His archèd brows, his hawking eye, his curls,

In our heart’s table – heart too capable

Of every line and trick of his sweet favour.

But now he’s gone, and my idolatrous fancy

Must sanctify his relics.

Timon of Athens

[IV, i, 1–41] Having squandered a fortune in hospitality and gifts, Timon finds himself forgotten by his so-called ‘friends’ when, exhausted by generosity, his money runs out. Bitterly disenchanted with the world of men, he takes refuge in the wild woods outside the city, but allows himself a single backward glance at his hometown as he leaves:

Let me look back upon thee. O thou wall

That girdles in those wolves, dive in the earth

And fence not Athens. Matrons, turn incontinent.

Obedience, fail in children. Slaves and fools

Pluck the grave wrinkled Senate from the bench,

And minister in their steads. To general filths

Convert, o’th’instant, green virginity.

Do’t in your parents’ eyes. Bankrupts, hold fast;

Rather than render back, out with your knives

And cut your trusters’ throats. Bound servants, steal.

Large-handed robbers your grave masters are,

And pill by law. Maid, to thy master’s bed;

Thy mistress is o’th’brothel. Son of sixteen,

Pluck the lined crutch from thy old limping sire,

With it beat out his brains. Piety and fear,

Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth,

Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood,

Instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades,

Degrees, observances, customs, and laws,

Decline to your confounding contraries

And let confusion live. Plagues incident to men,

Your potent and infectious fevers heap

On Athens, ripe for stroke. Thou cold sciatica,

Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt

As lamely as their manners. Lust and liberty

Creep in the minds and marrows of our youth,

That ’gainst the stream of virtue they may strive,

And drown themselves in riot. Itches, blains,

Sow all th’ Athenian bosoms, and their crop

Be general leprosy. Breath infect breath,

That their society, as their friendship, may

Be merely poison. Nothing I’ll bear from thee

But nakedness, thou detestable town.

Take thou that too, with multiplying bans.

Timon will to the woods, where he shall find

Th’ unkindest beast more kinder than mankind.

The gods confound – hear me, you good gods all –

The Athenians both within and out that wall.

And grant, as Timon grows, his hate may grow

To the whole race of mankind, high and low!

Amen.

[IV, iii, 1–45] Wealth, not worth, decides status in the world of men, inveighs an angry Timon as he digs in the woods for edible roots. When he finds gold instead he is filled with satirical scorn towards this basest of metals, the ‘common whore’ of all mankind:

O blessed breeding sun, draw from the earth

Rotten humidity. Below thy sister’s orb

Infect the air! Twinn’d brothers of one womb,

Whose procreation, residence, and birth,

Scarce is dividant – touch them with several fortunes,

The greater scorns the lesser. Not nature,

To whom all sores lay siege, can bear great fortune

But by contempt of nature.