Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

learn the reason of Alcibiades' wrath against his native city. One of his friends has, in sudden rage, killed a man who had traduced his honor, and thus lies under sentence of death. Alcibiades begs the senate for mercy, and his speech is an echo of the solemn pleadings of Portia and Isabella. Like them it appeals from the merciless written law to that higher principle of equity in which law has its true sanction. But the senators, a body of cold-blooded men of the world, have no spark of sympathy for the pride of reputation, which, feeling a stain like a wound, strikes out too vehemently in self-defense. As they had denied all help to Timon when his high-souled generosity brought him to ruin, so now they refuse all mercy to the victim of the chivalrous principle of honor. And in both cases they are ungrateful as well as hard-hearted, for, like Timon, the condemned man has done the state good service, and Alcibiades throws his own deserts as an additional weight into the scale. But to all entreaties the senators make the icy rejoinder: "We are for the law: he dies." Then follows a scene so strikingly parallel to the central situation in Coriolanus that its rejection by critics is incomprehensible. Alcibiades, like the Roman hero, feels a patrician's and soldier's shame in stooping to beg of his inferiors, and the rejection of his suit stirs him to an outburst, which is a mild echo of Coriolanus' fury when he is refused the consulship.-Boas, Shakspere and his Prede

cessors.

THE FAULTS OF THE PLAY

The diction is curiously involved, abrupt, elliptical, packed with useless metaphor, and is less lucid than in any earlier play. The idea is presented harshly and with violence. There is a good deal of sonorous but rather empty declamation. Nevertheless the play contains magnificent passages.-SECCOMBE AND ALLEN, The Age of Shakespeare.

THE LIFE OF TIMON OF ATHENS

[blocks in formation]

Other Lords, Senators, Officers, Banditti, and Attendants

SCENE: Athens, and the neighboring woods

SYNOPSIS

By J. ELLIS BURDICK

ACT I

By his liberality, Timon, a lord of Athens, surrounds himself with countless numbers of dependents and followers. They flatter him and he gives them gifts and shows them other favors, believing in the sincerity of their friendships. He gives one dinner at which the favors are precious stones. Flavius, his steward, is much distressed over this mad bounty of his master.

ACT II

Timon's creditors begin to suspect his financial condition and dun him for their money. At last Timon is made to realize that his steward's worryings had some foundation, but he comforts himself with the thought that he has only to ask aid from those who have enjoyed his bounty and that all their wealth will be at his disposal. Accordingly he dispatches his servants to them with requests for loans.

ACT III

His one-time friends all refuse to help him and even send to him demanding that he pay them certain small sums he owes them. Realizing the worthlessness of these men and to show his contempt of them, he invites them to a farewell banquet. When the dishes are uncovered they are seen to contain only warm water. Reproaching them for their ungratefulness he throws the water in their faces and hurls the dishes at them, driving them from the house.

« ZurückWeiter »