Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare
Act 5 - Scene 4
Before the walls of Athens.
Alcibiades : Sound to this coward and lascivious town
[p]Our terrible
approach.
[p][A parley sounded]
[p][Enter Senators on the
walls]
[p]Till now you have gone on and fill'd the time
[p]With all
licentious measure, making your wills
[p]The scope of justice; till
now myself and such
[p]As slept within the shadow of your
power
[p]Have wander'd with our traversed arms and breathed
[p]Our
sufferance vainly: now the time is flush,
[p]When crouching marrow in
the bearer strong
[p]Cries of itself 'No more:' now breathless
wrong
[p]Shall sit and pant in your great chairs of ease,
[p]And pursy
insolence shall break his wind
[p]With fear and horrid flight.
First Senator : Noble and young,
[p]When thy first griefs were but a mere
conceit,
[p]Ere thou hadst power or we had cause of fear,
[p]We sent
to thee, to give thy rages balm,
[p]To wipe out our ingratitude with
loves
[p]Above their quantity.
Second Senator : So did we woo
[p]Transformed Timon to our city's love
[p]By humble
message and by promised means:
[p]We were not all unkind, nor all
deserve
[p]The common stroke of war.
First Senator : These walls of ours
[p]Were not erected by their hands from
whom
[p]You have received your griefs; nor are they such
[p]That these
great towers, trophies and schools
[p]should fall
[p]For private
faults in them.
Second Senator : Nor are they living
[p]Who were the motives that you first went
out;
[p]Shame that they wanted cunning, in excess
[p]Hath broke their
hearts. March, noble lord,
[p]Into our city with thy banners
spread:
[p]By decimation, and a tithed death--
[p]If thy revenges
hunger for that food
[p]Which nature loathes--take thou the destined
tenth,
[p]And by the hazard of the spotted die
[p]Let die the
spotted.
First Senator : All have not offended;
[p]For those that were, it is not square to
take
[p]On those that are, revenges: crimes, like lands,
[p]Are not
inherited. Then, dear countryman,
[p]Bring in thy ranks, but leave
without thy rage:
[p]Spare thy Athenian cradle and those kin
[p]Which
in the bluster of thy wrath must fall
[p]With those that have
offended: like a shepherd,
[p]Approach the fold and cull the infected
forth,
[p]But kill not all together.
Second Senator : What thou wilt,
[p]Thou rather shalt enforce it with thy smile
[p]Than
hew to't with thy sword.
First Senator : Set but thy foot
[p]Against our rampired gates, and they shall
ope;
[p]So thou wilt send thy gentle heart before,
[p]To say thou'lt
enter friendly.
Second Senator : Throw thy glove,
[p]Or any token of thine honour else,
[p]That thou
wilt use the wars as thy redress
[p]And not as our confusion, all thy
powers
[p]Shall make their harbour in our town, till we
[p]Have seal'd
thy full desire.
Alcibiades : Then there's my glove;
[p]Descend, and open your uncharged
ports:
[p]Those enemies of Timon's and mine own
[p]Whom you yourselves
shall set out for reproof
[p]Fall and no more: and, to atone your
fears
[p]With my more noble meaning, not a man
[p]Shall pass his
quarter, or offend the stream
[p]Of regular justice in your city's
bounds,
[p]But shall be render'd to your public laws
[p]At heaviest
answer.
Both : 'Tis most nobly spoken.
Alcibiades : Descend, and keep your words.
Soldier : My noble general, Timon is dead;
[p]Entomb'd upon the very hem o' the
sea;
[p]And on his grave-stone this insculpture, which
[p]With wax I
brought away, whose soft impression
[p]Interprets for my poor
ignorance.
Alcibiades : [Reads the epitaph] 'Here lies a
[p]wretched corse, of wretched soul
bereft:
[p]Seek not my name: a plague consume you wicked
[p]caitiffs
left!
[p]Here lie I, Timon; who, alive, all living men did
hate:
[p]Pass by and curse thy fill, but pass and stay
[p]not here thy
gait.'
[p]These well express in thee thy latter spirits:
[p]Though
thou abhorr'dst in us our human griefs,
[p]Scorn'dst our brain's flow
and those our
[p]droplets which
[p]From niggard nature fall, yet rich
conceit
[p]Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye
[p]On thy low
grave, on faults forgiven. Dead
[p]Is noble Timon: of whose
memory
[p]Hereafter more. Bring me into your city,
[p]And I will use
the olive with my sword,
[p]Make war breed peace, make peace stint
war, make each
[p]Prescribe to other as each other's leech.
[p]Let our
drums strike.
Previous: Act 5 - Scene 3
Next: Act 5 - Scene 4
