name Enter FLAVIUS and tro Senators. Flav. It is in vain that you would speak with Timon ; For he is set so only to himself 120 Bring us to his cave : At all times alike griefs That framed him thus : time, with his fairer hand, Offering the fortunes of his former days, The former man may make him. Bring us to him, And chance it as it may. Flav. Here is his cave. Peace and content be here! Lord Timon ! Timon ! 130 Look out, and speak to friends: the Athenians, By two of their most reverend senate, greet thee : Speak to them, noble Timon. Timon comes from his cave. Tim. Thou sun, that comfort'st, burn ! Speak, and be hang'd : For each true word, a blister ! and each false Be as cauterizing to the root o' the tongue, Consuming it with speaking! First Sen. Worthy Tiinon, Tim. Of none but such as you, and you of Timon. First Sen. The senators of Athens greet thee, Timon. Tim. I thank them ; and would send them back the plague, 140 Could I but catch it for them. First Sen. 0, forget thought They confess render, Together with a recompense more fruitful Than their offence can weigh down by the dram; Ay, even such heaps and sums of love and wealth As shall to thee blot out what wrongs were theirs You witch me in it; Surprise me to the very brink of tears : Lend me a fool's heart and a woman's eyes, And I'll beweep these comforts, worthy senators. 161 First Sen. Therefore, so please thee to re turn with us back Sec. Sen." And shakes his threatening sword Therefore, Timon,- 170 Tim. Well, sir, I will; therefore, I will, sir; thus : If Alcibiades kill my countrymen, Let Alcibiades know this of Timon, That Timon cares not. But if he sack fair Athens, And take our goodly aged men by the beards, Giving our holy virgins to the stain Of contumelions, beastly, mad-brain'd war, Then let him kuow, and tell him Timon speaks it, In pity of our aged and our youth, I cannot choose but tell him, that I care not, And let him take't at worst; for their knives care not, 181 you Stay not, all's in vain. Tim. Why, I was writing of my epitaph ; It will be seen to-morrow: my long sickness Of health aud living now begins to mend, 190 And nothing brings me all things. Go, live still ; We speak in vain. Tim. But yet I love my country, and am not That's well spoke. Tim. Commend me to my loving country inen, First Sen. These words become your lips as they pass thorough them. Sec. Sen. 'And enter in our ears like great triumphers In their applauding gates. Tim. Commend me to them, 200 And tell them that, to ease them of their griefs, Their fears of hostile strokes, their aches, losses, Their pangs of love, with other incident throes That uature's fragile vessel doth sustaiv. In life's uncertain voyage, I will some kind- The enemies' drum is heard, and fearful scourness do them : ing r'll teach them to prevent wild Alcibiades' Doth choke the air with dust: in, and prepare: wrath {again. Ours is the fall, I fear ; our foes the snare. First Sen. I like this well ; he will return [Exeunt. Tim. I have a tree, which grows here in my close, SCENE III. The woods. Timon's cave, and a That mine own use invites me to cut down, rude tomb seen. And shortly must I fell it: tell my friends, 210 Enter a Soldier, seekiny TIMON. Tell Athens, in the sequence of degree From high' to low throughout, that whoso Sold. By all description this should be the please place. To stop affliction, let him take his haste, Who's here ? speak, ho! No answer! What Come hither, ere my tree hath felt the axe, is this ? And hang himself. I pray you, do my greet- Timon is dead, who hath outstretch'd his span: ing: Some beast rear'd this ; there does not live a Flav. Trouble him no further ; thus you man. still shall find him. Dead, sure ; and this his grave. What's on Tim. Come not to me again : but say to this tomb Athens, I cannot read; the character l'll take with wax: Timon hath made his everlasting mansion Our captain Jathi in every figure skill, Upon the beached verge of the salt flood ; An aged interpreter, though young in days : Who once a day with his embossed froth' 220 Before proud Athens he's set down by this, The turbulent surge shall cover: thither come, Whose fall the mark of his ambition is. [Exit. And let my grave-stone be your oracle. Lips, let sour words go by and language end : SCENE IV. Before the walls of Athens. What is amiss plague and infection mend ! Trumpets sound. Enter ALCIBIADES with his Graves only be men's works and death their powers. gain! Sun, hide thy beams! Timon hath done his Alcib. Sound to this coward and lascivious reign. [Retires to his care. town First Sen. His discontents are unremove- Our terrible approach. [-4 parley sounded. ably Enter Senators on the walls. Coupled to nature. Sec. Sen. Our hope in him is dead : let us Till now you have gone on and fill'd the time return, With all licentious measure, making your And strain what other means is left unto us wills (such In our dear peril. 231 The scope of justice : till now myself and First Sen. It requires swift foot. (Exeunt. As slept within the shadow of your power Have wander'd with our traversed arms and SCENE II. Before the walls of Athens. breathed Enter two Senators and a Messenger. Our sufferance vainly : now the time is flush, When crouching marrow in the bearer strong First Sen. Thou hast painfully discover'd : Cries of itself No more :' now breathless are his files wrong 10 As full as thy report ? Mess. I have spoke the least : Shall sit and pant in your great chairs of ease, And pursy insolence shall break his wind Besides, his expedition promises With fear and horrid flight. Present approach. First Sen. Noble and young, Sec. Sen. We stand much hazard, if they When thy first griefs were but a mere conbring not Timon. ceit, Mess. I met a courier, one mine ancient friend; Ere thou hadst power or we had cause of fear, We sent to thee, to give thy rages balm, Whom, thongh in general part we were op To wipe out our ingratitude with loves posed, Above their quantity. tYet our old love made a particular force, Sec. Sen, So did we woo And made us speak like friends: this man was Transformed Timon to our city's love riding From Alcibiades to Timon's cave, By humble message and by promised means : 10 21 With letters of entreaty, which imported We were not all unkind, nor all deserve The common stroke of war. His fellowship i’ the cause against your city, First Sen. These walls of ours In part for his sake moved. First Sen. Here come our brothers. Were not erected by their hands from whom You have received your griefs ; nor are they Enter the Senators from Timon. such Third Sen. No talk of simon, nothing of That these great towers, trophies and schools him expect. should fill 1 69 For private faults in them. Nor are they living Who were the motives that you first went out; Shame that they wanted cunning, in excess Hath broke their hearts. March, noble lord, Into our city with thy banners spread : 30 By decimation, and a tithed deathIf thy revenges hunger for that food Which nature loathes--take thou the des tined tenth, And by the hazard of the spotted die Let die the spotted. Fu'st Sen. All have not offended ; For those that were, it is not square to take On those that are, revenges : crimes, like lands, Are not inherited. Then, dear countryman, Bring in thy ranks, but leave without thy rage : Spare thy Athenian cradle and those kin 40 Which in the bluster of thy wrath must fall With those that have offended: like a shepherd, What thou wilt, Set but thy foot Against our rampired gates, and they shall ope; Throw thy glove, Or any token of thine honor else, 50 That thou wilt use the wars as thy redress And not as our confusion, all thy powers Shall make their harbor in our town, till we Have seal'd thy full desire. Alcib. Then there's my glove; Descend, and open your uncharged ports : Those enemies of Timon's and mine own Whom you yourselves shall set out for re proof Fall and no more : and, to atone your fears With my nore noble meaning, not a man Shall pass his quarter, or offend the stream Of regular justice in your city's bounds, 61 But shall be render'd to your public laws At heaviest answer. Both. "Tis most nobly spoken. Alcib. Descend, and keep your words. [The Senators descend, and open the gates. Enter Soldier. Sold. My noble general, Timon is dead; Entomb'd upon the very hem o' the sea ; And on his grave-stone this insculpture, which With wax I brought away, whose soft im pression Interprets for my poor ignorance. Alcih. [Reads the epitaph] Here lies a wretched corse, of wretched soul bereft: Seek not my name : a plague cousume you wicked caitiffs left! Here lie I, Timon ; who, alive, all living men did hate : Pass by and curse thy fill, but pass and stay not here thy gait.' These well express in thee thy latter spirits : Though thou abhorr'dst in us our haman griefs, Scorn’dst our brain's flow and those our drop lets which From niggard nature fall, yet rich conceit Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for ave On thy low grave, on faults forgiven. Dead Is noble Timon : of whose memory Hereafter more. Bring me into your city, And I will use the olive with my sword, Make war breed peace, make peace stint war, make each Prescribe to other as each other's leech. Let our drums strike, (Exeunt 80 PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE. (WRITTEN ABOUT 1608.) INTRODUCTION. Shakespeare's portion of this play has something of the slightness of a preliminary sketch. The first two Acts are evidently by another writer than Shakespeare, and probably the scenes in Act IV. (Sc. II., V., and VI.), so revolting 10 or moral sense, are also to be assigned away from him. What remains (Acts 111., IV., V., omitting the scenes just mentioned) is the pure and charming romance of Marina, the sea-born chill of Pericles, ber loss, and the recovery of both child and mother by the afflicted Prince. Whether Shakespeare worked upon the foundation of an earlier play, or whether the non-Shakespearean parts of Pericles were additions made to what he had written, cannot be determined with certainty. iu is supposed by some critics that three hands can be distinguished : that of a general reviser who wrote the first two acts and Gower's choruses-possibly the dramatist, George Wilkins; that of a second writer who contributed the offensive scenes of Act IV. ; and thirdly the hand of Shakespeare. Pericles was entered in the Stationers' register in 1608 by the book-seller Blount, and was published with a very ill arranged text the next year ( 1609 ) by another book-seller who hail, it is believed, surreptitiously obtained his copy. It was not inclused among the plays given in the first or second folios, but appeared, with six added plays, in the third folio (1663). The story upon which Pericles was foun.led is that given in Lawrence Twine's Patterne af Painfull Adventures (1607), itself a reprint of an early printed version from the French; given also in Gower's Confessio Amantis, and originally written about the fifth or sixth century of our era, in Greek. Both Twine and Gower appear to have been made use of by the writers of Pericles, and tho debt to Gower is acknowledged by his introduction as the “ presenter” of the play. The drama as a whole is singularly, undramatic. It entirely lacks unity of action, and the prominent figures of the opening scenes quickly drop out of the play: Most of the story is briefly told in rhymed verse by the presenter, Gower, or is set forth in dumb show. But Shakespeare's portion is one and in, divisible. It opens on ship board with a tempest, and in Shakespeare's later play of storm and wreck he has not attempted to rival the earlier treatment of the subject. “No poetry of shipwreck and the sea," a living poet writes," has ever equalled the great scene of Pericles ; no such note of music was crer struck out of the clash and contention of tempestuous elements.".. Cerimon, who is master of the secrets of nature, and who is liberal in his learned charity,” is like a first study of Prospero. In the fifth act Marina, so named from her birth at sea, has grown to the age of fourteen years, and is, as it were, a sister of Miranda and Perdita ( note in each case the significant name). She, like Perdita, is a child lost by her parents, and, like Perdita, we see her flower-liko with her flowers-only these flowers of Marina are not for a merrymaking, but a grave. The melancholy of Pericles is a clear-obscure of sadness, not a gloom of cloudy remorse like that of Leontes. His meeting with his lost Marina is like an anticipation of the scene in which Cymbeline recovers his sons and daughter; but the scene in Pericles is filled with a rarer, keener passion of joy. DRAMATIS PERSONÆ. The Daughter of Antiochus. ANTIOCHUS, king of Antioch. two lords of Tyre. Lords, Knights, Gentlemen, Sailors, Pirates, DIAXA. GOWER, as Chorus. (985) ACT I. Enter GOWER. Before the palace of Antioch. To sing a song that old was sung, From ashes ancient Gower is come ; Assuming man's infirmities, To glad your ear, and please your eyes. It hath been sung at festivals, On ember-eves and holy-ales ; And lords and ladies in their lives Have read it for restoratives : The purchase is to make men glorious ; Et bonum quo antiquius, eo melius. 10 If you, born in these latter times, When wit's more ripe, accept my rhymes. And that to hear an old man sing May to your wishes pleasure bring, I life would wish, and that I might Waste it for you, like taper-light. This Antioch, then, Antiochus the Great Built up, this city, for his chiefest seat : The fairest in all Syria, I tell you what mine authors say : 20 This king unto him took a fere, Who died and left a female heir, So buxom, blithe, and full of face, As heaven had lent her all his grace ; With whom the father liking took, And her to incest did provoke : Bad child ; worse father! to entice his own To evil should be done by none : But custom what they did begin Was with long use account no sin. 30 The beauty of this sinful dame Made many princes thither frame, To seek her as a bed-fellow, In marriage-pleasures play-fellow : Which to prevent he made a law, To keep her still, and men in awe, That whoso ask'd her for his wife, His riddle told not, lost his life : So for her many a wight did die, As yon grim looks do testify. 40 What now ensues, to the judgment of your eye I give, my cause who best can justify. [Exit. SCENE I. Antioch. A room in the palace. Enter AntiOCHUS, PRINCE PERICLES, and followers. Ant. Young prince of Tyre, you have at large received The danger of the task you undertake. Per. I have, Antiochus, and, with a soul Embolden'd with the glory of her praise, Think death no hazard in this enterprise. Ant. Bring in our daughter, clothed like a bride, For the embracements even of Jove himself ; At whose conception, till Lucina 'd Nature this dowry gave, to glad her presence, The senate-house of planets all did sit, 10 To knit in her their best perfections. Music. Enter the Daughter of Antiochus. the spring, Graces her subjects, and her thoughts the king Of every virtue gives renown to inen! Her face the book of praises, where is read Nothing but curious pleasures, as from thence Sorrow were ever razed, and testy wrath Could never be her mild companion. You gods that made me man, and sway in love, Ant. Prince Pericles,- ides, With golden fruit, but dangerous to be touch'd ; For death-like dragons here affright theo hard : Her face, like heaven, enticeth thee to view 30 Her countless glory, which desert must gain ; And which, without desert, because thiveere Presumes to reach, all thy whole heap must die. Yon sometimes famous princes, like thyself, Drawn by report, adventurous by desire, Tell thee, with speechless tongues and sem blance pale, That without covering, save yon field of stars, Here they stand martyrs, slain in Cupid's wars ; And with dead cheeks advise thee to lesist For going on death's net, whom none resist. Per. Antiochus, I thank thee, v ho hath taught 41 My frail mortality to know itself, And by those fearful objects to prepare This body, like to them, to what I must; For death remember'd should be like a mir ror, Who tells us life's but breath, to trust it error. I'll make my will then, and, as sick men do Who know the world, see heaven, but, feeling woe, Gripe not át earthly joys as erst they did ; So I bequeath a happy peace to you And all good men, as every prince should do ; My riches to the earth from whence they came; But my unspotted fire of love to you. [To the daughter of Antiochus, Thus ready for the way of life or death, I wait the sharpest blow, Antiochus. Ant. Scorning advice, read the conclusion then : Which read and not expounded, 'tis decreed, As these before thee thou thyself shalt bleed. Daugh. Of all say'd yet, mayst thou prove prosperous ! Of all say'd yet, I wish thee happiness ! |