Act 5, Scene 1

The woods. Before TIMON's Cave.

[Enter POET and PAINTER.]
Painter
2038 As I took note of the place, it cannot be far where he
2039 abides.
Poet
2040 What's to be thought of him? Does the rumour hold for true that
2041 he is so full of gold?
Painter
2042 Certain. Alcibiades reports it; Phrynia and Timandra had
2043 gold of him: he likewise enriched poor straggling soldiers with
2044 great quantity. 'Tis said he gave unto his steward a mighty sum.
Poet
2045 Then this breaking of his has been but a try for his friends?
Painter
2046 Nothing else. You shall see him a palm in Athens again,
2047 and flourish with the highest. Therefore 'tis not amiss we tender
2048 our loves to him in this supposed distress of his; it will show
2049 honestly in us, and is very likely to load our purposes with what
2050 they travail for, if it be just and true report that goes of his
2051 having.
Poet
2052 What have you now to present unto him?
Painter
2053 Nothing at this time but my visitation; only, I will
2054 promise him an excellent piece.
Poet
2055 I must serve him so too, tell him of an intent that's coming
2056 toward him.
Painter
2057 Good as the best. Promising is the very air o' the time;
2058 it opens the eyes of expectation. Performance is ever the duller
2059 for his act, and, but in the plainer and simpler kind of people,
2060 the deed of saying is quite out of use. To promise is most
2061 courtly and fashionable; performance is a kind of will or
2062 testament which argues a great sickness in his judgment that
2063 makes it.
[Enter TIMON from his cave.]
[Aside.]
Timon
2064 Excellent workman! Thou canst not paint a man so bad
2065 as is thyself.
Poet
2066 I am thinking what I shall say I have provided for him. It
2067 must be a personating of himself; a satire against the softness
2068 of prosperity, with a discovery of the infinite flatteries that
2069 follow youth and opulency.
[Aside.]
Timon
2070 Must thou needs stand for a villain in thine own
2071 work? Wilt thou whip thine own faults in other men? Do so, I have
2072 gold for thee.
Poet
2073 Nay, let's seek him;
2074 Then do we sin against our own estate
2075 When we may profit meet, and come too late.
Painter
2076 True;
2077 When the day serves, before black—corner'd night,
2078 Find what thou want'st by free and offer'd light.
2079 Come.
[Aside.]
Timon
2080 I'll meet you at the turn. What a god's gold,
2081 That he is worshipp'd in a baser temple
2082 Than where swine feed!
2083 'Tis thou that rigg'st the bark and plough'st the foam,
2084 Settlest admired reverence in a slave.
2085 To thee be worship! and thy saints for aye
2086 Be crown'd with plagues, that thee alone obey!
2087 Fit I meet them.
[Advancing from his cave.]
Poet
2088 Hail, worthy Timon!
Painter
2089 Our late noble master!
Timon
2090 Have I once liv'd to see two honest men?
Poet
2091 Sir,
2092 Having often of your open bounty tasted,
2093 Hearing you were retir'd, your friends fall'n off,
2094 Whose thankless natures—O abhorred spirits!
2095 Not all the whips of heaven are large enough—
2096 What! to you,
2097 Whose star-like nobleness gave life and influence
2098 To their whole being! I am rapt, and cannot cover
2099 The monstrous bulk of this ingratitude
2100 With any size of words.
Timon
2101 Let it go naked: men may see't the better.
2102 You, that are honest, by being what you are,
2103 Make them best seen and known.
Painter
2104 He and myself
2105 Have travail'd in the great shower of your gifts,
2106 And sweetly felt it.
Timon
2107 Ay, you are honest men.
Painter
2108 We are hither come to offer you our service.
Timon
2109 Most honest men! Why, how shall I requite you?
2110 Can you eat roots, and drink cold water? No?
Both
2111 What we can do, we'll do, to do you service.
Timon
2112 Ye're honest men! Ye've heard that I have gold;
2113 I am sure you have. Speak truth; ye're honest men.
Painter
2114 So it is said, my noble lord; but therefore
2115 Came not my friend nor I.
Timon
2116 Good honest men! Thou draw'st a counterfeit
2117 Best in all Athens. Thou'rt, indeed, the best;
2118 Thou counterfeit'st most lively.
Painter
2119 So, so, my lord.
Timon
2120 E'en so, sir, as I say.
[To the POET.]
Timon
2121 And for thy fiction,
2122 Why, thy verse swells with stuff so fine and smooth
2123 That thou art even natural in thine art.
2124 But for all this, my honest-natur'd friends,
2125 I must needs say you have a little fault.
2126 Marry, 'tis not monstrous in you; neither wish I
2127 You take much pains to mend.
Both
2128 Beseech your honour
2129 To make it known to us.
Timon
2130 You'll take it ill.
Both
2131 Most thankfully, my lord.
Timon
2132 Will you indeed?
Both
2133 Doubt it not, worthy lord.
Timon
2134 There's never a one of you but trusts a knave
2135 That mightily deceives you.
Both
2136 Do we, my lord?
Timon
2137 Ay, and you hear him cog, see him dissemble,
2138 Know his gross patchery, love him, feed him,
2139 Keep in your bosom; yet remain assur'd
2140 That he's a made-up villain.
Painter
2141 I know not such, my lord.
Poet
2142 Nor I.
Timon
2143 Look you, I love you well; I'll give you gold,
2144 Rid me these villains from your companies.
2145 Hang them or stab them, drown them in a draught,
2146 Confound them by some course, and come to me,
2147 I'll give you gold enough.
Both
2148 Name them, my lord; let's know them.
Timon
2149 You that way, and you this, but two in company;
2150 Each man apart, all single and alone,
2151 Yet an arch-villain keeps him company.
[To the PAINTER.]
Timon
2152 If, where thou art, two villians shall not be,
2153 Come not near him.
[To the POET.]
Timon
2154 If thou wouldst not reside
2155 But where one villain is, then him abandon.
2156 Hence! pack! there's gold; you came for gold, ye slaves.
[To the PAINTER.]
Timon
2157 You have work for me; there's payment; hence!
[To the POET.]
Timon
2158 You are an alchemist; make gold of that.
2159 Out, rascal dogs!
[Beats them out and then returns to his cave.]
[Enter FLAVIUS and two SENATORS.]
Flavius
2160 It is vain that you would speak with Timon;
2161 For he is set so only to himself
2162 That nothing but himself, which looks like man,
2163 Is friendly with him.
First Senator
2164 Bring us to his cave.
2165 It is our part and promise to the Athenians
2166 To speak with Timon.
Second Senator
2167 At all times alike
2168 Men are not still the same; 'twas time and griefs
2169 That fram'd him thus. Time, with his fairer hand,
2170 Offering the fortunes of his former days,
2171 The former man may make him. Bring us to him,
2172 And chance it as it may.
Flavius
2173 Here is his cave.
2174 Peace and content be here! Lord Timon! Timon!
2175 Look out, and speak to friends. The Athenians
2176 By two of their most reverend Senate greet thee.
2177 Speak to them, noble Timon.
[Enter TIMON from his cave.]
Timon
2178 Thou sun that comfort'st, burn! Speak and be hang'd!
2179 For each true word, a blister! and each false
2180 Be as a cauterizing to the root o' the tongue,
2181 Consuming it with speaking!
First Senator
2182 Worthy Timon,—
Timon
2183 Of none but such as you, and you of Timon.
First Senator
2184 The senators of Athens greet thee, Timon.
Timon
2185 I thank them; and would send them back the plague,
2186 Could I but catch it for them.
First Senator
2187 O! forget
2188 What we are sorry for ourselves in thee.
2189 The senators with one consent of love
2190 Entreat thee back to Athens, who have thought
2191 On special dignities, which vacant lie
2192 For thy best use and wearing.
Second Senator
2193 They confess
2194 Toward thee forgetfulness too general, gross;
2195 Which now the public body, which doth seldom
2196 Play the recanter, feeling in itself
2197 A lack of Timon's aid, hath sense withal
2198 Of it own fail, restraining aid to Timon,
2199 And send forth us to make their sorrow'd render,
2200 Together with a recompense more fruitful
2201 Than their offence can weigh down by the dram;
2202 Ay, even such heaps and sums of love and wealth
2203 As shall to thee blot out what wrongs were theirs,
2204 And write in thee the figures of their love,
2205 Ever to read them thine.
Timon
2206 You witch me in it;
2207 Surprise me to the very brink of tears.
2208 Lend me a fool's heart and a woman's eyes,
2209 And I'll beweep these comforts, worthy senators.
First Senator
2210 Therefore so please thee to return with us,
2211 And of our Athens—thine and ours—to take
2212 The captainship, thou shalt be met with thanks,
2213 Allow'd with absolute power, and thy good name
2214 Live with authority. So soon we shall drive back
2215 Of Alcibiades the approaches wild,
2216 Who, like a boar too savage, doth root up
2217 His country's peace.
Second Senator
2218 And shakes his threat'ning sword
2219 Against the walls of Athens.
First Senator
2220 Therefore, Timon,—
Timon
2221 Well, sir, I will. Therefore I will, sir, thus:
2222 If Alcibiades kill my countrymen,
2223 Let Alcibiades know this of Timon,
2224 That Timon cares not. But if he sack fair Athens,
2225 And take our goodly aged men by the beards,
2226 Giving our holy virgins to the stain
2227 Of contumelious, beastly, mad-brain'd war,
2228 Then let him know, and tell him Timon speaks it,
2229 In pity of our aged and our youth
2230 I cannot choose but tell him that I care not,
2231 And let him take't at worst; for their knives care not
2232 While you have throats to answer. For myself,
2233 There's not a whittle in the unruly camp
2234 But I do prize it at my love before
2235 The reverend'st throat in Athens. So I leave you
2236 To the protection of the prosperous gods,
2237 As thieves to keepers.
Flavius
2238 Stay not, all's in vain.
Timon
2239 Why, I was writing of my epitaph;
2240 It will be seen to-morrow. My long sickness
2241 Of health and living now begins to mend,
2242 And nothing brings me all things. Go, live still;
2243 Be Alcibiades your plague, you his,
2244 And last so long enough!
First Senator
2245 We speak in vain.
Timon
2246 But yet I love my country, and am not
2247 One that rejoices in the common wrack,
2248 As common bruit doth put it.
First Senator
2249 That's well spoke.
Timon
2250 Commend me to my loving countrymen,—
First Senator
2251 These words become your lips as they pass through
2252 them.
Second Senator
2253 And enter in our ears like great triumphers
2254 In their applauding gates.
Timon
2255 Commend me to them,
2256 And tell them that, to ease them of their griefs,
2257 Their fears of hostile strokes, their aches, losses,
2258 Their pangs of love, with other incident throes
2259 That nature's fragile vessel doth sustain
2260 In life's uncertain voyage, I will some kindness do them:
2261 I'll teach them to prevent wild Alcibiades' wrath.
First Senator
2262 I like this well; he will return again.
Timon
2263 I have a tree, which grows here in my close,
2264 That mine own use invites me to cut down,
2265 And shortly must I fell it. Tell my friends,
2266 Tell Athens, in the sequence of degree
2267 From high to low throughout, that whoso please
2268 To stop affliction, let him take his haste,
2269 Come hither, ere my tree hath felt the axe,
2270 And hang himself. I pray you do my greeting.
Flavius
2271 Trouble him no further; thus you still shall find him.
Timon
2272 Come not to me again; but say to Athens
2273 Timon hath made his everlasting mansion
2274 Upon the beached verge of the salt flood,
2275 Who once a day with his embossed froth
2276 The turbulent surge shall cover. Thither come,
2277 And let my gravestone be your oracle.
2278 Lips, let sour words go by and language end:
2279 What is amiss, plague and infection mend!
2280 Graves only be men's works and death their gain!
2281 Sun, hide thy beams! Timon hath done his reign.
[Exit TIMON into his cave.]
First Senator
2282 His discontents are unremovably
2283 Coupled to nature.
Second Senator
2284 Our hope in him is dead. Let us return
2285 And strain what other means is left unto us
2286 In our dear peril.
First Senator
2287 It requires swift foot.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 2045archaic vocab
“this breaking of his has been but a try”
'Breaking' means bankruptcy — the public collapse of credit when a debtor could not pay his debts. The Poet speculates that Timon's ruin was deliberate, a test of which friends would stand by him.
TLN 2046classical allusion
“see him a palm in Athens again, and flourish”
The palm tree was the classical symbol of victory and triumph; to be 'a palm' means to stand conspicuous and honored, towering above all rivals. The Painter pictures Timon restored to his old eminence.
TLN 2057rhetorical device
“Promising is the very air o' the time”
The Painter delivers a miniature satiric essay: promising has replaced performing as the currency of social life. Performance (actually doing what you said) is 'ever the duller for his act' — it is flat and anticlimactic next to the bright hope of a promise. Only simple, unglamorous people still bother to keep their word; in polite society a promise is treated like a will or testament, a sign you are so near death you had better settle your affairs.
TLN 2064wordplay
“Thou canst not paint a man so bad as is thyself”
Timon plays on the Painter's trade: no matter how wicked a subject the Painter depicts in his art, the man doing the painting is worse. 'Paint' also carried the secondary sense of 'disguise with cosmetics' — to cover over one's true, ugly nature. Both meanings apply: the Painter cannot represent villainy because he embodies it.
TLN 2080rhetorical device
“What a god's gold, That he is worshipp'd in a baser temple Than where swine feed”
Timon frames gold as a pagan god who accepts worship in any sty, no matter how filthy. Calling the greedy Poet and Painter a 'temple' for gold-worship, and a baser one than a pigsty, compresses his disgust: at least pigs are honestly beastly. The speech is a sardonic parody of religious devotion.
TLN 2083rhetorical device
“'Tis thou that rigg'st the bark and plough'st the foam, Settlest admired reverence in a slave”
Timon apostrophizes gold as the power that equips ships ('rigg'st the bark'), drives sea trade, and makes even a slave command respect. 'Plough'st the foam' is a metaphor for sailing: a ship's prow cuts through the sea as a plough cuts earth. Gold, Timon says, is the real force behind every human enterprise and every false distinction of rank.
TLN 2085rhetorical device
“thy saints for aye Be crown'd with plagues”
Timon inverts the language of religious worship: gold's 'saints' — those who venerate it alone — deserve not heavenly crowns but plague-crowns forever. 'For aye' means for ever. The mock-liturgy compares worshippers of money to a religious cult, then wishes their god's blessing to be pestilence.
TLN 2090rhetorical device
“Have I once liv'd to see two honest men”
The line is savage irony. Timon already knows from overhearing the Poet and Painter that they are the opposite of honest. Calling them 'honest' to their faces is a trap: he will repeat the word so insistently ('honest men,' 'honest men,' 'ye're honest men') that it becomes an accusation. The audience shares his private joke.
TLN 2121wordplay
“for thy fiction, Why, thy verse swells with stuff so fine and smooth That thou art even natural in thine art”
'Fiction' here means literary invention or the Poet's devised poem, but it also means a lie. 'Natural' is another trap: to the Poet it sounds like high praise (naturally talented, born to the art); it also means foolish — a 'natural' was an Elizabethan term for an idiot or simpleton. Timon is calling the Poet an instinctive liar and a born fool at the same time.
TLN 2137archaic vocab
“you hear him cog, see him dissemble, Know his gross patchery”
'Cog' means to cheat or deceive, especially by wheedling flattery; 'dissemble' means to hide true intentions behind a false front; 'patchery' means shabby trickery, fraud — literally the work of a 'patch,' a fool or a botcher. Timon is saying: you know the knave in your company is a liar, a fake, and a cheap cheat — yet you feed him and keep him close.
TLN 2145archaic vocab
“drown them in a draught”
A 'draught' is a privy or cesspit — an outdoor latrine. Timon is telling the Poet and Painter to drown the knaves they keep company with in a sewer. The insult measures his contempt: the appropriate fate for such men is not heroic death but drowning in excrement.
TLN 2151rhetorical device
“Yet an arch-villain keeps him company”
The logical trap snaps shut: Timon told both men to go separate ways and rid themselves of their knave. Each man apart is alone — and yet, Timon says, an arch-villain keeps each one company. Therefore the villain must be the man himself. This is a classic enthymeme, a compressed syllogism: the premise (a villain accompanies you wherever you go) forces the conclusion without Timon having to state it.
TLN 2158historical topical
“You are an alchemist; make gold of that”
An alchemist claimed the ability to transmute base metals into gold — a widespread pursuit in the medieval and early modern period. Timon throws the Poet a handful of coins (or perhaps just beats him), telling him sarcastically that if he is such a skilled transformer of reality he can make gold out of this worthless encounter. The insult identifies the Poet's flattering verse with the alchemist's empty promises of transformation.
TLN 2178rhetorical device
“Thou sun that comfort'st, burn!”
Timon's first words to the senators invert a natural blessing: the sun, which warms and sustains life, is commanded to burn instead of comfort. The pattern is typical of his late misanthropic speech — turning the expected gift (warmth, light, hospitality, gold) into its destructive opposite. Every good thing, in Timon's vision, should become a weapon.
TLN 2179rhetorical device
“each true word, a blister! and each false Be as a cauterizing to the root o' the tongue”
Timon curses both true speech and false speech equally: tell the truth and get a blister; tell a lie and have your tongue cauterized (burned closed at the root with a hot iron). Either way, language itself should be physically punished and shut down. The curse turns Timon's own final farewell speech — which ends 'language end' — into a form of self-fulfilling prophecy.
TLN 2185historical topical
“would send them back the plague, Could I but catch it for them”
Bubonic plague was a live and recurring terror in Elizabethan and Jacobean London, closing theatres and killing thousands (severe outbreaks in 1592–93, 1603, 1609). To wish plague on someone was the harshest available malediction. Timon's regret that he cannot infect himself to give it to the senators crystallises the depth of his misanthropy: he would willingly die of plague to transmit it to his enemies.
TLN 2233archaic vocab
“There's not a whittle in the unruly camp But I do prize it at my love before The reverend'st throat in Athens”
A 'whittle' is a small knife or clasp-knife — the most ordinary, cheap cutting implement a soldier might carry. Timon says he values even the meanest knife in Alcibiades's lawless army more highly than the most respected throat in Athens. The contrast of the smallest weapon against the most revered life measures his total contempt for the city's dignitaries.
TLN 2239classical allusion
“I was writing of my epitaph; It will be seen to-morrow. My long sickness Of health and living now begins to mend, And nothing brings me all things”
Timon announces that he is composing his own epitaph — the inscription for his tomb — and will be dead by tomorrow. The 'long sickness of health and living' is a paradox: he has been ill for as long as he was alive and well; his life itself was the disease, and death is the cure. 'Nothing brings me all things' means that having nothing (death, nothingness) is the condition that gives him everything he wants — which is for the world to leave him alone.
classical Timon the misanthrope (Lucian and the man-hater tradition)classical Plutarch's Lives (North's Translation)
TLN 2263classical allusion
“I have a tree, which grows here in my close, That mine own use invites me to cut down, And shortly must I fell it. Tell my friends, Tell Athens, in the sequence of degree From high to low throughout, that whoso please To stop affliction, let him take his haste, Come hither, ere my tree hath felt the axe, And hang himself”
The 'tree for hanging' is the play's darkest satiric joke. Timon offers a public service: whoever wants to escape life's miseries can come to his grove and use his tree as a gallows before he cuts it down. Lucian's dialogue 'Timon, or the Misanthrope' contains a similar mock-invitation, and the tree-for-hanging appears in Plutarch's Life of Antony as a detail of the historical Timon's legend.
classical Timon the misanthrope (Lucian and the man-hater tradition)
TLN 2273classical allusion
“Timon hath made his everlasting mansion Upon the beached verge of the salt flood, Who once a day with his embossed froth The turbulent surge shall cover”
Timon describes his grave-site: he has chosen a spot on the shoreline where the sea washes over it daily. 'Everlasting mansion' (eternal dwelling-place, i.e. a tomb) placed at the tide-line is drawn from Plutarch, who specifies that Timon was buried by the sea at Halae. 'Embossed froth' means foaming, swelling surf. The sea grave refuses the city entirely — not even land will hold him.
classical Timon the misanthrope (Lucian and the man-hater tradition)classical Plutarch's Lives (North's Translation)
TLN 2278rhetorical device
“Lips, let sour words go by and language end: What is amiss, plague and infection mend! Graves only be men's works and death their gain! Sun, hide thy beams! Timon hath done his reign”
Timon's last spoken words are a formal valediction structured as four rhyming couplets that successively close down speech, cure, human achievement, and daylight. 'Language end' calls for the end of language itself — all of it, not just dishonest speech. 'Plague and infection mend' inverts the wish for healing: only disease can fix what is wrong with the world. 'Timon hath done his reign' treats his life as a kingly rule now finished, and exits into the cave.
classical Timon the misanthrope (Lucian and the man-hater tradition)