir, if you'ld save your life, fly to your house: The plebeians have got your fellow-tribune And hale him up and down, all swearing, if 40 The Roman ladies bring not comfort home, They'll give him death by inches, I will go meet the ladies. This Volumnia This morning for ten thousand of your throats I'd not have given a doit. Hark, how they [Music still, with shouts. 60 Sic. First, the gods bless you for your tidings; next, joy! Accept my thankfulness. Sec. Mess. Sir, we have all I know it; And my pretext to strike at him admits A good construction. I raised him, and I pawn'd Mine honor for his truth who being so heighten'd, [tery, He water'd his new plants with dews of flat- Auf That I would have spoke of: 29 Being banish'd for't, he came unto my hearth; Presented to my knife his throat : I took him; Made him joint-servant with me; gave him way In all his own desires; nay, let him choose Lords. First Lord. We have. And grieve to hear't. What faults he made before the last, I think Might have found easy fines: but there to end Where he was to begin and give away The benefit of our levies, answering us With our own charge, making a treaty where There was a yielding,-this admits no excuse. Auf. He approaches: you shall hear him. 70 Enter CORIOLANUS, marching with drum and colors; commoners being with him. Cor. Hail, lords! I am return'd your soldier, No more infected with my country's love Do more than counterpoise a full third part The charges of the action. We have made peace With no less honor to the Antiates 80 Than shame to the Romans: and we here deliver, Subscribed by the consuls and patricians, Auf. Read it not, noble lords; But tell the traitor, in the high'st degree Auf. Cor. Ay, traitor, Marcins! Marcius! Auf. Ay, Marcius, Caius Marcius: dost thou think I'll grace thee with that robbery, thy stol'n name Coriolanus in Corioli? 90 You lords and heads o' the state, perfidiously He has betray'd your business, and given 12 Too great for what contains it. Boy! O slave! Pardon me, lords, 'tis the first time that ever 1 was forced to scold. Your judgments, my grave lords, Must give this cur the lie and his own notion Who wears my stripes impress'd upon him; that Must bear my beating to his grave-shall join To thrust the lie unto him. 110 First Lord. Peace, both, and hear me speak. Cor. Cut me to pieces, Volsces; men and lads, Stain all your edges on me. Boy! false hound! If you have writ your annals true, 'tis there, This orb o' the earth. His last offences to us Shall have judicious hearing. Stand, Aufid ius, 130 And trouble not the peace. Sec. Lord. Thou hast done a deed whereat valor will weep. Third Lord. Tread not upon him. Masters all, be quiet; Put up your swords. Auf. My lords, when you shall know-as in this rage, Provoked by him, you cannot-the great dan His own impatience Takes from Aufidius a great part of blame. Let's make the best of it. Auf. My rage is gone; And I am struck with sorrow. Take him up. Help, three o' the chiefest soldiers; I'll be one. Beat thou the drum, that it speak mournfully: Trail your steel pikes. Though in this city he Hath widow'd and unchilded many a one, Which to this hour bewail the injury, Yet he shall have a noble memory. Assist. [Exeunt, bearing the body of Coriolanus. A dead march sounded. TIMON OF ATHENS. (WRITTEN ABOUT 1607-1608.) INTRODUCTION. This play is, beyond reasonable doubt, only in part the work of Shakespeare. Whether Shakespeare worked upon materials furnished by an older play, or whether he left his play a fragment to be completed by another hand, is uncertain: the former supposition is perhaps the correct one, and the older writer may possibly have been George Wilkins. There is a substantial agreement among the best critics as to what portions of the play are Shakespeare's and what are not. The following may be distinguished, with some confidence, as the non-Shakespearian parts: Act I., Sc. I., L. 189 240, 258-273 (or? from entrance of Apemantus to end of scene), II. (certainly); Act II., Sc. II., L. 45-124; all Act III., except Sc. vI., L.98-115; Act IV., Sc. II., L. 30-50, (?) III., L. 292–362, 399– 413, 454-543; Act V. (?) Sc. I., L. i.-59, II., III. There is no external evidence which helps to determine the date at which Shakespeare wrote his part of the play, but it was probably later than Macbeth and earlier than Pericles. The year 1607 is a date which cannot be very far astray. The sources of the play were Paynter's Palace of Pleasure, a passage in Plutarch's Life of Mark Antony, and in particular, a dialogue of Lucian. But if Shakespeare worked upon an older play, it may have been through it that he obtained the materials which appear to come through Lucian. Although only a fragment, Shakespeare's part of Timon is written with the highest dramatic energy. Nothing is more intense than the conception and rendering of Timon's feelings when he turns in hatred from the evil world. The rich Lord Timon has lived in a rose-colored mist of pleasant delusions. The conferring of favors has been with him a mode of kindly self-indulgence, and he has assumed that every one is as liberal-hearted and of as easy generosity as himself. Out of his pleasant dream he wakes to find the baseness, the selfishness, the ingratitude of the world; and he passes violently over from his former lax philanthropy to a fierce hatred of mankind. The practical Alcibiades sets at once about righting the wrongs which he has suffered; but Timon can only rage and then die. His rage implies the elements of a possible nobleness in him; he cannot acclimatize himself, as Alcibiades can, to the harsh and polluted air of the world; yet the rage also proceeds from a weakness of nature. The dog-like Apemantus accepts, well-contented, the evil which Alcibiades would punish, and from which Timon flies: he barks and snarls, but does not really suffer. The play is a painful one, unrelieved by the presence of beauty or human worth. SCENE: Athens, and the neighboring woods. |