Had I your tongues and eyes, I would use them so

That heaven’s vault should crack. She’s gone for ever.

I know when one is dead and when one lives.

She’s dead as earth.

[He lays her down]

Lend me a looking-glass.

If that her breath will mist or stain the stone,

Why, then she lives.

KENT Is this the promised end?

EDGAR

Or image of that horror?

ALBANY Fall and cease.

LEAR

This feather stirs. She lives. If it be so,

It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows

That ever I have felt.

KENT [kneeling] Ah, my good master!

LEAR

Prithee, away.

EDGAR w’Tis noble Kent, your friend.

LEAR

A plague upon you, murderous traitors all.

I might have saved her; now she’s gone for ever.—

Cordelia, Cordelia: stay a little. Ha?

What is’t thou sayst?—Her voice was ever soft,

Gentle, and low, an excellent thing in women.—

I killed the slave that was a-hanging thee.

[SECOND] CAPTAIN

’Tis true, my lords, he did.

LEAR Did I not, fellow?

I have seen the day with my good biting falchion

I would have made them skip. I am old now,

And these same crosses spoil me. (To Kent) Who are you?

Mine eyes are not o’ the best, I’ll tell you straight.

KENT

If fortune bragged of two she loved or hated,

One of them we behold.

LEAR Are not you Kent?

KENT

The same, your servant Kent. Where is your servant

Caius?

LEAR

He’s a good fellow, I can tell you that.

He’ll strike, and quickly too. He’s dead and rotten.

KENT

No, my good lord, I am the very man—

LEAR I’ll see that straight.

KENT

That from your first of difference and decay

Have followed your sad steps.

LEAR You’re welcome hither.

KENT

Nor no man else. All’s cheerless, dark, and deadly.

Your eldest daughters have fordone themselves,

And desperately are dead.

LEAR So think I, too.

ALBANY

He knows not what he sees; and vain it is

That we present us to him.

EDGAR

Very bootless.

Enter another Captain

[THIRD] CAPTAIN (to Albany)

Edmund is dead, my lord.

ALBANY That’s but a trifle here.—

You lords and noble friends, know our intent.

What comfort to this great decay may come

Shall be applied; for us, we will resign

During the life of this old majesty

To him our absolute power; (to Edgar and Kent) you

to your rights,

With boot and such addition as your honours

Have more than merited. All friends shall taste

The wages of their virtue, and all foes

The cup of their deservings.—O see, see!

LEAR

And my poor fool is hanged. No, no life.

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life,

And thou no breath at all? O, thou wilt come no more.

Never, never, never.—Pray you, undo

This button. Thank you, sir. O, O, O, O!

EDGAR He faints. (To Lear) My lord, my lord!

LEAR Break, heart, I prithee break.

EDGAR Look up, my lord.

KENT

Vex not his ghost. O, let him pass. He hates him

That would upon the rack of this tough world

Stretch him out longer.

[Lear dies]

EDGAR O, he is gone indeed.

KENT

The wonder is he hath endured so long.

He but usurped his life.

ALBANY (to attendants)

Bear them from hence. Our present business

Is to general woe. (To Kent and Edgar) Friends of my

soul, you twain

Rule in this kingdom, and the gored state sustain.

KENT

I have a journey, sir, shortly to go:

My master calls, and I must not say no.

ALBANY

The weight of this sad time we must obey,

Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.

The oldest have borne most. We that are young

Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

Exeunt carrying the bodies

TIMON OF ATHENS

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AND THOMAS MIDDLETON

WE know no more of Timon of Athens than we can deduce from the text printed in the 1623 Folio. Some episodes, such as the emblematic opening dialogue featuring a Poet and a Painter, are elegantly finished, but the play has more unpolished dialogue and loose ends of plot than usual: for example, the episode (3.6) in which Alcibiades pleads for a soldier’s life is only tenuously related to the main structure; and the final stretch of action seems imperfectly worked out. Various theories of collaboration and revision have been advanced to explain the play’s peculiarities. During the 1970s and 1980s strong linguistic and other evidence was adduced in support of the belief that it is a product of collaboration between Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton, a dramatist born in 1580 and educated at Queen’s College, Oxford, who was writing for the stage by 1602 and was to develop into a great playwright. The major passages for which Middleton seems to have taken prime responsibility are Act 1. Scene 2; all of Act 3 except for parts of Scene 7; and the closing episode (4.3.460-537) of Act 4. The theory of collaboration explains some features of the text—Middleton’s verse, for example, was less regular than Shakespeare’s. There is no record of early performance; the play is conjecturally assigned to 1605-6.

The story of Timon was well known and had been told in an anonymous play which seems to have been acted at one of the Inns of Court in 1602 or 1603. The classical sources of Timon’s story are a brief, anecdotal passage in Plutarch’s Life of Mark Antony, and a Greek dialogue by Lucian, who wrote during the second century AD, the former was certainly known to the authors of Timon of Athens; the latter influences them directly or indirectly. Plutarch records two epitaphs, one written by Timon himself, which recur, conflated as one epitaph, almost word for word in the play. In Lucian, as in the play, Timon is a misanthrope because his friends flattered and sponged on him in prosperity but abandoned him in poverty. The first part of the play dramatizes this process; in the second part, as in Lucian, Timon finds gold and suddenly becomes attractive again to his old friends.