Washes it off, and sprinkles in your faces [Throwing the water in their faces. Most smiling, smooth, detested parasites, You fools of fortune, trencher-friends, time's 111 Crust you quite o'er! What, dost thou go? Stay, I will lend thee money, borrow none. Re-enter the Lords, Senators, &c. First Lord. How now, my lords! [Exit. Sec. Lord. Know you the quality of Lord Ti mon's fury? Third Lord. Push! did you see my cap? Fourth Lord. I have lost my gown. First Lord. He's but a mad lord, and nought but humor sways him. He gave me a jewel 120 119. This and the next speech are spoken by the newly arrived lords.-H. N. H. th' other day, and now he has beat it out of my hat. Did you see my jewel? Third. Lord. Did you see my cap? Sec. Lord. Here 'tis. Fourth Lord. Here lies my gown. 130 First Lord. Let's make no stay. [Exeunt. 132. As Timon has in fact thrown nothing at his guests but warm water and dishes, it is not altogether clear why "stones" should be thus mentioned in this place. The missiles used may, it is true, have had much the same effect as stones, and thus led the speaker to mistake them for that article. On the other hand, the common use of stones in such a way may have caused other missiles to be designated by that term. Or the need of something to rhyme with bones may have suggested the word. But the most probable explanation is found in an old play on the subject of Timon lately published from the manuscript by Mr. Dyce, who thinks it to have been "intended for the amusement of an academic audience." In this play, also, Timon invites his false friends to a feast; but, instead of warm water, sets before them stones painted to look like artichokes, which he afterwards throws at them, and drives them out. The date of this play is not fully ascertained, but the play is supposed to have been written before Shakespeare's. ACT FOURTH SCENE I Without the walls of Athens. Tim. Let me look back upon thee. O thou wall, Obedience fail in children! Slaves and fools, Do't in your parents' eyes! Bankrupt, hold Rather than render back, out with your knives, 1-3. We concur with Knight and Verplanck in pointing this passage as it is in the original. All other modern editions, so far as we know, set a period after wolves, thus: "Let me look back upon thee, O thou wall, That girdlest in those wolves. Dive in the earth," etc. As we now give it, Timon first addresses the city generally, and then goes on to the particulars of his imprecation. As Knight remarks, "there is much greater force and propriety in the arrangement which we adopt."-H. N. H. 6. "general filths" means common strumpets: filthiness and obscenity were synonymous with our ancestors.-H. N. H. And cut your trusters' throats! Bound serv 10 ants, steal! Large-handed robbers your grave masters are And pill by law. Maid, to thy master's bed! Thy mistress is o' the brothel. Son of sixteen, Pluck the lined crutch from thy old limping sire, With it beat out his brains! Piety and fear, men, Your potent and infectious fevers heap 20 On Athens, ripe for stroke! Thou cold sciatica, Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt And drown themselves in riot! Itches, blains, 21. "let"; Hanmer's emendation of Ff., "yet."-I. G. The unkindest beast more kinder than mankind. The gods confound-hear me, you good gods The Athenians both within and out that wall! SCENE II Athens. Timon's house. Enter Flavius, with two or three Servants. First Serv. Hear you, master steward, where 's our master? Are we undone? cast off? nothing remaining? Flav. Alack, my fellows, what should I say to you? Let me be recorded by the righteous gods, I am as poor as you. First Serv. Such a house broke! So noble a master fall'n! All gone! and not Sec. Serv. As we do turn our backs 10 From our companion thrown into his grave, A dedicated beggar to the air, With his disease of all-shunn'd poverty, |