Timon of Athens
Act V, Scene 4

Before the walls of Athens.

Byam Shaw, 1901

0. Trumpets sound. Enter Alcibiades with his powers before
0. Athens.

Alcibiades

1 - 13

1. Sound to this coward and lascivious town
2. Our terrible approach.
0. Sounds a parley.
0. The Senators appear upon the walls.
3. Till now you have gone on and fill’d the time
4. With all licentious measure, making your wills
5. The scope of justice; till now myself and such
6. As slept within the shadow of your power
7. Have wander’d with our travers’d arms, and breath’d
8. Our sufferance vainly. Now the time is flush,
9. When crouching marrow in the bearer strong
10. Cries (of itself) “No more!” Now breathless wrong
11. Shall sit and pant in your great chairs of ease,
12. And pursy insolence shall break his wind
13. With fear and horrid flight.

First Senator

14 - 19

14.                              Noble and young—
15. When thy first griefs were but a mere conceit,
16. Ere thou hadst power or we had cause of fear,
17. We sent to thee to give thy rages balm,
18. To wipe out our ingratitude with loves
19. Above their quantity.

Second Senator

20 - 24

20.                       So did we woo
21. Transformed Timon to our city’s love
22. By humble message and by promis’d means.
23. We were not all unkind, nor all deserve
24. The common stroke of war.

First Senator

25 - 29

25.                           These walls of ours
26. Were not erected by their hands from whom
27. You have receiv’d your grief; nor are they such
28. That these great tow’rs, trophies, and schools should fall
29. For private faults in them.

Second Senator

30 - 39

30.                             Nor are they living
31. Who were the motives that you first went out;
32. Shame, that they wanted cunning in excess,
33. Hath broke their hearts. March, noble lord,
34. Into our city with thy banners spread;
35. By decimation, and a tithed death,
36. If thy revenges hunger for that food
37. Which nature loathes, take thou the destin’d tenth,
38. And by the hazard of the spotted die
39. Let die the spotted.

First Senator

40 - 49

40.                      All have not offended;
41. For those that were, it is not square to take
42. On those that are, revenge; crimes, like lands,
43. Are not inherited. Then, dear countryman,
44. Bring in thy ranks, but leave without thy rage;
45. Spare thy Athenian cradle and those kin
46. Which in the bluster of thy wrath must fall
47. With those that have offended; like a shepherd,
48. Approach the fold and cull th’ infected forth,
49. But kill not all together.

Second Senator

50 - 52

50.                            What thou wilt,
51. Thou rather shalt enforce it with thy smile
52. Than hew to’t with thy sword.

First Senator

53 - 56

53.                               Set but thy foot
54. Against our rampir’d gates and they shall ope,
55. So thou wilt send thy gentle heart before,
56. To say thou’t enter friendly.

Second Senator

57 - 62

57.                               Throw thy glove,
58. Or any token of thine honor else,
59. That thou wilt use the wars as thy redress
60. And not as our confusion, all thy powers
61. Shall make their harbor in our town till we
62. Have seal’d thy full desire.

Alcibiades

63 - 72

63.                              Then there’s my glove;
64. Descend, and open your uncharged ports.
65. Those enemies of Timon’s and mine own
66. Whom you yourselves shall set out for reproof
67. Fall, and no more; and to atone your fears
68. With my more noble meaning, not a man
69. Shall pass his quarter, or offend the stream
70. Of regular justice in your city’s bounds,
71. But shall be remedied to your public laws
72. At heaviest answer.

First Senator and Second Senator

73

73.                     ’Tis most nobly spoken.

Alcibiades

74

74. Descend, and keep your words.

0. The Senators descend and open the gates.

0. Enter Soldier as a messenger.

Soldier

75 - 79

75. My noble general, Timon is dead,
76. Entomb’d upon the very hem o’ th’ sea,
77. And on his grave-stone this insculpture, which
78. With wax I brought away, whose soft impression
79. Interprets for my poor ignorance.

Alcibiades

80 - 95

0. Reads the epitaph.
80. “Here lies a wretched corse, of wretched soul bereft;
81. Seek not my name: a plague consume you, wicked caitiffs left!
82. Here lie I, Timon, who, alive, all living men did hate;
83. Pass by and curse thy fill, but pass and stay not here thy gait.”
84. These well express in thee thy latter spirits:
85. Though thou abhorr’dst in us our human griefs,
86. Scorn’dst our brains’ flow, and those our droplets which
87. From niggard nature fall, yet rich conceit
88. Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye
89. On thy low grave, on faults forgiven. Dead
90. Is noble Timon, of whose memory
91. Hereafter more. Bring me into your city,
92. And I will use the olive with my sword:
93. Make war breed peace, make peace stint war, make each
94. Prescribe to other as each other’s leech.
95. Let our drums strike.

0. Exeunt.