Act 4, Scene 2

Athens. A Room in TIMON's House.

[Enter FLAVIUS, with two or three SERVANTS.]
First Servant
1422 Hear you, Master Steward! where's our master?
1423 Are we undone? cast off? nothing remaining?
Flavius
1424 Alack! my fellows, what should I say to you?
1425 Let me be recorded by the righteous gods,
1426 I am as poor as you.
First Servant
1427 Such a house broke!
1428 So noble a master fall'n! All gone! and not
1429 One friend to take his fortune by the arm
1430 And go along with him!
Second Servant
1431 As we do turn our backs
1432 From our companion, thrown into his grave,
1433 So his familiars to his buried fortunes
1434 Slink all away, leave their false vows with him,
1435 Like empty purses pick'd; and his poor self,
1436 A dedicated beggar to the air,
1437 With his disease of all—shunn'd poverty,
1438 Walks, like contempt, alone. More of our fellows.
[Enter other SERVANTS.]
Flavius
1439 All broken implements of a ruin'd house.
Third Servant
1440 Yet do our hearts wear Timon's livery,
1441 That see I by our faces; we are fellows still,
1442 Serving alike in sorrow. Leak'd is our bark,
1443 And we, poor mates, stand on the dying deck,
1444 Hearing the surges threat: we must all part
1445 Into this sea of air.
Flavius
1446 Good fellows all,
1447 The latest of my wealth I'll share amongst you.
1448 Wherever we shall meet, for Timon's sake
1449 Let's yet be fellows; let's shake our heads, and say,
1450 As 'twere a knell unto our master's fortune,
1451 'We have seen better days.' Let each take some;
[Giving them money.]
Flavius
1452 Nay, put out all your hands. Not one word more:
1453 Thus part we rich in sorrow, parting poor.
[They embrace, and part several ways.]
Flavius
1454 O! the fierce wretchedness that glory brings us.
1455 Who would not wish to be from wealth exempt,
1456 Since riches point to misery and contempt?
1457 Who would be so mock'd with glory? or so live,
1458 But in a dream of friendship?
1459 To have his pomp, and all what state compounds
1460 But only painted, like his varnish'd friends?
1461 Poor honest lord! brought low by his own heart,
1462 Undone by goodness. Strange, unusual blood,
1463 When man's worst sin is he does too much good!
1464 Who then dares to be half so kind agen?
1465 For bounty, that makes gods, does still mar men.
1466 My dearest lord, bless'd, to be most accurs'd,
1467 Rich, only to be wretched, thy great fortunes
1468 Are made thy chief afflictions. Alas! kind lord,
1469 He's flung in rage from this ingrateful seat
1470 Of monstrous friends;
1471 Nor has he with him to supply his life,
1472 Or that which can command it.
1473 I'll follow and enquire him out:
1474 I'll ever serve his mind with my best will;
1475 Whilst I have gold, I'll be his steward still.
[Exit.]

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Notes

TLN 1427archaic vocab
“Such a house broke! So noble a master fall'n”
'House broke' means the household has gone bankrupt and disbanded — the entire establishment, with its servants, debts, and social obligations, has collapsed at once. In early modern usage a 'house' was both the building and the institution it contained; when it 'broke,' it dissolved like a failed business. The First Servant's exclamation registers both financial ruin and the dismantling of a whole social world.
TLN 1431rhetorical device
“As we do turn our backs From our companion, thrown into his grave”
The Second Servant builds an extended simile comparing Timon's false friends to mourners at a burial: just as people turn away from a coffin once it is in the ground and walk off, leaving their promises of remembrance behind with the corpse, so Timon's 'familiars' (close friends) have abandoned him the moment his fortune was 'buried.' The simile equates financial ruin with death, and Timon's friends with hollow graveside mourners.
TLN 1442rhetorical device
“Leak'd is our bark, And we, poor mates, stand on the dying deck”
The Third Servant compares Timon's ruined household to a sinking ship: the vessel ('bark') has sprung a leak, the 'mates' (sailors, but also fellow servants) stand on the sinking deck listening to the waves, and they must all 'part / Into this sea of air' — scatter into the open world like a crew abandoning ship. The sea-wreck image turns a financial collapse into a vivid physical disaster.
TLN 1457wordplay
“mock'd with glory? or so live, But in a dream of friendship? To have his pomp, and all what state compounds But only painted”
Flavius uses 'painted' to mean both literally painted (like a portrait or a stage-flat) and falsely varnished over — the same word the text applies to Timon's false friends ('his varnish'd friends' follows immediately). A 'painted' friend is one who looks real but is a surface image with nothing behind it. 'All what state compounds' means everything that high social rank is made of — the pomp, the attendants, the feasts — all of it was only a painted illusion, not substance. The phrase 'dream of friendship' reinforces the idea: Timon's entire social world was a fiction he mistook for reality.
TLN 1462cultural context
“Undone by goodness. Strange, unusual blood, When man's worst sin is he does too much good! Who then dares to be half so kind agen? For bounty, that makes gods, does still mar men.”
Flavius identifies the paradox at the heart of the play: Timon's ruin was caused not by vice but by excess generosity — 'bounty' so great that it is described as godlike, yet it destroyed him as a man. In classical and biblical tradition, the gods were defined by their giving without limit; Timon tried to live that way among humans and was bankrupted. 'Strange, unusual blood' means an extraordinary nature or temperament — 'blood' in this usage means one's innate character or disposition.
classical Timon the misanthrope (Lucian and the man-hater tradition)historical The fall of princes (de casibus tragedy)