Introduction

King John is generally regarded as the most obscure of the 10 history plays. It is not nearly as impressive as Richard II, Henry IV (parts I and II), Henry V, or Richard III and not as well developed or as captivating as Henry VI (parts I, II, III) or as spectacular a pageant as Henry VIII. It rarely gets staged or even read.

When it is revealed that Philip is actually the bastard son of King John’s brother and previous King, Richard the Lionheart, John immediately knights him and takes him under his tutelage. This bastard, Philip, swaggers throughout the court and the play with a mocking confidence. The bastard alone is a fully develop and impressive character, which makes him outshine all others in the play. He is one of Shakespeare’s earliest great protagonists. King John himself is buffoon-like and only on the throne because of the death of his well loved brother, Richard the Lionhearted, and the young age of Richard’s son, Arthur. John is, in fact, a terribly unpopular monarch, unfit to rule and despised by his own lords and his European neighbours, France and Austria. King John fumbles into a war with France and is excommunicated from the Catholic Church by the Pope. The King of France demands that he abdicate his throne and give it to his goodly nephew, Arthur. John imprisons Arthur as a false claimant to the throne, and orders his death, but his killer can’t bring himself to kill the saintly Arthur, who winds up killing himself trying to escape prison. The French invade England and Philip the Bastard fights heroically, while the ineffective King John is poisoned and dies. In many ways King John and the Bastard are mirror images of one another, moving in totally opposite directions. As John’s power is collapsing all around him the Bastard grows in prominence and heroism. Although thought of as a serious play, in performance King John can be presented as ironic and, at times, farcical, turning the king’s court into a pack of knaves.

The theme that ‘blood follows blood’ resonates throughout Shakespeare’s plays. Henry the IV is forever haunted by his responsibility for the death of Richard II. Richard III is destroyed as a result of his murderous tendencies and Henry VI is dripping with bloody scene after bloody scene. MacBeth, Hamlet, Lear, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus all succumb to violent deaths following a trail of blood. Attaining the throne undeservedly is a sure fired way to guarantee your own bloody downfall and that is the fate awaiting the incompetent King John. He tries desperately to hold power by repressing and destroying a more legitimate rival in Arthur, King Richard the Lionheart’s son. External war and civil strife inevitably follows. All of Shakespeare’s other bastards, including King Lear’s Edmund, are tragically rendered. However, Philip is one Shakespearean bastard who prevails rather stunningly. King John may not be as polished or as highly regarded as the other histories but its themes of honour and suitability for the throne and the presentation of so well developed a character as Philip the Bastard in a play with plenty of energy have provided very attractive and compelling features which continue to resonate today. Although King John is remembered by history for his signing of the Magna Carta, Shakespeare never even references this.

Act I (1 scene)

Scene i

King John’s palace

Enter King John, Queen Elinor (his mother), Essex and Chatillon (ambassador from France)

King John: “Now say, Chatillon, what would France with us?”

Chatillon: “Thus speaks the King of France to his majesty, the borrowed majesty, of England.”

Elinor: “A strange beginning – ‘borrowed majesty’!”

King John: “Silence, good mother, hear the embassy.”

Chatillon: “Philip of France, in right and true behalf of thy deceased brother Geffrey’s son, Arthur, lays most lawful claim to this fair island, desiring thee to lay aside the sword which sways usurpingly, and put the same into young Arthur’s hand, thy nephew and right royal sovereign.”

King John: “What follows if we disallow of this?”

Chatillon: “Fierce and bloody war, to enforce these rights so forcibly withheld.”

King John: “Here have we war for war, and blood for blood – so answer France.”

Chatillon: “Then take my King’s defiance from my mouth.”

King John: “Bear mine to him and so depart in peace. For ere thou can report I will be there, the thunder of my canon shall be heard. So hence! Be thou the trumpet of our wrath and sullen presage of your own decay. Farewell Chatillon.”

Exit Chatillon

Elinor: “What now, my son! Have I not ever said how that ambitious Constance would not cease until she had kindled France and all the world upon the right of her son?”

King John: “Our strong possession and our right for us!”

Elinor: “Your strong possession much more than your right; so much my conscience whispers in your ear, which none but heaven and you and I shall hear.”

Essex: “My liege, here is the strangest controversy come from the county to be judged by you that I ever heard.”

King John: “Let them approach.”

Enter Robert Falconbridge and Philip, his bastard brother.

Bastard: “Your faithful subject I, a gentleman and oldest son, as I suppose, to Robert Faulconbridge.”

King John: “What art thou?”

Robert: “The son and heir to that same Faulonbridge.”

King John: “You came not of one mother then, it seems.”

Bastard: “Most certain of one mother, mighty king – that is well known – and, as I think, one father; but for the certain knowledge of that truth, I put you over to heaven and my mother.”

Elinor: “Out on thee, rude man! Thou does shame thy mother.”

Bastard: “I, madam? No. That is my brother’s plea, and none of mine; the which if he can prove, it pops me out at least from fair five-hundred pounds a year. Heaven guard my mother’s honour and my land!”

King John: “A good blunt fellow. Why does he lay claim to thy inheritance?”

Bastard: “I know not why, except to get the land. But once he slandered me with bastardy; but wherever I be as true begot or no, that still I lay upon my mother’s head; compare our faces and be judged thyself. If old Sir Robert did beget us both I give heaven thanks I was not like to thee.”

King John: ‘Why, what a madcap has heaven lent us here!”

Elinor: “He has a trick of Richard the Lionheart’s face; do you not read some tokens of my son in the large composition of this man?”

King John: “My eye has well examined his parts and finds them perfect Richard.”

Robert: “My gracious liege, when that my father lived your brother did employ my father much.”

Bastard: “Well, sir, your tale must be how he employed my mother.”

Robert: “And once dispatched him in an embassy in Germany. The advantage of his absence took the King, sojourned at my father’s, where how he did prevail I shame to speak – but truth is truth: large lengths of seas and shores between my father and my mother lay when this same lusty gentleman was got. Upon his death-bed he by will bequeathed his lands to me, and took it on his death that this my mother’s son was none of his. Then, my good liege, let me have what is mine, my father’s land, as was my father’s will.”

King John: “Your father’s wife, if she did play false, the fault was hers; which felt lies on the hazards of all husband who marry wives. This concludes: my mother’s son did get your father’s heir.”

Elinor: “I like thee well. Will thou forsake thy fortune, bequeath thy land to him and follow me?”

Bastard: “Brother, take you my land, and I’ll take my chance. Madam, I’ll follow you unto the death.”

King John: “What is thy name?”

Basard: “Philip, my liege.”

King John: “From henceforth bear his name whose form thou bears: kneel thou down Philip, but rise more great – arise Sir Richard and Plantagenet.”

Bastard: “Now blessed be the hour, by night or day, when I was got, Sir Robert was away!”

Elinor: “The very spirit of Plantagenet! I am thy grandam, Richard: call me so.”

King John: “Go Faulconbridge, now thou has thy desire. Come, madam, and come, Richard, we must speed for France.”

Bastard: “Brother, adieu. Good fortune come to thee! For thou was got in the way of honesty.”

Exit all but the Bastard.

“A foot of honour better than I was; but many a many foot of land the worse. But this is worshipful society, and fits the mounting spirit like myself. But who comes in such haste in riding-robes? What woman-post is this?”

Enter Lady Faulconbridge

Bastard: “O me, tis my mother! How now, good lady! What brings you here to the court so hastily?”

Lady Faulconbridge: “Where is that slave, thy brother?”

Bastard: “Is it Sir Robert’s son that you seek so?”

Lady Faulconbridge: “Ay, thy unreverend boy. He is Sir Robert’s son, and so art thou.”

Bastard: “Madam, I was not old Sir Robert’s son. Sir Robert could not do it. Therefore, good mother, to whom am I beholdened for these limbs?”

Lady Faulconbridge: “Has thou conspired with thy brother too? What means this scorn, thou most untoward knave?”

Bastard: “But, mother, I am not Sir Robert’s son: I have disclaimed Sir Robert and my land; and all is gone. Then, good my mother, let me know my father – some proper man, I hope. Who was it, mother?”

Lady Faulconbridge: “Has thou denied thyself a Faulconbridge?”

Bastard: “As faithfully as I deny the devil.”

Lady Faulconbridge: “King Richard the Lionheart was thy father. By long and vehement suit was I seduced to make room for him in my husband’s bed. Thou art the issue of my dear offence, which was so strongly urged past my defence.”

Bastard: “Madam, I would not wish a better father. Some sins do bear their privilege on earth, and so does yours: your fault was not your folly. He that perforce robs lions of their hearts may easily win a woman’s. Ay, my mother, with all my heart I thank thee for my father! Who lives and dares but say thou did not well when I was got, I’ll send his soul to hell. Come, lady, I will show thee to my kin.”

Summary and Analysis

This first one scene act, per typical, lays out the foundation of the play. We see that France demands that King John abdicate in favour of his elder brother’s son, Arthur. When the king refuses, France as much as declares war on England. Even his own mother insists that his present possession of the crown presents a stronger case for keeping it then does his right to the crown itself. The question of his lack of legitimacy for the crown will plague him throughout his hapless reign. Next, the bastard arrives and we learn that he is, in fact, the son of King Richard the Lionheart, born of an illicit affair between the King and the Bastard’s mother while his father was away in Germany. His very own mother admits this and King John and Elinor acknowledge the physical resemblance of the bastard to King Richard. The Bastard is welcomed into the royal court as family and proclaimed Sir Richard. He is also thrilled: “Ay, my mother, with all my heart I thank thee for my father.” This is a play about legitimacy, one of Shakespeare’s regular themes throughout his plays about kingship. Many a monarch falls due to either a question of his hereditary inheritance rights or because of his sheer incompetency. King John fails both tests. When his brother, King Richard (the Lionheart) died, by all accounts the throne should have gone to either his elder brother, Geffrey or Geffrey’s eldest son, Arthur. But Arthur was merely a young boy and John took advantage and seized the crown. His mother, Elinor, supports his weak claim, but the powerful lords of England and the other heads of Europe, including the Pope, do not. And again, it does not help his cause that he also happens to be a terrible king. The bastard son of King Richard the Lionheart chooses to abandon his claims as a landed heir of Faulconbridge and to proceed as the bastard son of the former king, which brings him into the court of King John, where he will do extraordinarily well. It should be mentioned that the Bastard is Shakespeare’s fictional creation and not a historical character. That being said, he will transcend his role as a court agitator to become a most responsible, heroic character and easily the most interesting of the play, often regarded as Shakespeare’s most well rounded creation to date.

Act II (1 scene)

Scene i

France, before Algiers.

Enter Austrian forces, King Philip of France, Lewis (the Dauphin), Constance and Arthur.

King Philip: “Arthur, that great forerunner of thy blood, Richard, that robbed the lion of his heart and fought the holy wars in Palestine, came early to his grave; and for amends to his posterity, boy, in thy behalf, rebuke the usurpation of thy unnatural uncle, English John.”

Arthur: “I give you welcome with a powerless hand, but with a heart full of unstained love.”

King Philip: “A noble boy! Who would not do thee right?”

Austria: “Upon thy cheek lay I this zealous kiss as seal to my love, that to my home I will no more return till the right thou has in France, together with that white-faced shore, even till that England salute thee for her king. Till then, fair boy, will I not think of home, but follow arms.”

Constance: “O, take his mother’s thanks, a widow’s thanks, till your strong hand shall help to give him strength.”

Austria: “The peace of heaven is theirs who lift their swords in such a just and charitable war.”

King Philip: “Well then, to work! Our cannon shall be bent against the brows of this resisting town. But we will make it subject to this boy.”

Enter Chatillon

King Philip: “Our messenger, Chatillon, has arrived. What England says, say briefly, gentle lord; Chatillon, speak.”

Chatillon: “Then turn your forces from this paltry siege and stir them up against a mightier task. England, impatient of your just demands, has put himself in arms. The adverse winds have given him time to land his legions all; his marches are expedient to this town, his forces strong, his soldiers confident. With him along has come the mother-queen; with them a bastard of the king’s deceased. In brief, a braver choice of dauntless spirits did never float upon the swelling tide to do offence and scathe in Christendom. They are at hand, to parley or fight, therefore prepare.”

Austria: “Courage mounts with occasion. Let them be welcome then; we are prepared.”

Enter King John, Elinor, Blanche and the Bastard

King John: “Peace be to France, if France in peace permit our just and lineal entrance to our own! If not, bleed France, and peace ascend to heaven, while we, God’s wrathful agent, do correct their proud contempt that beats his peace to heaven.”

King Philip: “Peace be to England, if that war return from France to England, there to live in peace! England we love, but thou from loving England art so far that thou has under-wrought his lawful king, and done a rape upon the maiden virtue of the crown. Look here upon they brother-in-law’s Geffrey’s face: these eyes, these brows, were moulded out of his; this little abstract does contain that large which died in Geffrey, and the hand of time shall draw this brief into as huge a volume. That Geffrey was thy elder brother born, and this his son; England was Geffrey’s right, and this is Geffrey’s. In the name of God, how comes it that thou are called a king, when living blood does in these temples beat which owe the crown to that thou over-masters?”

King John: “From whom has thou this great commission, France?”

King Philip: “From that supernal judge that stirs good thoughts in any breast of strong authority to look into the blots and stains of right. That judge has made me guardian to this boy, under whose warrant I impeach thy wrong, and by whose help I mean to chastise it.”

King John: “Alack, thou does usurp authority.”

Elinor: “Who is it thou does call usurper, France?”

Constance: “Let me make answer; thy usurping son.”

Elinore: “Out, insolent! Thy bastard shall be king, that thou may be a queen and check the world!”

Constance: “My bed was ever to thy son as true as thine was to your husband; and this boy liker in feature to his father Geffrey than thou and John in manners. My boy a bastard! By my soul, I think his father never was so true begot. There’s a good grandam, boy, who would blot thee.”

Austria: “What the devil art thou?”

Bastard: “One who will play the devil, sir, with you and I may catch your hide and you alone. I’ll smoke your skin-coat, sirrah, look to it; faith I will.”

Austria: “What cracker is this same who deals our ears with this abundance of superfluous breath?”

King Philip: “Women and fools, break off your conference. King John, this is the very sum of all: England and Ireland, Anjou, Touraine, Maine in right of Arthur, do I claim of thee; will thou resign them and lay down thy arms?”

King John: “My life as soon. I do defy thee, France. Arthur of Britain, yield thee to my hand, and out of my dear love I’ll give thee more than ever the coward hand of France can win. Submit thee, boy.”

Elinor: “Come to thy grandam, child.”

Constance: “Do, child, give grandam kingdom and grandam will give a plum, a cherry and a fig.”

Arthur: “Good my mother, peace! I would that I were low laid in my grave: I am not worth this coil that’s made for thee.”

Elinor: “His mother shames him, so poor boy, he weeps.”

Constance: “His grandam’s wrongs, and not his mother’s shame, draw those heaven-moving pearls from his poor eyes.”

Elinor: “Thou monstrous slanderer of heaven and earth!”

Constance: “Thou monstrous injurer of heaven and earth. Call me not slanderer! Thou and thine usurp the dominations and rights of this oppressed boy, this is thy eldest son’s son, unfortunate in nothing but in thee. Thy sins are visited in this poor child; the canon of the law is laid on him, being but the second generation removed from thy sin-conceiving womb.”

King John: “Bedlam, have done.”

Constance: “I have but this to say: her sin is his injury; a plague upon her!”

Elinor: “Thou unadvised scold, I can produce a will that bars the title of thy son.”

Constance: “Ay, who doubts that? A will, a wicked will; a woman’s will; a cankered grandam’s will.”

King Philip: “Peace, lady! Pause or be more temperate. Summon hither to the walls these men of Angiers; let us hear them speak whose title they admit, Arthur’s or John’s.

Trumpet sounds. Enter citizens upon the walls.

Citizens: “Who is it that has warned us to the walls?”

King Philip: “Tis France, for England.”

King John: “England for itself. Hear us first. These flags of France. Their cannons have their bowels full of wrath, and ready mounted are they to spit forth their iron’s indignation against your walls, and wide havoc made for bloody power to rush upon your peace. But on the sight of us your lawful king, instead of bullets wrapped in fire, to make a shaking fever in your walls, they shoot but calm words folded up in smoke to make a faithless error in your ears. Kind citizens, let us in – your king craves harbourage within your city walls.”

King Philip: “When I have said, make answer to us both. Lo, in this right hand, whose protection is most divinely vowed upon the right of him it holds, stands young Plantagenet, son to the elder brother of this man. Be pleased then to pay that duty which you truly owe to him who owes it, namely, this young prince; and then our arms, like to a muzzled bear, we will bare home that lusty blood again which here we came to spout against your town, and leave your children, wives, and you, in peace. But if you fondly pass our proffered offer, tis not the rounder of your old-faced walls can hide you from our messengers of war, though all these English were harboured in their rude circumference. Then tell us, shall your city call us lord or shall we give the sign to our rage, and stalk in blood to our possession?”

Citizens: “In brief: we are the King of England’s subjects; for him, and in his right, we hold this town.”

King John: “Acknowledge then the King, and let me in.”

Citizens: “That can we not; but he that proves he King, to him we will prove loyal. Till that time we have rammed up our gates against the world.”

King John: “Does not the crown of England prove the king? And if not that, I bring you witnesses: twice fifteen thousand hearts of England’s breed, to verify our title with their lives.”

Citizens: “Till you compound whose right is worthiest, we for the worthiest hold the right from both.”

French Herald: “You men of Angiers, open wide your gates and let young Arthur in, who by the hand of France this day has made much work for tears in many an English mother, whose sons lie scattered on the bleeding ground; many a widow’s husband grovelling lies, coldly embracing the discoloured earth; and victory with little loss does play upon the dancing banners of the French, who are at hand to enter conquerers, and to proclaim Arthur England’s king and yours.”

English Herald: “Rejoice, you men of Angiers, ring your bells: King John, your king and England’s, does approach, commander of this hot malicious day. Their armours hither return all gilt with Frenchmen’s blood. And like a jolly troop of huntsmen come our lusty English, with purpled hands, dyed in the dying slaughter of their foes. Open your gates and give the victors way.”

Citizens: “Heralds, from off our towers we behold both your armies. Blood has brought blood, and blows have answered blows, but are alike, and both alike we like. One must prove greatest. While thy weigh so even, we hold our town for neither, yet for both.”

Enter the two Kings

King John: “Has thou yet more blood to cast away?”

King Philip: “England, thou has not saved one drop of blood in this hot trial more than we of France; rather, lost more. And by this hand I swear, before we will lay down our just-bourne arms, we’ll put thee down.”

Bastard: “Ha, majesty! Cry ‘havoc’ kings; back to the stained field, you equal potents, fiery kindled spirits! Then let confusion of one part confirm the other’s peace. Till then, blows, blood and death!”

King John: “Whose party do the townsmen yet admit?”

King Philip: “Speak, citizens, for England; who’s you’re king?”

Citizens: “The King of England, when we know the King. A greater power than we denies all this; and till it be undoubted, we do lock our former scruples in our strong-barred gates; until our fears, resolved, be by some certain king purged and deposed.”

Bastard: “By heaven, Angiers flout you, kings, and stand securely on your battlements as in a theatre, whence they gape and point at your industrious scenes and acts of death. Your royal presences be ruled by me: do like the rebels of Jerusalem, be friends awhile, and both conjointly bend your sharpest deeds of malice on this town. Let France and England mount their battering cannon till their soul-fearing clamours have brawled down the flinty ribs of this contemptuous city. That done, part your mingling colours once again, turn face to face and bloody point to point; then in a moment of fortune shall cull forth out of one side her happy minion, to whom in favour she shall give the day. How like you this wild counsel, mighty states?”

King John: “I like it well. France, shall we knit our powers and lay this Angiers even with the ground; then after fight who shall be king of it?”

Bastard: “If thou has the mettle of a king, being wronged as we are by this peevish town, turn thou the mouth of thy artillery, as we will ours, against these saucy walls; and when that we have dashed them to the ground, why then defy each other, and pell-mell make work upon ourselves, for heaven or hell.”

King Philip: “Let it be so. Say, where will you assault?”

King John: “We from the west will send destruction into this city’s bosom.”

Austria: “I from the north.”

King Philip; “Our thunder from the south shall rain.”

Bastard: (aside) “O prudent discipline! From north to south Austria and France shoot into each other’s mouth.”

Citizens: “Hear us, great kings; vouchsafe awhile to stay, and I shall show you peace; win you this city without stroke or wound. Persever not, but hear me, mighty kings.”

King John: “Speak on with favour; we are bent to hear.”

Citizens: “That daughter there of Spain, the Lady Blanch, is niece to England; look upon the years of Lewis the Dauphin and that lovely maid. If lusty love should go in quest of beauty, where should he find it fairer than in Blanch? If zealous love should go in search of virtue, where should he find it purer than in Blanch? If love ambitious sought a match at birth, whose veins bound richer blood than Blanch? Such as she is, in beauty, virtue, birth, is the long Dauphin every way complete. He is the half part of a blessed man, left to be finished by such as she; and she a fair divided excellence, whose fulness of perfection lies in him. Two such controlling bounds shall you be, kings, to these two princes, if you marry them. At this match the mouth of passage shall we fling wide open and give you entrance.”

Bastard: “Here’s a stay that shakes the rotten carcass of old death out of his rags! Zounds! I was never so bethumped with words.”

Elinor: “Son, list to this conjunction, make this match; for by this knot thou shall so surely tie thy now unsured assurance to the crown.”

Citizens: “Why answer not the double majesties?”

King Philip: “Speak England first. What say you?”

King John: “If that the Dauphin there, thy princely son, can in this book of beauty read ‘I love’, her dowry shall weigh equal with a queen; for Anjou, and fair Tourains, Maine, Poictiers, and all that we upon this side the sea, except this city now by us besieged, shall gild her bridal bed, and make her rich in titles, honours and promotions, as she in beauty, education, blood holds hand with any princess of the world.”

King Philip: “What says thou, boy? Look in the lady’s face.”

Lewis: “I do, my lord, and in her eye I find a wonder, or a wondrous miracle. I do protest I never loved myself till now infixed I beheld myself drawn in the flattering table of her eye.”

Bastard: (aside) “He does espy himself love’s traitor. This is pity now, that there should be in such a love so vile a lout as he.”

Blanch: “My uncle’s will in this respect is mine. Anything he sees which moves his liking I can with ease translate it to my will; or if you will, to speak more properly, I will enforce it easily to my love. Further, I will not flatter you, my lord, that all I see in you is worthy love. Nothing do I see in you that I can find should merit any hate.”

King John: “Speak then, Prince Dauphin: can you love this lady?”

Lewis: “Nay, ask me if I can refrain from love; for I do love her most unfeignedly.”

King John: “Then do I give Volquessen, Touraine, Maine, Poictiers, and Anjou, these five provinces, with her to thee; and this addition more, full thirty thousand marks of English coin. Philip of France, if thou be pleased withal, command thy son and daughter to join hands.”

King Philip: “It likes us well; young princes, close your hands.”

Austria: “And your lips too.”

King Philip: “Now, citizens of Angiers, open your gates, let in that amity which you have made; for at St Mary’s Chapel presently the rights of marriage shall be solemnized. Is not the Lady Constance in this troop? Where is she and her son? Tell me, who knows?

Lewis: “She is sad and passionate at your highness’ tent.”

King Philip: “And by my faith, this league that we have made will give her sadness very little cure. Brother of England, how may we content this widow lady? In her right we came; which we, God knows, have turned another way, to our own vantage.”

King John: “We will heal up all. For we’ll create young Arthur Duke of Britain and Earl of Richmond. Call the Lady Constance; I trust we shall in some measure satisfy her.”

Exit all but the Bastard

Bastard: “Mad world! Mad kings! Mad composition! John, to stop Arthur’s title in the whole, has willingly departed with a part; and France, whom zeal and charity brought to the field rounded in the ear with that same purpose-changer, that sly devil, that broker that still breaks the pate of faith, that daily vow-breaker, he that wins of all, of kings, of beggars, old men, young men, maids, that smooth faced gentleman: tickling commodity. Commodity, the bias of the world. This advantage, this commodity, this bawd, this broker, clapped on the outward eye of fickle France, has drawn him from his own determined aid, from a resolved and honourable war, to a most base and vile-concluded peace. And why rail I on this commodity? But for because he has not woo’d me yet; not that I have the power to clutch my hand, but for my hand, as unattempted yet, like a poor beggar rails on the rich. Well, while I am a beggar, I will rail and say there is no sin but to be rich; and being rich, my virtue then will be to say there is no vice but beggary. Since kings break faith upon commodity, gain, be my lord, for I will worship thee.”

Summary and Analysis

King Philip of France tries to convince Arthur that as his father, Geffrey is the elder brother of King John, he should ‘rebuke the usurpation of his unnatural uncle, English King John’. The King of Austria vows that his army will remain in the field until Arthur becomes King of England. Arthur’s mother, Constance, is grateful for France and Austria’s support. King Philip learns that King John has outright rejected this suggestion and has accompanied an army to France to defend possession of his crown. He is joined by his mother, Elinor, and his newly determined Bastard nephew. Before the town of Angiers King John and King Philip argue over who has the right to the English crown. Elinor and Constance, the mothers of the two claimants, exchange bitter hostilities, as well. Both sides claim possession of Angiers, but the citizens who arm the walls of the city will admit neither side until one prevails over the other. The armies engage in a battle that is inconclusive. The Bastard next proposes that the English and French forces unite to destroy Angiers before then resuming their contest against one another. Both sides agree but then the citizens of Angiers have yet another proposal, that the niece of King John, Blanch, marry the son of King Philip, the Dauphin, Lewis, and unite the two kingdoms in peace. This is agreed upon and King John awards the couple with much of his French possessions. Constance is devastated that her son, Arthur, will not be made King of England and John offers to make him Duke of Britaine and Earl of Richmond. The Bastard ends the scene ranting about the madness of kings and commodity, the buying and selling of everything, and how that has altered the policy of both England and France so dramatically. He becomes determined to use commodity to his own advantage in order to gain the power and prestige he envisions for himself. So in order to ensure he retain the English throne, King John has married Blanch to the French Dauphin and given away most of his French possessions. King Philip, on the other hand, relinquishes France’s demand to have Arthur placed on the English throne, in order to maintain peace with England by marrying his son, the Dauphin, to King John’s niece, Blanch. It is not what either nation originally planned or wanted but it is the compromise agreed upon and everyone goes home in peace. In this scene we see the Bastard holding a position of great prominence along side King John. His ascent has begun in earnest. Arthur’s mother is the person most distressed by these new arrangements, as her son’s claim to the English throne has been thwarted by the marriage uniting the two kingdoms. Arthur himself seems to harbour no such cravings for power and will very sweetly return the court of King John back in England, where he can be closely monitored as a potential and threatening claimant to the English throne.

Act III (4 scenes)

Scene i

France. The French King’s camp

Enter Constance, Arthur and Salsbury

Constance: “Gone to be married! Gone to swear a peace! False blood to false blood joined! Shall Lewis have Blanch, and Blanch those provinces? It is not so; thou has misspoken, misheard; be well advised; tell over thy tale again. It cannot be; thou does but say ’tis so; I trust I may not trust thee; for thy word is but the vain breath of a common man: believe me I do not believe thee, man; I have a KIng’s oath to the contrary. Thou shall be punished for thus frightening me, for I am sick and capable of fears, oppressed with wrongs, and therefore full of fears; a widow, husbandless, subject to fears; a woman, naturally born to fears. What does thou mean by the shaking of thy head? Why does thou look so sadly on my son? What means that hand upon that breast of thine? Why holds thine eye with that lamentable rheum, like a proud river peering over his bounds? Be these sad signs, confirmers of thy words? Then speak again, whether thy tale be true.”

Salsbury: “As true as I believe you think them false.”

Constance: “O, if thou teach me to believe this sorrow, teach thou this sorrow how to make me die. Lewis marry Blanch! O boy, then where art thou? France friend with England; what becomes of me? Fellow, be gone: I cannot brook thy sight; this news has made thee a most ugly man.”

Salibury: “What other harm have I, good lady, done but spoke the harms that is by others done?”

Constance: “Which harm within itself so heinous is as it makes harmful all that speak of it.”

Arthur: “I do beseech you, madam, be content.”

Constance: “If thou who bid me be content were grim, ugly and slanderous to thy mother’s womb, full of unpleasing blots, lame, foolish, crooked, swart, patched with foul moles and eye offending marks, I would not care, I then would be content; for then I should not love thee; no, nor thou deserve a crown. But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy, nature and fortune joined to make thee great: but fortune, O! She is corrupted, changed, and won from thee; she adulterates hourly with thine uncle John, and with her golden hand has plucked France to tread down fair respect of sovereignty, and made his Majesty the bawd to theirs. France is a bawd to fortune and King John – that strumpet fortune, that usurping John! Envenom him with words and leave those woes alone which I alone am bound to under-bear. I will instruct my sorrows to be proud. To me, and to the state of my great grief, let kings assemble; for my grief is so great that no supporter but the huge firm earth can hold it up. (she sits on the ground) Here I and sorrow sit; here is my throne, bid kings come and bow to it.”

Enter King John, King Philip, Lewis, Blanch, Elinor, the Bastard and Austria

King Philip: “Tis true, fair daughter, and this blessed day ever in France shall be kept festive.”

Constance: (rising) “A wicked day, and not a holy day! What has this day deserved? Nay, rather turn this day out of the week, this day of shame, oppression, perjury; let wives with child pray that their burdens may not fall this day, lest that their hopes prodigiously be crossed; but on this day let seamen fear no wreck; no bargains break that are not this day made; this day, all things begun come to ill end.”

King Philip: “By heaven, lady, you shall have no cause to curse the fair proceedings of this day. Have I not pawned to you my majesty?”

Constance: “You have beguiled me with a counterfeit resembling majesty, which proves valueless; you are forsworn, forsworn; you came in arms to spill my enemies’ blood, but now in arms you strengthen it with yours. Arm, arm, you heavens, against these perjured kings! A widow cries: be husband to me, heavens! Set armed discord between these perjured kings! Hear me, O, hear me!”

Austria: “Lady Constance, peace!”

Constance: “War! War! No peace! Peace is to me a war. O Austria! Thou slave, thou wretch, thou coward! Thou little valiant, great in villainy! Thou ever strong upon the stronger side! Thou are perjured too. What a fool art thou. Has thou not spoke like thunder on my side, been sworn my soldier, and does thou now fall over to my foes?”

Austria: “O that a man should speak those words to me!”

Enter Pandulph

King Philip: “Here comes the holy legate of the Pope.”

Pandulph: “Hail, you anointed deputies of heaven! To thee, King John, my holy errand is. Pandulph, from Pope Innocent, does in his name demand why thou against the church, our holy mother, so willfully does spurn; and force perforce keep Stephen Langton, chosen Archbishop of Canterbury, from that Holy See? I do demand of thee.”

King John: “Thou cannot, Cardinal, devise a name so slight, unworthy and ridiculous, to charge me to an answer. Tell the Pope that no Italian priest shall tithe or toll in our dominions; but as we under heaven are supreme head, where we do reign we will alone uphold, without the assistance of a mortal hand. So tell the Pope, all reverence set apart to him and his usurped authority.”

King Philip: “Brother of England, you blaspheme.”

King John: “Though you and all the kings of Christiandom are led so grossly by this meddling priest, and by the merit of vile gold, yet I alone do me oppose the Pope, and count his friends my foes.”

Pandulph: “Then by the lawful power that I have thou shall stand cursed and excommunicated; and blessed shall he be that does revolt from his allegiance to a heretic; and meritorious shall that hand be called, canonized, and worshipped as a saint, who takes away by any secret course thy hateful life.”

Constance: “O, lawful let it be that I have room with Rome to curse a while! Good father Cardinal, cry thou ‘amen’ to my keen curses.”

Pandulph: “There’s law and warrant, lady, for my curse.”

Constance: “And for mine too; when law can do no right, let it be lawful that law bar no wrong; law cannot give my child his kingdom here, for he who holds his kingdom holds the law; therefore, since law itself is perfect wrong, how can the law forbid my tongue to curse?”

Pandulph: “Philip of France, on peril of a curse, let go the hand of that arch-heretic, and raise the power of France upon his head, unless he does submit himself to Rome.”

Elinor: “Look thou pale, France? Do not let go thy hand.”

Austria: “King Philip, listen to the Cardinal.”

King John: “Philip, what says thou to the Cardinal?”

Lewis: “Bethink you, father, for the difference is purchase of a heavy curse from Rome or the light loss of England for a friend. Forgo the easier.”

Blanch: “That’s the curse of Rome.”

Constance: “O Lewis, stand fast! The devil tempts thee here in likeness of a new untrimmed bride.”

Blanch: “The Lady Constance speaks not from her faith but from her need.”

Constance: “O, if thou grant my need, which only lives but by the death of faith, that need must needs infer this principle – that faith would live again by death of need. O then, tread down my need, and faith mounts up: keep my need up, and faith is trodden down!”

King Philip: “I am perplexed and know not what to say.”

Pandulph: “What can thou say but will perplex thee more, if thou stand excommunicated and cursed?”

King Philip: “Good reverend father, this royal hand and mine are newly knit, coupled and linked together with all religious strength of sacred vows; the latest breath that gave the sound of words was deep-sworn faith, peace, amity, true love, between our kingdoms and our royal selves; and even before this truce our hands were besmeared and overstained with slaughtered pencil, where revenge did paint the fearful difference of incensed kings. And shall these hands, so lately purged of blood, so newly joined in love, unyoke this seizure, make such inconstant children of ourselves, unswear faith sworn, and make a riot on the gentle brow of true sincerity? O, holy sir, my reverend father, let it not be so! Out of your grace, devise, ordain, impose some gentle order; and then we shall be blessed to do your pleasure, and continue friends.”

Pandulph: “All form is formless, order orderless, save what is opposite to England’s love. Therefore, to arms! Be champion of our church or let the church, our mother, breathe her curse – a mother’s curse – on her revolting son. France, thou may hold a serpent by the tongue, a chafed lion by the mortal paw, a fasting tIger safer by the tooth, than keep in peace that hand which thou does hold. O, let thy vow first made to heaven, first be to heaven performed, that is, to be the champion of our church. What since thou swore is sworn against thyself and may not be performed by thyself, for that which thou has sworn to do amiss is not amiss when it is truly done; and being not done, where doing tends to ill, the truth is then most done not doing it; the better act of purposes mistook is to mistake again; though indirect, yet indirection thereby grows direct, and falsehood falsehood cures, as fire cures fire within the scorched veins of one newly burned. It is religion that does make vows kept; but thou has sworn against religion by what thou swears against the thing thou swears, and makes an oath the surety of thy truth against an oath; the truth thou are unsure to swear swears only not to be forsworn; else what a mockery should it be to swear! But thou does swear only to be forsworn; and most forsworn to keep what thou does swear. Therefore thy later vows against thy first is in thyself rebellion to thyself; and better conquest never can thou make than arm thy constant and thy nobler parts against these giddy loose suggestions. But if not, then know the peril of our curses light on thee so heavy as thou shall not shake them off, but in despair die under their black weight.“

Lewis: “Father, to arms!”

Blanch: “Upon thy wedding day? Against the blood that thou has married? What, shall our feast be kept with slaughtered men? Shall clamours of hell be measures to our pomp? O husband, gear me! Upon my knee I beg, go not to arms against my uncle.”

Constance: “O, upon my knee, made heard with kneeling, I do pray to thee, thou virtuous Dauphin, alter not the doom forethought by heaven!”

Blanch: “Now shall I see thou love. What motive may be stronger with thee than the name of wife?”

Constance: “That which upholds him that thee upholds, his honour. O, thine honour, Lewis, thine honour!”

Pandulph: “I will denounce a curse upon his head.”

King Philip: “Thou shall not need. England, I shall fall from thee.”

Constance: “O fair return of banished majesty!”

Elinor: “O, foul revolt of French inconstancy!”

King John: “France, thou shall rue this hour within this hour.”

Blanch: “The sun is overcast with blood. Fair day, adieu! Which is the side that I must go withal? I am with both; each army has a hand; and in their rage, I having hold of both, they whirl asunder and dismember me. Husband, I cannot pray that thou may win; Uncle, I needs must pray that thou may lose; father, I may not wish the fortune thine; grandam, I will not wish thy wishes thrive. Whoever wins, on the side I shall lose.”

Lewis: “Lady, with me thy fortune lies.”

Blanch: “There where my fortune lives, there my life dies.”

King John: “France, I am burned up with inflaming wrath, a rage whose heat has this condition that nothing can allay, nothing but blood, the blood, and dearest-valued blood, of France.”

King Philip: “Thy rage shall burn thee up, and thou shall turn to ashes, ere our blood shall quench that fire. Look to thyself, thou are in jeopardy.”

Summary and Analysis

England and France, having made their peace with one another, by virtue of the marriage between King John’s niece, Blanch, and King Philip’s son, Lewis, leaves Constance, Arthur’s mother, in a rage. King Philip of France had sworn to defeat King John and place Arthur on the English throne, but now he has joined forces with King John and it would appear there will be no throne for Arthur. So Constance waxes poetic in her wrath until the Cardinal arrives also enraged by the peace between England and France, as King John has railed against the Pope over the expectation that the church could appoint the Archbishop of Canterbury over King John’s objection. The Cardinal pronounces King John’s excommunication from the church, providing Constance with hope, and pressures King Philip to break his peace with King John. Philip resists but eventually succumbs to church threats and breaks off his relationship with England, leaving Blanch to wonder which side she could possible support, with her uncle, King John, on one side and her husband, Lewis, on the other. The scene ends with King John once again swearing vengeance on France. So the church has destroyed the peace created by the marriage of Blanch and Lewis. Shakespeare’s audiences would have empathized with King John being so manipulated by the Catholic Church, as Elizabeth herself sought throughout her reign to control the impact of the church on the Protestant kingdom created by her father, King Henry VIII. This scene contains some of Shakespeare’s finest writing, in the ragings of both Constance and Pandulph.

Act III

Scene ii

France, near Angiers.

Enter the Bastard with Austria’s head.

Bastard: “Austria’s head lies here, while Philip breathes.”

Enter King John, Arthur and Hubert

King John: “Hubert, keep this boy. My mother is assailed in our tent, and taken, I fear.”

Bastard: “My lord, I rescued her; her Highness is in safety, fear you not.”

Summary and Analysis

The battle has commenced between England and France / Austria. The Bastard arrives with Austria’s head and when King John fears that Elinor has been captured it is the Bastard once again who assures him that she is safe, as he has rescued her. John’s fortunes seem to be plummeting, as he is at war with not only France and Austria, but also with the Catholic Church in Rome and his own nobles and lords at home. At the same time, the Bastard is rising in prominence, playing a leading role in the decision making process of the court, bravely conducting himself in the war in Europe and saving the Queen Mother from capture.

Act III

Scene iii

France, near Angiers

Enter King John, Elinor, Arthur, the Bastard and Hubert

King John: (to Elinor) “So shall it be; your Grace shall stay behind, so strongly guarded. (to Arthur) Cousin, look not sad; thy grandam loves thee, and thy uncle will as dear be to thee as thy father was.”

Arthur: “O, this will make my mother die with grief.”

King John: (to the Bastard) “Cousin, away for England! Haste before, and, ere our coming, see thou shakes the bags of hoarding abbots. The fat ribs of peace must by the hungry now be fed upon. Use our commission in his utmost force.”

Bastard: “Bell, book and candle shall not drive me back, when gold and silver beckons me to come on. I leave your Highness. So, I kiss your hand.”

Elinor: “Farewell, gentle cousin.”

King John: “Coz, farewell.”

Exit the Bastard

King John: “Come hither, Hubert. O, my gentle Hubert, we owe thee much! Thy voluntary oath lives in this bosom, dearly cherished. I had a thing to say, but I will fit it with some better time. By heaven, Hubert, I am almost ashamed to say what good respect I have of thee.”

Hubert: “I am much bound to your Majesty.”

King John: “I had a thing to say – but let it go. If that thou could see me without eyes, hear me without thy ears, and make reply without a tongue, without eyes, ears, and harmful sounds of words, I would into thy bosom pour my thoughts. But, ah, I will not! Yet I love thee well; and by my troth, I think thou loves me well.”

Hubert: “So well that what you bid me undertake, though that my death were adjunct to my act, by heaven, I would do it.”

King John: “Good Hubert, throw thine eyes on yonder young boy. I’ll tell thee what, my friend, he is a very serpent in my way; and wheresoever this foot of mine does tread, he lies before me. Does thou understand me? Thou art his keeper.”

Hubert: “And I’ll keep him so that he shall not offend your Majesty.”

King John: “Death.”

Hubert: “He shall not live.”

King John: “I could be merry now. Hubert, I love thee. Well, I will not say what I intend for thee. (to Arthur) For England, cousin, go; Hubert shall be your man, attend on you with all true duty. On toward Calais, ho!”

Summary and Analysis

The English have triumphed on the battlefield of France and King John assures Arthur that he will love him as a father and instructs the Bastard to raid the monasteries for money for the common people to feed on. Then John coyly informs loyal Hubert that there is something he wishes to tell him regarding Arthur. He says that Arthur is a serpent in the King’s way and eventually says that he wants him dead. Arthur has a very popular claim to the throne and King John wants to rid himself of this threat. Hubert assures King John that Arthur will not live and John comforts Arthur that Hubert will attend to to him with ‘true duty’. The King is willing to further alienate the Catholic Church and then seals his own fate with plans to have the beloved Arthur murdered.

Act III

Scene iv

France, in the French King’s camp.

Enter King Philip, Lewis and Pandolph

King Philip: “So a whole Armada of convicted sail is scattered and disjoined from fellowship.”

Pandulph: “Courage and comfort! All shall yet go well.”

King Philip: “What can go well, when we have run so ill? Are we not beaten? Arthur taken prisoner? Bloody England into England gone? Look who comes here: a grave unto a soul; holding the eternal spirit, against her will, in the vile prison of afflicted breath. I prithee, lady, go away with me. Comfort, gentle Constance!”

Constance: “No, I defy all counsel, all redress, but death, death; O amiable, lovely death! Thou odoriferous stench! Sound rottenness! I will kiss thy detestable bones, and put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows, and ring these fingers with thy household worms, and stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust, and be a carrion monster like thyself. Misery’s love, O, come to me!”

King Philip: “O fair affliction, peace!”

Constance: “No, no, O that my tongue were in the thunder’s mouth! Then with a passion would I shake the world.”

Pandulph: “Lady, you utter madness, not sorrow.”

Constance: “I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine; my name is Constance; I was Geffrey’s wife; young Arthur is my son, and he is lost. I am not mad – I would to heaven I were! For then tis like I should forget myself. Or, if I could, what grief should I forget! Preach some philosophy to make me mad, and thou shall be canonized, Cardinal; for, being not mad, but sensible of grief, my reasonable part produces reason how I may be delivered of these woes, and teaches me to kill or hang myself. If I were mad I should forget my son. I am not mad; too well, too well I feel the different plague of each calamity.”

King Philip: “Bind up those tresses.”

Constance: “To England, if you will.”

King Philip: “Bind up your hairs.”

Constance: “Yes, that I will. I tore them from their bonds and cried aloud ‘O that these hands could so redeem my son, as they have given these hairs their liberty!’ But now I envy their liberty, because my poor child is a prisoner. For since the birth of Cain, the first male child, there was not such a gracious creature born. But now will canker sorrow eat my bud, and he will look as hollow as a ghost; and so he’ll die; and, rising so again, when I shall meet him in the court of heaven I shall not know him. Therefore never, never must I behold my pretty Arthur more.”

Pandulph: “You hold too heinous a respect of grief.”

Constance: “He talks to me who never had a son.”

King Philip: “You are as fond of grief as of your child.”

Constance: “Grief fills the room up of my absent child, lies in his bed, walks up and down with me. Then have I reason to be fond of grief. Fair you well; had you such a loss as I, I could give better comfort than you do. I will not keep this form upon my head, (tearing more hair out) when there is such disorder in my wit. O lord! My boy, my Arthur, my fair son! My life, my joy, my food, my all the world! My widow-comfort, and my sorrow’s cure.”

Exit Constance

King Philip: “I fear some outrage, and I’ll follow her.”

Exit King Philip

Lewis: “There’s nothing in this world can make me joy. Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man; and bitter shame has spoiled the sweet world’s taste, that it yields nought but shame and bitterness.”

Pandulph: “What have you lost by losing of this day?”

Lewis: “All days of glory, joy and happiness.”

Pandulph: “If you had won it. No, no; when fortune means to men most good, she looks upon them with a threatening eye. Tis strange to think how much King John has lost in this which he accounts so clearly won. Are not you grieved that Arthur is his prisoner?”

Lewis: “As heartily as he is glad he has him.”

Pandulph: “Now hear me speak with a prophetic spirit; for even the breath of what I mean to speak shall blow each dust out of the path which shall directly lead thy foot to England’s throne. And therefore mark: John has seized Arthur; and it cannot be that the misplaced John should entertain an hour, one minute, nay, one quiet breath of rest. That John may stand then, Arthur needs must fall; so be it, for it cannot be but so.”

Lewis: “But what shall I gain by young Arthur’s fall?”

Pandulph: “You, in the right of Lady Blanch your wife, may then make all the claim that Arthur did. John lays you plots; the times conspire with you; this act, so evilly born, shall cool the hearts of all his peoples and freeze up their zeal, plainly denouncing vengeance upon John.”

Lewis: “Maybe he will not touch young Arthur’s life, but hold himself safe in his prisonment.”

Pandulph: “O, sir, when he shall hear of your approach, if that young Arthur be not gone already, even at that news he dies; and then the hearts of all his people shall revolt from him.

Summary and Analysis

The French ships are scattered at sea but Pandulph, the Pope’s representative, comforts King Philip that all is well. Constance arrives totally distraught, claiming to be ready for death due to the capture of her son by King John. She rightly believes he will die in the hands of King John. Neither Pandulph or King Philip can comfort her in the least. Lewis, the Dauphin, is also saddened by the capture of Arthur, until Pandolph suggests that, with Arthur doomed, all of his claims for the English throne become Lewis’ right, as he has married King John’s niece. Pandulph also rightly insists that once Arthur is killed by John, the people of England will turn on their king with a vengeance. Lewis is heartened and makes plans to go directly to England. Pandulph prophetically reads the future regarding Arthur and John’s fate, assessments that escape King John’s consideration entirely.

Act IV (3 scenes)

Scene i

England, a castle

Enter Hubert and executioners.

Hubert: “Heat me these irons hot. When I strike my foot upon the bosom of the ground, rush forth and bind the boy which you shall find with me fast to the chair.”

1 Executioner: “I hope your warrant will bear out the deed.”

Hubert: “Fear not you. Look to it.”

Exit the executioners

Hubert: “Young lad, come forth.”

Enter Arthur

Arthur: “Good morrow, Hubert.”

Hubert: “Good morrow, little Prince.”

Arthur: “You are sad.”

Hubert: “Indeed, I have been merrier.”

Arthur: “Mercy on me! Methinks no body should be sad but I. By my christiandom, so I were out of prison and kept sheep, I should be as merry as the day is long; and so I would be here but that I doubt my uncle; he is afraid of me, and I of him. Is it my fault that I was Geffrey’s son? No, indeed, is it not; and I would to heaven I were your son, so you would love me, Hubert.”

Hubert: (aside) “If I talk to him, with his innocent prate he will wake my mercy, which lies dead; therefore I will be sudden and dispatch.”

Arthur: “Are you sick, Hubert? You look pale today; In sooth, I would you were a little sick, that I might sit all night and watch with you. I warrant I love you more than you do me.”

Hubert: (aside) “His words do take possession of my bosom.” “Read here, young Arthur.” (shows him a paper) (aside) “How now, foolish rheum! I must be brief, lest resolution drop out of my eyes in tender womanish tears.” “Can you not read it?”

Arthur: “Hubert, must you with hot irons burn out both my eyes?”

Hubert: “Young boy, I must.”

Arthur: “And will you?”

Hubert: “And I will.”

Arthur: “Have you the heart? When your head did but ache, I knit my handkerchief about your brows, and with my hand at midnight I held your head; still and anon cheered up the heavy time, saying ‘What lack you?’ and ‘Where lies your grief?’ or ‘What good love may I perform for you?’ If heaven be pleased that you must use me ill, why, then you must. Will you put out my eyes, these eyes that never did or never shall so much as frown on you?”

Hubert: “I have sworn to do it; and with hot irons must I burn them out.”

Arthur: “If an angel should have come to me and told me Hubert should put out my eyes, I would not have believed him.”

Hubert: “Come forth. Do as I bid you to.”

Re-enter executioners

Arthur: “O, save me, Hubert, save me!”

Hubert: “Give me the iron, I say, and bind him here.”

Arthur: “I will not struggle. For heaven’s sake, Hubert, drive these men away, and I will sit as quiet as a lamb; I will not stir, nor wince, nor speak a word. Thrust but these men away, and I’ll forgive you, whatever torment you do put me to.”

Hubert: “Go; let me alone with him.”

1 Executioner: “I am best pleased to be from such a deed.”

Exit executioners

Arthur: “Alas, he has a stern look but a gentle heart. Let him come back, that his compassion may give life to yours.”

Hubert: “Come boy, prepare yourself.”

Arthur: “Is there no remedy?”

Hubert: “None, but to lose your eyes.”

Arthur: “Hubert, if you will, cut out my tongue, so I may keep my eyes. O, spare my eyes.”

Hubert: “Well, see to live. I will not touch thy eye for all the treasure that thy uncle owes. Yet I am sworn with this same very iron to burn them out.”

Arthur: “O, now you look like Hubert! All this while you were disguised.”

Hubert: “Peace; no more. Adieu. Your uncle must not know but you are dead: I’ll fill these dogged spies with false reports; and, pretty child, sleep doubtless and secure that Hubert, for the wealth of all the world, will not offend thee.”

Arthur: “O heaven! I thank you, Hubert.”

Hubert: “Much danger do I undergo for thee.”

Summary and Analysis

Hubert is initially following King John’s order that he blind and murder young Arthur. His executioners stand by as he speaks with Arthur, who wishes he were merely a simple shepherd. Hubert is extremely fond of Arthur, so this assignment is very hard on him. He shows Arthur the note from King John that he must put out the young man’s eyes. Arthur appeals to Hubert to consider how close they have become, but at first Hubert insists he must do what he is sworn by. Finally, his heart softens and he sends away the executioners, freeing Arthur from his fate. Arthur is extremely grateful but Hubert reminds him ‘much danger do I undergo for thee.’ Arthur is a very sweet and innocent young man and Hubert cannot bring himself to rid King John of Arthur. Arthur stands in vivid contrast to King John, who is wickedly ordering the death of this young prince beloved throughout the kingdom.

Act IV

Scene ii

England. King John’s palace.

Enter King John, Pembroke and Salisbury.

King John: “Here once again we sit, once again crowned and looked upon, I hope, with cheerful eyes.”

Pembroke: “This once again, but that your Highness pleased, was once superfluous: you were crowned before.”

Salisbury: “Therefore, to be possessed with double pomp, to guard a title that was rich before is wasteful and ridiculous excess.”

Pembroke: “But that your royal pleasure must be done, this act is troublesome.”

Salisbury: “In this the antique and well-noted face of plain old form is much disfigured; startles and frights consideration, makes sound opinion sick, and truth suspected, for putting on so new a fashioned robe.”

King John: “Some reasons for this double coronation I have possessed you with, and think them strong; meantime but ask what you would have reformed that is not well, and well shall you perceive how willingly I will both hear and grant your requests.”

Pembroke: “Then I, both for myself and your safety, heartily request the enfranchisement of Arthur, whose restraint does move the murmuring lips of discontent to break into this dangerous argument.”

King John: “Let it be so. I do commit his youth to your direction.”

Enter Hubert

Pembroke: “This is the man should do the bloody deed; the image of a wicked heinous fault lives in his eyes and I do fearfully believe tis done what we so feared he had a charge to do.”

King John: “Good lords, although my will to give is living, the suit which you demand is gone and dead: he tells us Arthur is deceased tonight.”

Salisbury: “Indeed, we feared his sickness was past cure.”

Pembroke: “Indeed, we heard how near his death he was.”

King John: “Why do you bend such solemn brows on me? Think you I bear the shears of destiny? Have I commandment on the pulse of life?”

Salisbury: “It is apparent foul-play; and tis shame that greatness should so grossly offer it; and so, farewell.”

Exit the lords

King John: “They burn in indignation. I repent. There is no sure foundation set on blood, no certain life achieved by other’s death.”

Enter a messenger

King John: “A fearful eye thou has; where is that blood that I have seen inhabit those cheeks? How goes all in France?”

Messenger: “From France to England. Never such a power for any foreign preparation was levied in the body of a land. They are all arrived.”

King John: “O, where has our intelligence slept? Where is my mother’s care?”

Messenger: “My liege, her ear is stopped with dust: the first of April died your noble mother; and as I hear, my lord, the Lady Constance in a frenzy died.”

King John: “Withhold thy speech, dreadful occasion! What! Mother dead! Under whose conduct came those powers of France?”

Messenger: “Under the Dauphin.”

Enter the Bastard

King John: “No, what says the world to your proceedings? Do not seek to stuff my head with more ill news, for it is full.”

Bastard: “But if you be afeared to hear the worst, then let the worst, unheard, fall on your head.”

King John: “Bear with me, cousin. Speak.”

Bastard: “How I have sped among the clergymen, the sums I have collected shall express. But as I travelled hither through the land, I find the people possessed with rumours, full of idle dreams, not knowing what they fear, but full of fear; and here’s a prophet I brought with me from forth the streets of Pomfret, whom I found with many hundreds treading on his heels, to whom he sung that, ere the next Ascension-day at noon, your Highness should deliver up your crown.”

King John: “Thou idle dreamer. Hubert, away with him; imprison him; and on that day at noon whereon he says I shall yield up my crown let him be hanged. O my gentle cousin, hear thou the news abroad, who are arrived?”

Bastard: “The French, my lord. Besides, I met Lord Bigot and Lord Salisbury, with eyes as red as new-enkindled fire, and others more, going to seek the grave of Arthur, whom they say is killed tonight on your suggestion.”

King John: “Gentle kinsman, go and thrust thyself into their companies. I have a way to win their loves again; bring them before me.”

Bastard: “I will seek them out.”

King John: “Make haste. O let me have no subject enemies when adverse foreigners affright my towns with dreadful stout invasion! My mother dead!”

Re-enter Hubert

Hubert: “My lord, they say five moons were seen tonight.”

King John: “Five moons!”

Hubert: “Old men and bedlam in the streets do prophesy upon it dangerously; young Arthur’s death is common in their mouths; and when they talk of him, they shake their hearts, and whisper to one another.”

King John: “Why seek thou to possess me of these fears? Why urged thou so often young Arthur’s death? Thy hand has murdered him. I had a mighty cause to wish him dead, but thou had none to kill him.”

Hubert: “My lord! Why, did you not provoke me? Here is your hand and seal for what I did.”

King John: “How often the sight of means to do ill deeds make deeds ill done! Had not thou been by, this murder had nor come into my mind; but finding thee fit for bloody villainy, I faintly broke with thee of Arthur’s death. Without stop, did thou let thy heart consent, and consequently thy rude hand to act the deed which both our tongues held vile to name. Out of my sight, and never see me more! My nobles leave me; and my state is braved with ranks of foreign powers.”

Hubert: “Arm you against your other enemies, I’ll make a peace between your soul and you. Young Arthur is alive. This hand of mine is yet a maiden and an innocent hand, not painted with the crimson spots of blood. Within this bosom never entered yet the dreadful motion of a murderous thought; and you have slandered nature in my form.”

King John: “Does Arthur live? O, haste thee to the peers, throw this report on their incensed rage. Forgive the comment that my passion made upon thy feature; for my rage was blind, and foul imaginary eyes of blood presented thee more hideous than thou are.”

Summary and Analysis

King John speaks of having a second coronation to Salisbury and Pembroke. They think it is a horrible idea and King John says he will follow their directives. They request of him that Arthur be released, as he is beloved of the people and poses very little threat. After King John speaks with Hubert he returns and announces that Arthur is dead. The lords are very displeased by this and insist that foul play is at work. King John reflects on how his reign seems to be disintegrating with the angry lords and invading French forces. He inquires of his mother and is informed that she has died, as has Arthur’s mother, Constance. The Bastard reports that he has collected a handsome sum from the monasteries but that the people he encountered across the country are angry and predict that John’s reign will soon come to an end. King John instructs the Bastard to try to rally support from the lords. Hubert arrives with news that there have been five moons in the sky from which the people prophecize a vey bad omen of things to come. King John blames Hubert for the death of Arthur, claiming he talked him into it and that even having him around influenced King John to go along with the idea. As we know, Hubert never did kill Arthur and he informs King John that the lad is alive. John is thrilled to hear this and wants the lords informed immediately and asking Hubert to forgive him for being so harsh. John’s fortunes are in steep decline. His mother, his closest and most trusted counsellor, dies and his rule then gets even weaker and less predictable. His behaving is increasingly child-like and petulant. His lords are turning against him and the French army is approaching, while omens and prophecies foretell even worse to come.

Act IV

Scene iii

England, before the castle

Enter Arthur, upon the walls

Arthur: “The wall is high, and yet will I leap down. Good ground, be pitiful and hurt me not! I am afraid; and yet I’ll venture it. If I get down and do not break my limbs, I’ll find a thousand shifts to get away. (leaps down) O me! My uncle’s spirit is in these stones. Heaven take my soul, and England keep my bones.” (he dies)

Bastard: “Distempered lords! The King by me requests your presence straight.”

Salisbury: “The King has dispossessed himself of us. We will not line his thin destained cloak with our poor honours, nor attend the foot that leaves the print of blood wherever it walks. Return and tell him so. We know the worst. Our griefs, and not our manners, reason now.”

Bastard: “But there is little reason in your grief.”

Salisbury: “This is the bloodiest shame, the wildest savagery, the vilest stroke, that ever wall eyed wrath or staring rage presented to the tears of soft remorse.”

Bastard: “It is a damned and bloody work.”

Salisbury: “It is the shameful work of Hubert’s hand; the practice and the purpose of the King; from whose obedience I forbid my soul, kneeling before this ruin of sweet life, the incense of a vow, a holy vow, never to taste the pleasures of the world, till I have set a glory to this hand by giving it the worship of revenge.”

Pembroke: “Our souls religiously confirm thy words.”

Enter Hubert

Hubert: “Lords, I am hot with haste in seeking you. Arthur does live.”

Salisbury: “Avaunt, thou hateful villain, get thee gone!”

Hubert: “I am no villain.”

Bigot: “Out dunghill”

Salisbury: “Thou art a murderer.”

Hubert: “Do not prove me so.”

Pembroke: “Cut him to pieces.”

Bastard: “Keep the peace, I say.”

Salisbury: “Stand by or I will gall you, Faulconbridge.”

Bastard: “They were better to gall the devil, Salisbury. I’ll spike thee dead. Put up thy sword or I’ll so maul you that you should think the devil is come from hell.”

Bigot: “Who killed this prince?”

Hubert: “I honoured him, I loved him, and will weep my date of life out for his sweet life’s loss.”

Salisbury: “Trust not those cunning waters of his eyes, for villainy is not without such rheum. Away, with me, all you whose souls abhor the uncleanly savours of a slaughter-house.”

Bigot: “Away toward the Dauphin there!”

Pembroke: “There tell the King he may inquire us out.”

Hubert: “Do but hear me, sir.”

Bastard: “Ha! I’ll tell thee what: thou art damned as black – nay, nothing is so black – thou art more deep damn than Prince Lucifer; there is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell as thou shall be, if thou did kill this child.”

Hubert: “Upon my soul -“

Bastard: “If thou did but consent to this most cruel act, do but despair; and if thou wants a cord, the smallest thread that ever a spider twisted from her womb will serve to strangle thee; or would thou drown thyself, put but a little water in a spoon, and it shall be as all the ocean, enough to stifle all a villain up. I do suspect thee grievously.”

Hubert: “If I in act, consent, or sin of thought, be guilty of the stealing that sweet breath, let hell want pains enough to torture me! I left him well.”

Bastard: “Go, bear him in thine arms. I am amazed, methinks, and lose my way among the thorns and dangers of this world. From forth this morsel of dead royalty the life, the right, the truth of all this realm is fled to heaven; and England now is left to tug and scramble. Vast confusion waits, as does a raven on a sick-fallen beast. Bear away that child. I’ll to the King.”

Summary and Analysis

Arthur stands atop his prison wall, planning to jump and escape. But the jump is a long one and he is afraid. He jumps and dies. Lords Salisbury, Pembroke and Bigot inform the Bastard that they no longer support the King. When they see the dead body of Arthur they are horrified, believing it is the work of King John and Hubert. Just then Hubert arrives and insists that Arthur is alive, unaware that he has jumped off the wall to his death. When informed that Arthur is indeed dead Hubert insists that he had nothing to do with it. The lords do not believe him and storm off to support the Dauphin’s invasion of England. The Bastard tells Hubert that he is eternally damned if he had anything to do with the death of Arthur. Hubert continues to insist that he is innocent and they proceed to find the King. We know that Arthur’s death was accidental but there is nothing Hubert or King John can do to exonerate themselves. Besides, King John is responsible for jailing Arthur and then sending Hubert in to blind and kill him. Hubert may not be able to bring himself to carry out the murder but Arthur’s deadly escape attempt is only necessary because John has confined him so. The noose is tightening around John’s neck as Act V begins.

Act V (7 scenes)

Scene i

England. King John’s palace.

Enter King John and Pandulph

King John: “Thus have I yielded up into your hands the circle of my glory.”

Pandulph: (gives back the crown) “Take again from this my hand your sovereign greatness and authority.”

King John: “Now keep your holy word; go meet the French; and use all your power to stop their marching before we are enflamed. Our discontinued counties do revolt; our people quarrel with obedience, swearing allegiance and love of soul to stranger blood, to foreign royalty. Pause not; for the present time is so sick that present medicine must be ministered or overthrow incurable ensues.“

Pandulph: “It was my breath that blew this tempest up; but since you are a gentle converter, my tongue shall hush again this storm of war and make fair weather in your blustering land. Upon your oath of service to the Pope, go I to make the French lay down their arms.”

Exit Pandulph

King John: “Is this Ascension-day? Did not the prophet say that before Ascension-Day at noon my crown I should give off? Even so I have. But, heaven be thanked, it is but voluntary.”

Enter the Bastard

Bastard: “All Kent has yielded. Nothing there holds out but Dover Castle. London has received the Dauphin and his powers. Your nobles will not hear you, but are gone to offer service to your enemy; and wild amazement hurries up and down the little number of your doubtful friends.”

King John: “Would not my lords return to me again after they heard young Arthur was alive?”

Bastard: “They found him dead and cast into the streets, where the jewel of life by some damned hand was robbed and taken away.”

King John: “That villain Hubert told me he did live.”

Bastard: “So, on my soul, he did, for aught he knew. But wherefore do you droop? Why look you sad? Let not the world see fear and sad distrust govern the motion of a kingly eye. Be stirring as the time; threaten the threatener; so shall inferior eyes grow great by your example and put on the dauntless spirit of resolution. Away, and glister like the god of war; show boldness and aspiring confidence.”

King John: “The legate of the Pope has been with me, and I have made a happy peace with him; and he has promised to dismiss the powers led by the Dauphin.”

Bastard: “O inglorious league! Shall we, upon the footing of our land, make compromise, parlay and base truth, to arms invasive? Shall a fearless boy brave our fields and flesh his spirit in a war-like soil, and find no check? Let us, my liege, too arms.”

Summary and Analysis

King John has made his peace with the Catholic Church, which he hopes will eliminate the French threat of invasion. However, his lords have pretty much all abandoned him and gone over to support the Dauphin, due to what they imagine was King John’s role in the death of young Arthur. The Bastard convinces him to arm and confront the French. The King is in desperation mode, as his kingdom crumbles around him. He may have made peace with Rome, but not with his own nobles, commoners or the French forces.

Act V

Scene ii

England. The Dauphin’s camp.

Enter the Dauphin (Lewis), Salisbury, Melun, Pembroke and Bigot.

Salisbury: “Noble Dauphin, albeit we swear a voluntary zeal and an un-urged faith to your proceedings; yet, believe me, prince, I am not glad that such a sore of time should seek a plaster by contemned revolt, and heal the inveterate canker of one wound by making many. O, it grieves my soul that I must be a widow-maker, there where honourable rescue and defence cries out upon the name of Salisbury! But such is the infection of the time that we cannot deal but with the very hand of stern injustice and confused wrong. And is it not pity, O my grieved friends, that we, the sons and children of this isle, were born to see so sad an hour as this, wherein we step after a stranger-march upon her gentle bosom, and fill up her enemy’s ranks – I must withdraw and weep upon the spot of this enforced cause.”

Lewis: “A noble temper does thou show in this; let me wipe off this honourable dew that does progress on thy cheeks. Lift up thy brow, renowned Salisbury, and with a great heart heave away this storm; come, come; for thou shall thrust thy hand as deep into the purse of rich prosperity as Lewis himself. So, nobles, shall you all, that knit your sinews to the street of mine. (enter Pandulph) Look where the holy legate comes apace to give us warrant from the hand of heaven and on our actions set the name of right with holy breath.”

Pandulph: “Hail, noble prince of France! King John has reconciled himself to Rome; his spirit has come in, that so stood out against the holy church. Therefore, thy threatening colours now wind up and tame the savage spirit of wild war, that it may lie gently at the foot of peace.”

Lewis: “Your Grace shall pardon me, I will not back. Your breath first kindled the dead coal of wars between this chastised kingdom and myself and brought in matter that should feed this fire; and now tis far too huge to be blown out with that same weak wind which enkindled it. You thrust this enterprise into my heart; and come ye now to tell me John has made his peace with Rome? What is that peace to me? I, by the honour of my marriage-bed, after young Arthur, claim this land for mine; and, now it is half conquered, must I back because that John has made his peace with Rome? Am I Rome’s slave? Have I not here the best cards of the game to win this easy match, played for a crown? And shall I now give over the yielded set? No, no, on my soul, it never shall be said.”

Enter the Bastard

Bastard: “According to the fair play of the world, I am sent to speak. From the King I come to learn how you have dealt for him.”

Pandulph: “The Dauphin is too wild-opposite; he flatly says he’ll not lay down his arms.”

Bastard: “The youth says well. Now hear our English King; for thus his royalty does speak in me. He is prepared. This unaired sauciness and boyish troops the King does smile at; and is well prepared to whip this dwarfish war, these pigmy arms. Know the gallant monarch is in arms, and you degenerate, you ingrate revolts, you bloody Neroes, ripping up the womb of your dear mother England, blush for shame.”

Lewis: “We grant thou can outscold us. Fare thee well; we hold our time too precious to be spent with such a babbler.”

Pandulph: “Give me leave to speak.”

Bastard: “No, I will speak.”

Lewis: “We will attend to neither. Strike up the drums; and let the tongue of war plead for our interest and our being here.”

Bastard; “Indeed, your drums, being beaten, will cry out; and so shall you, being beaten. Do but start the clamour of thy drum, and even at hand a drum is ready braced that shall reverberate all as loud as thine: sound but another, and another shall rattle the ear. Warlike John is this day to feast upon the whole thousands of the French.”

Lewis: “Strike up our drums to find this danger out.”

Bastard: “And thou shall find it out, Dauphin, do not doubt.”

Summary and Analysis

In the Dauphin’s camp Salisbury declares his loyalty to the French side but admits that it is very painful for him to do so. The Dauphin appeals to Salisbury and the other English lords to not be so sentimental and to look forward to the prosperity that will follow. Pandulph arrives to announce that England has made its peace with Rome and that therefore the French should curtail their advance upon English soil. The Dauphin simply cannot do this. It was Rome that set the French against England and now that it is coming along very successfully, the Dauphin refuses to surrender his advantage. The bastard appears to tell the French that King John has taken an army to the field that will destroy the French. The Dauphin insists that they will continue their attack on England and a clash of armies seems inevitable.

Act V

Scene iii

England. The field of battle.

Enter King John and Hubert

King John: “How goes the day with us, Hubert?”

Hubert: “Badly, I fear. How fares your Majesty?”

King John: “This fever that has troubled me so lies heavy on me. O, my heart is sick.”

Enter a messenger

Messenger: “My lord, your valiant kinsman, Faulconbridge, desires your majesty to leave the field and send him word by me which way you go. Be of good comfort; for the great supply that was expected by the Dauphin here are wrecked. The French fight coldly and retire themselves.”

King John: “Ay me, this tyrant fever burns me up, and will not let me welcome the good news. Weakness possesses me and I am faint.”

Summary and Analysis

King John is distraught on the battlefield with Hubert. He has a fever that troubles him. A messenger arrives to say that the French supplies have been wrecked at sea and that the French forces are in repeat. The King’s fever will not allow him to celebrate this good news because he is so weak and faint. As we shall soon learn, this fever and weakness is more than just a sickness.

Act V

Scene iv

England. Another part of the battlefield.

Enter Salisbury, Pembroke and Bigot.

Salisbury: “I did not think the King so stored with friends. That misbegotten devil, Faulconbridge, in spite of spite, alone upholds the day.”

Pembroke: “They say King John, sore sick, has left the field.”

Enter Melun wounded.

Pembroke: “It is the Count Melun.”

Salisbury: “Wounded to death.”

Melun: “Fly, noble English, unthread the rude eye of rebellion, and welcome home again discarded faith. Seek out King John, and fall before his feet; for if the French be lords of this loud day, he means to recompense the pains you take by cutting off your heads. This has he sworn.”

Salisbury: “May this be possible? May this be true?”

Melun: “Have I not hideous death within my view retaining but a quantity of life, which bleeds away? What is the world should make me now deceive, since I must lose the use of all deceit? Why should I then be false, since it is true that I must die here. I say again, if Lewis does win the day, he is forsworn if ever those eyes of yours behold another day break in the east; but even this night your breathing shall expire if Lewis by your assistance wins the day. For that my grandsire was an Englishman awakes my conscience to confess all this. In lieu whereof, I pray you, bear me hence from forth the noise and rumour of the field, where I may think the remnant of my thoughts in peace, and part this body and my soul with contemplation and devout desires.”

Salisbury: “We do believe thee. My arm shall give thee help to bear thee hence; for I do see the cruel pangs of death right in thine eye.”

Summary and Analysis

Salisbury, Pembroke and Bigot are astonished that the English army is so powerful. Melun, a wounded French lord, appeals to them to make their peace with King John because if the French win the day, the Dauphin has pledged to murder all of the English lords who have fought for France. O the shifting sands of war.

Act V

Scene V

England. The French Camp.

Enter Lewis

Lewis: “O, bravely came off we. After such bloody toil, we bid goodnight, and wound our tottering colours clearly up.”

Enter a messenger

Messenger: “The Count Melun is slain; the English lords by his persuasion are again fallen off, and your supply, which you have wished for so long, are cast away and sunk.”

Lewis: “Ah, foul, shrewd news! I did not think to be so sad tonight as this has made me.”

Summary and Analysis

The fortunes here turn against Lewis the Dauphin and the French forces, as the English lords have deserted them and their much needed essential supplies have been wrecked at sea. Their prospects of defeating England are now remote.

Act V

Scene vi

An open place near Swinstead Abbey

Enter the Bastard and Hubert

Bastard: “Come, come. What news abroad?”

Hubert: “News fitting to the night, black, fearful, comfortless and horrible.”

Bastard: “Show me the very wound of this ill news; I’ll not swoon at it.”

Hubert: “The King, I fear, is poisoned by a monk; I left him almost speechless and broke out to acquaint you with this evil.”

Bastard: “Who did taste to him?”

Hubert: “A monk, I tell you; a resolved villain. The King yet speaks.”

Bastard: “Who did thou leave to tend his Majesty?”

Hubert: “The Lords have all come back and they brought Prince Henry in their company; at whose request the King has pardoned them, and they are all about his Majesty.”

Bastard: “Conduct me to the King.”

Summary and Analysis

Good news and bad news. The lords have returned to the King. But the King has been poisoned by a monk, likely in response to the raiding of the monasteries. The end is near for King John and our play.

Act V

Scene vii

The orchard at Swinstead Abbey

Enter Prince Henry, Salisbury and Bigot.

Prince Henry: “It is too late; the life of all his blood is touched corruptibly, and his pure brain, which some suppose the soul’s frail dwelling-house, does by the idle comments that it makes foretell the end of mortality.“

Enter Pembroke

Pembroke: “His Highness yet does speak, and holds belief that, being brought into the open air, it would allay the burning quality of that fell poison which assails him.”

Prince Henry: “Let him be brought into the orchard here. Does he still rage?”

Pembroke: “He is more patient than when you left him.”

Prince Henry: “O vanity of sickness! His siege is now against his mind, the which he pricks and wounds with many legions of strange fantasies, which confound themselves.”

Salisbury: “Be of good comfort, Prince; for you are born to set a form upon that indigent which he has left so shapeless and so rude.”

King John is carried in on a chair

King John: “Ay, marry, now my soul has elbow room. There is so hot a summer in my bosom, that all my bowels crumble up to dust, and against this fire do I shrink up.”

Prince Henry: “How fares your majesty?”

King John: “Poisoned – iil-fare! dead, forsook, cast-off. I beg cold comfort. Within me is a hell; and there the poison is as a fiend confined to tyrannize on unreprievable condemned blood.”

Enter the Bastard

Bastard: “O, I am scaled with my violent motion and spleen of speed to see your majesty.”

King John: “O cousin, the tackle of my heart is cracked and burnt and my heart has one poor string to stay it by, which holds but till thy news be uttered.”

Bastard: “The Dauphin is preparing hitherward, where God he knows how we shall answer him.”

King John dies

Prince Henry: “What surety of the world, what hope, what stay, when this was now a king, and now is clay?”

Bastard: “I do but stay behind to do the office for thee of revenge, and then my soul shall wait on thee to heaven, as it on earth has been thy servant still. Instantly return with me again to push destruction and perpetual shame out of the weak door of our fainting land. Straight let us seek, or straight we shall be sought; the Dauphin rages at our very heels.”

Salisbury: “It seems you know not, then, so much as we: the Cardinal Pandulph is within at rest, who half an hour since came from the Dauphin, and brings from him such offers of our peace as we with honour and respect may take, with purpose presently to leave this war.”

Bastard: “He will the rather do it when he sees ourselves well sinewed to our defence.”

Salisbury: “Nay, tis in a manner done already.”

Bastard: “Let it be so.”

Prince Henry: “At Worcester must his body be interred.”

Bastard: “Thither shall it, then. And happily may your sweet self put on the lineal state and glory of the land! To whom, with all submission, on my knee I do bequeath my faithful services and true subjection everlastingly.”

Salisbury: “And the like tender of our love we make.”

Prince Henry: “I have a kind soul that would give you thanks, and knows not how to do it but with tears.”

Bastard: “This England never did, nor never shall, lie at the proud foot of a conquerer, but when it first did help to wound itself. Now these her princes have come home again, come the three corners of the world in arms, and we shall shock them; nought shall make us rue, if England to itself do rest but true.”

Summary and Analysis

So ends the Life and Death of King John, likely Shakespeare’s first history play. The King is clearly dying. His son and heir, Prince Henry, mourns the fact that his father’s mind is gone while his body persists. John is brought in speaking wildly about having been poisoned. He finally dies and his son mourns him while they discuss his funeral. The final words belong to the bastard, who swears his loyalty to Prince Henry and proclaims that England has never been in danger of being conquered except when it divided against itself. England is now strong again and will remain so, according to the Bastard, so long as its citizens remain loyal. This is perhaps a look ahead to the War of the Roses, a struggle between the houses of Lancaster and York, that will tear the country apart from in the 15th century and will be the focus of several subsequent Shakespearean histories. Prince Henry will assume the throne upon the death of King John and will rule England, as King Henry III, for 56 years, the longest reign of an English monarch until that of George III in the 19th century.

Final Thoughts

King John stands alone in the history plays of Willam Shakespeare. John’s reign (1199-1216) was by far the earliest of all of Shakespeare’s historical monarchs. King Richard II (1377-1399), King Henry IV (1399-1413), Henry V (1413-1422) and Henry VI (1422-1461) tell the uninterrupted story of war and succession. The same story is picked up three monarch’s later with Richard III and then two monarchs later with Henry VIII (1509-1547), not long before Queen Elizabeth’s reign (1588-1603) and Shakespeare’s time. King John is concerned with many of the same themes as the other histories, namely a king’s efforts to retain the crown in the face of rival claims, debates about what constitutes legitimate rule, off and on again wars with France, complete with climactic battles, conflicts with the Church in Rome, disloyal lords, murders, assassinations, threats of invasions and the death of a king. And yet, King John remains among the most obscure of all of Shakespeare’s works for several reasons. The narrative is thin, there is no defining event and the only historically memorable occurrence in the reign of King John, the signing of the Magna Carta, is not even mentioned. The ending is generally regarded as unsatisfactory and all of the characters other than the Bastard do not seem fully developed. On the other hand, the Bastard is a marvellous character and several speeches throughout the play are as fine as you will see in any of the Bard’s work. Characters are often examining their own identities in these impressive reflections. King John, in the end, is regarded as a rather uneven bag of tricks whether read or performed. Nonetheless, you can find several Youtube audio versions and at least two stage productions (The Wichita Shakespeare Company and the MIT Shakespeare Ensemble). There is no record of any stage productions of King John in Shakespeare’s day and in fact the earliest one we are aware of is as late as 1737 in Covent Gardens, London. Well regarded 20th century stagings have seen Ralph Richardson, Paul Scofield and Richard Burton in the role of the Bastard.

Introduction

Timon of Athens is play that has always existed on the fringes of the repertory. Written on the very heels of the great tragedies, it’s companion piece would seem to be Coriolanus, another story of a protagonist treated unjustly and tragically withdrawing from society. Timon moves from being a renowned philanthropist to an extreme misanthrope, but only finds torment and death. His tragic flaw is either his excessive goodness or his foolish naiveté . It is a harsh play. In the end, Timon is bitter and revenge minded, entirely consumed by the darkest components of human nature. And then he dies.

Timon is a very wealthy and generous Athenian as the play begins. He joyfully gives everything he has to his friend and acquaintances until he finally goes broke as a result. When he turns to these same friends for help, they outright refuse him. He then invites them all to a banquet and serves hot water in bowls, which he throws at them. Timon chooses to become a hermit in a cave near the sea, away from the society of Athens. Here he digs up a hidden treasure and gives it away to whores, bandits and to his one friend, Alcibaides, who is leading an army against the corrupt senators of Athens. Timon pretty much rejects everyone who comes out to try to reason with him. Alcibiades wins the war against the senate and promises to rule Athens justly. News arrives that Timon died committed to his hatred of humanity.

Timon is a tragic figure who we can feel sorry for but never regard him anywhere near the status of King Lear, who, in the end, is redeemed by his suffering. Timon has no such epiphanies, does nothing but rail and dies a soulless and pathetic man. Few of Shakespeare’s characters embody such a nihilistic vision with the same commitment as Timon. There is a persistent intensity throughout this play, without relief or diversion. There is even very little plot to speak of. Appropriately enough, there is a cynical philosopher in the play, Apemantus, who condemns Timon as well as his false friends. Their sparing exchanges certainly are among the highlights. Flavius is Timon’s steward and is warm and sympathetic to his plight: ‘I bleed inwardly for my lord’. His human kindness is in sharp contrast to nearly everyone else in the play, including the seriously foolish old Athenian Senators.

There is an excessive fury, bordering on madness, that inhabits Timon of Athens. But Shakespeare clearly struggles with this final tragic depiction. In that sense it is a transitional play, positioned between the great tragedies and the emerging romances. There is little inwardness of character development in this play and perhaps Shakespeare realizes that it is time to move on to some new style. There will be no more tragedies. He seems, on occasion, to be at something of a loss here. The focus is so much on Timon that the various supporting characters are never sufficiently developed and coming out of such a period of extraordinary tragic genius, this work can appear tired. The only women are whores and there is no conventional love plot to be found. Hence, the romances, up next, will explode with extensive plots, a multitude of characters, miraculous misadventures, spectacular sets, costumes and dramatic resolution scenes. And yet, Timon of Athens can be staged quite effectively, is thematically relevant to all times and places (can money buy love?) and contains several superbly written scenes. Although widely regarded as better seen than read, nonetheless, we proceed.

Act I (2 scenes)

Scene i

Athens. Timon’s house

Enter Poet, Painter, Jeweller and Merchant

Poet: “Good day, sir. How goes the world?”

Painter: “It wears, sir, as it grows.”

Poet: “Ay, that’s well known.”

Jeweller: “I have a jewel here.”

Merchant: “For the Lord Timon, sir? Tis a good form.”

Poet: “What have you there?”

Painter: “A picture, sir.”

Poet: “So it is. This comes off well and excellent. I would say it tutors nature livelier than life.”

Enter certain Senators.

Painter: “How this lord is followed!”

Poet: “You see this confluence, this great flood of visitors. You see how all minds and slippery creatures tender down their services to Lord Timon. His large fortune and gracious nature subdues all sorts of hearts, from the glass faced flatterers to Apemantus; even he drops down the knee before him.”

Enter Timon and a visitor.

Timon: “Imprisoned is he, you say?”

Messenger: “Ay, my good lord. Five talents is his debt; your honourable letter he desires to those who shut him up.”

Timon: “Well, I am not of that feather to shake off my friend when he must need me. I do know him a gentleman who well deserves a help, which he shall have. I’ll pay the debt, and free him. Commend me to him; I will send his ransom. Tis not enough to help the feeble up, but to support him after. Fare you well.”

Enter an old Athenian.

Old Athenian: “Lord Timon, hear me speak.”

Timon: “Freely, good father.”

Old Athenian: “Thou has a servant named Lucilius.”

Timon: “I have so; what of him?”

Old Athenian: “Most noble Timon, call the man before thee.”

Timon: “Attends he here, or no? Lucilius!”

Lucilius: “Here, at your lordship’s service.”

Old Athenian: “This fellow here, Timon, this thy creature, by night frequents my house. Only one daughter have I on whom I may confer what I have. The maid is fair, and I have bred her at my dearest cost in qualities of the best. This man of thine attempts her love. I prithee, noble lord, forbid him her resort; myself has spoken in vain.”

Timon: “The man is honest. Does she love him?”

Old Athenian: “She is young and apt.”

Timon: (to Lucilius) “Love you the maid?”

Lucilius: “Ay, my good lord, and she accepts of it.”

Timon: “This gentleman of mine has served me long; to build his fortune I will strain little. Give him thy daughter.”

Old Athenian: “My noble lord, she is his.”

Lucilius: “Humbly I thank your lordship.”

Exit Lucilius and the Old Athenian

Poet: (presenting his poem) “Vouchsafe my labour, and long live your lordship!”

Timon: “I thank you. Go not away. What have you there, my friend?”

Painter: “A piece of painting, which I do beseech your lordship to accept.”

Timon: “Painting is welcome. I like your work, and you shall find I like it. Wait till you hear further from me.”

Painter: “The gods preserve thee.”

Timon: “Sir, your jewel has suffered under praise.”

Jewelle: “Believe it, dear lord, you mend the jewel by wearing it.”

Enter Apemantus

Timon: “Good morrow to thee, gentle Apemantus!”

Apemantus: Till I be gentle, stay thou for thy good morrow; when thou art Timon’s dog, and these knaves honest.”

Timon: “Why does thou call them knaves? Thou knows them not.”

Apemantus: “Are they not Athenians?”

Timon: Yes.”

Apemantus: “Then I repent not.”

Timon: “Thou art proud, Apemantus.”

Apemantus: “Of nothing so much as that I am not like Timon.”

Timon: “Wither art thou going?”

Apemantus: “To knock out an honest Athenian’s brains.”

Timon: “How like thou this picture, Apemantus? Wrought he not well who painted it?”

Apemantus: “He wrought better who made the painter; and yet he is but a filthy piece of work.”

Painter: “You are a dog.”

Apemantus: “Thy mother; what is she, if I be a dog?”

Timon: “Will thou dine with me, Apemantus?”

Apemantus: “No, I eat not lords.”

Timon: “How does thou like this jewel, Apemantus?”

Apemantus: “Not so well as plain dealing, which will not cost a man a doit.”

Timon: “What does those think tis worth?”

Apemantus: “Not worth my thinking. How now, poet!”

Poet: “How now, philosopher!”

Apemantus: “Thou lies.”

Poet: “Are thou not one?”

Apemantus: “Yes.”

Poet: “Then I lie not.”

Apemantus: “Art thou not a poet?”

Poet: “Yes.”

Apemantus: “Then thou lies. Look in thy last work”, where thou has feigned him a worthy fellow.”

Poet: “That’s not feigned – he is so.”

Apemantus: “Yes, he is worthy of thee and pays thee for thy labour. He who loves to be flattered is worthy of the flatterer. Heavens, that I were a lord.”

Timon: “What would thou do then, Apemantus?”

Apemantus: “Even as Apemantus does now: hate a lord with my heart.”

Timon: “What, thyself?”

Apemantus: “Ay.”

Timon: “Wherefore?”

Apemantus: “That I had no angry wit to be a lord.”

Enter a messenger

Messenger: “Tis Alcibiades and some twenty horses.”

Enter Alcibiades

Timon: “Right welcome, sir! Ere we depart we’ll share a bounteous time in different pleasures.”

Exit all but Apemantus and two lords.

1 Lord: “What time of day is it, Apemantus?”

Apemantus: “Time to be honest.”

2 Lord: “Are thou going to Lord Timon’s feast?”

Apemantus: “Ay, to see meat filled knaves and wine heat fools.”

2 Lord: “Fare thee well, fare thee well.”

Apemantus: “Thou art a fool to bid me farewell twice.”

2 Lord: “Why, Apemantus?”

Apemantus: “You should have kept one to thyself, for I mean to give thee none.”

1 Lord: “Hang thyself.”

Apemantus: “No, I will do nothing at thy bidding.”

2 Lord: “Away unpeaceable dog, or I’ll spurn thee hence.”

Apemantus: “I will fly, like a dog.”

Exit Apemantus

1 Lord: “He’s opposite to humanity. Come shall we go in and taste Lord Timon’s bounty? He outdoes the very heart of kindness. The noblest mind he carries that ever governed man.”

2 Lord: “Long may he live in fortune!”

Summary and Analysis

The basic premise is laid out clearly in the first scene. Timon is a very wealthy lord who generously bestows whatever is asked of him by his so-called friends. They gather at his home to sell him their poetry, paintings and jewelry. He offers to pay the debt of a man who is being held in prison and provides a considerable sum to his servant so that he can marry a wealthy man’s daughter. Apemantus, the cynical philosopher, arrives and banters with Timon and then insults some of the flatters and lords. He clearly believes that these hanger-oners are taking advantage of Timon’s generosity and he is deliberate in his condemnation of them. Shakespeare so often has such a vocal cynic in his plays, providing acerbic commentary on the goings on as he sees fit. Apemantus is one of the better of these and, as we will see, he is bang on about these flatterers. As long as Timon’s money holds out, everyone is happy. But this is, after all, a tragedy.

Act I

Scene ii

A room in Timon’s house

Loud music playing. A great banquet served.

Enter Timon, Flavius (his servant), many Lords and Apemantus

Ventidius: (whom he retrieved from prison) Most honoured Timon, it has pleased the gods to remember my father’s age, and call him to long peace. He is gone happy and has made me rich then, as in grateful virtue I am bound to your free heart. I do return those talents, doubled with thanks and service, from whose help I derived liberty.”

Timon: “O, by no means, honest Ventidius! You mistake my love: I gave it freely ever; and there’s none can truly say he gives, if he receives.”

Ventidius: “A noble spirit!”

Timon: “Pray, sit: more welcome are you to my fortunes than my fortunes to me. O, Apemantus, you are welcome.”

Apemanus: “No, you shall not make me welcome. I come to have you thrust me out of doors.”

Timon: “Fie, thou art a churl; you have got a humour there, does not become a man. My lords, yonder man is ever angry. Go, let him have a table by himself; for he does neither affect company nor is he fit for it indeed.”

Apemantus: “I come to observe; I give thee warning on it.”

Timon: “I take no heed of thee. Thou art an Athenian, therefore welcome. Prithee, let my meat make thee silent.”

Apemantus: “I scorn thy meat; t’would choke me, for I should never flatter thee. O, you gods, what a number of men eat Timon, and he sees them not! It grieves me to see so many dip their meat in one man’s blood; and all the madness is, he cheers them up, too. I wonder men dare trust themselves with men. Methinks they should invite them without knives: good for their meat and safer for their lives. The fellow who sits next to him now, parts bread with him, pledges the breath of him in a divided draught, is the readiest man to kill him. Great men should drink with a harness on their throats.”

Timon: “My lord, in heart! And let the health go around.”

2 Lord: “Let it flow this way, my good lord.”

Apemantus: “Flow this way! A brave fellow! Those healths will make thee and thy state look ill.”

Apemantus’ grace:

“Immortal gods, I pray for no man but myself. Grant I should never prove so fond to trust a man on his oath or bond, or a harlot for her weeping, or a dog that seems a-sleeping, or my friends, if I should need them. Amen. So fall to it. Rich men sin, and I eat root.”

Timon: “Captain Alcibiades, you heart is in the field now.”

Alcibiades: “My heart is ever at your service, my lord.”

Timon: “You had rather be at a breakfast of enemies than a dinner of friends.”

Alcibiades: “I could wish my best friends at such a feast.”

Apemantus: “Would all those flatterers were thine enemies then, that thou might kill them.”

Timon: “My good friends, the gods themselves have provided that I shall have much help from you. I have told more of you to myself than you can with modesty speak in your own behalf; and this far I confirm you. O, you gods, think I, what need we have any friends if we should never have need of them? They were the most needless creatures living, should we never have use for them; and would most resemble sweet instruments hung up in cases, that keep their sounds to themselves. Why, I have often wished myself poorer, that I might come nearer to you. We are born to do benefits; and what better can we call our own than the riches of our friends? O what a precious comfort it is to have so many like brothers commanding one another’s fortunes! My eyes cannot hold out water, methinks. I drink to you.”

Apemantus: “Thou weeps to make them drink, Timon.”

Enter a servant

Servant: “Please you, my lord, there are certain ladies most desirous of admittance.”

Timon: “Ladies! What are their wills? I pray, let them be admitted.”

Enter Cupid

Cupid: “Hail to thee, worthy Timon, and to all that of his bounties taste! The five best senses acknowledge thee their patron.”

Timon: “They’re welcome all; let them have kind admittance.”

1 Lord: “You see, my lord, how ample you are beloved.”

Enter a masque of ladies as Amazons, with lutes, dancing and playing.”

Apemantus: “What a sweep of vanity comes this way! They dance? They are mad women, like madness is the glory of this life. We make ourselves fools to disport ourselves. Who lives who is not depraved or depraves? Who dies but spares not one spurn to their graves of their friends’ gift? I should fear those who dance before me now would one day stamp upon me.”

Lords rise from the table and each singles out an Amazon, and all dance.

Timon: “You have done our pleasures much grace, fair ladies. I am to thank you for it.”

1 Lady: “My lord, you take us even at the best.”

Apemantus: “Faith, for the worst is filthy, and would not hold taking, I doubt me.”

Exit Cupid and the ladies.

Timon: “Flavius!”

Flavius: “My lord?”

Timon: “The little casket, bring me hither.”

Flavius: “Yes, my lord. (aside) More jewels yet! There is no crossing him in his humour, else I should tell him – well in faith, I should – when all is spent, he’d be crossed then.”

Timon: “O my friends, I have one word to say to you. Look you, my good lord, I must entreat you to honour me so much as to advance this jewel; accept it and wear it, my lord.”

1 Lord: “I am so far in your gifts – “

All: “So are we all.”

Enter servant

Servant: “My lord, there are certain nobles of the Senate newly alighted who come to visit you.”

Timon: “They are fairly welcome.”

Flavius: “I beseech your honour, vouchsafe me a word; it does concern you near.”

Timon: “Near! Why then, another time I’ll hear thee. I prithee, lets be provided to show them entertainment.”

2 Servant: “May it please your honour, Lord Lucius, out of his free love, has presented to you three milk white horses, tapped in silver.”

Timon: “I shall accept them fairly.”

3 Servant: “Please you, my lord, that honourable gentleman, Lord Lucullus, entreats your company tomorrow to hunt with him and has sent your honour two brace of greyhounds.”

Timon: “I’ll hunt with him, and let them be received, not without fair reward.”

Flavius: (aside) “What will this come to? He commands us to provide and give great gifts, and all out of an empty coffer; nor will he know his purse. Here, my lord, or yield me this, to show him what a beggar his heart is, being of no power to make his wishes good. His promises fly so beyond his state that what he speaks is all in debt; he owes for every word. He is so kind that he now pays interest for it; well, would I were gently put out of office before I were forced out! Happier is he who has no friends to feed, than such who have enemies exceed. I bleed inwardly for my lord.”

Timon: “You do yourselves much wrong. Here, my lord, a trifle of our love.”

2 Lord: “With more than common thanks I will receive it.”

Timon: “I weigh my friend’s affection with my own. I take all and your several visitations so kind to heart ’tis not enough to give; methinks I could deal kingdoms to my friends and never be weary. Alcibiades, thou art a soldier, therefore seldom rich; for all thy living is among the dead, and all the lands thou has lie in a pitched field.”

Alcibiades: “Ay, defiled land, my lord.”

1 Lord: “We are so virtuously bound.”

Timon: “And so am I to you.”

2 Lord: “So infinitely endeared.”

Timon: “All to you.”

1 Lord: “The best of happiness, honour, and fortunes, keep with you, Lord Timon!”

Exit all but Apemantus and Timon

Apemantus: “What a coil is here. Friendships full of dregs: methinks false hearts should never have sound legs. Thus honest fools lay out their wealth on curtsies.”

Timon: “Now, Apemantus, If thou were not sullen, I would be good to thee.”

Apemantus: “No, I’ll nothing; for if I should be bribed too, there would be none left to rail upon thee, and then thou would sin the faster. Thy gives so long, Timon, I fear me thou will give away thyself shortly. What needs these feasts, pomps and vainglories?”

Timon: “Nay, as you begin to rail on society, I am sworn not to give regard to you. Farewell, and come with better music.”

Exit Timon

Apemantus: “So. Thou will not hear me now: thou shall not then. O that men’s ears should be to counsel deaf, but not to flattery!”

Summary and Analysis

In this scene we are witness to Timon’s great feast for his friends / flatterers, in which he spares no expense to lavish his guests with his unmitigated generosity and kindness. When Apemantus arrives his presence is unlike anyone else, with his overall biting cynicism and sharp barbs for each person his speaks with. He does not believe for a second that these people care one bit about Timon. They are leaches not to be trusted. He is angry at Timon for not seeing this. Flavius, Timon’s servant, is also concerned for Timon because he keeps the financial records and sees that his reserves are drying up and that he is virtually in debt, even as he continues to spend lavishly on his guests. But this is the end game of his generosity, as act I comes to a close. He will be called to account in act II and from there it only gets worse. Apemantus was right after all: ‘O, you gods. What a number of men eat Timon, and he sees it not.’

Act II

Scene i

A senator’s house.

Enter a senator, with papers

Senator: “And late, five thousand. To Varro and Isidore he owes nine thousand; besides my former sum, which makes it five and twenty. Still in motion of raging waste? It cannot hold; it will not. Caphis, ho!”

Caphis: “Here, sir; what is your pleasure?”

Senator: “Get on your cloak and haste you to Lord Timon; importune him for my monies, be not ceased with slight denial, nor be silenced. But tell him my uses cry to me, I must serve my turn out of my own; his days and times are past. I love and honour him, but must not break my back to heal his finger. Immediate are my needs, and my relief must find supply immediate. Get you gone; put on a most importunate aspect, a visage of demand; for I do fear, when every feather sticks in his own wing, Lord Timon will be left a naked gull, which flashes now a phoenix. Get you gone.”

Caphis: “I go, sir.”

Summary and Analysis

Here comes the fall. This senator has loaned Timon money, as have many others, in order to allow him to finance his extravagances. And now they will demand their money, which he no longer has. This has been a recipe for disaster, whose time has come. Timon’s life is about to change dramatically, along with Timon.

Act II (2 scenes)

Scene ii

Before Timon’s house.

Enter Flavius with many bills in his hands.

Flavius: “No care, no stop! So senseless of expense that he will neither know how to maintain it nor cease his flow of riot; takes no account how things go from him, nor resumes no care of what is to continue. What shall be done? I must be round with him.”

Enter Caphis and the servants of Isidore and Varro.

Caphis: “Good even, Varro. What, you come for money?”

Varro’s Servant: “Is it not your business too?”

Caphis: “It is. And your business too, Isidore?”

Isidore’s Servant: “It is so.”

Cahpis: “Here comes the lord.”

Enter Timon with Alcibiades

Caphis: “My lord, here is a note of certain dues.”

Timon: “Dues! Whence are you?”

Caphis: “Of Athens here, my lord.”

Timon: “Go to my steward.”

Caphis: “Please it your lordship, he has put me off. My master is awakened by great occasion to call upon his own, and humbly prays you’ll give him his right.”

Timon: “My honest friend, I prithee but repair to me next morning.”

Caphis: “Nay, good my lord -“

Timon: Contain thyself, good friend.”

Varro’s Servant: “One Varro’s servant, my good lord -“

Isidore’s Servant: “From Isidore: he humbly prays your speedy payment -“

Caphis: “If you did know, my lord, my master’s wants -“

Varro’s Servant: “Twas due on forfeiture, my lord, six weeks and past.”

Isidore’s Servant: “Your Steward puts me off, my lord; and I am sent expressly to your lordship.”

Timon: “Give me breath. I do beseech you, good my lords, keep on; I’ll wait upon you instantly.”

Timon: (to Flavius) “Come hither. Pray you, how goes the world that I am thus encountered with clamorous demands of date-broke bonds and the detention of long since due debts against my honour?”

Flavius: “Please you, gentlemen, the time is unagreeable to this business. Your impotency cease till after dinner, that I may make his lordship understand wherefore you are not paid.”

Timon: “Do so, my friends. See them well entertained.”

Exit Timon and Flavius

Enter Apemantus and a fool

Caphis: “Here comes the fool with Apemantus. Let’s have some sport with them.”

Varro’s Servant: “Hang him, he’ll abuse us!”

Isidore’s Servant: “A plague upon him, dog!”

Varro’s Servant: “How dost, fool?”

Apemantus: “Does thou dialogue with thy shadow?”

Varro’s Servant: “I speak not to thee.”

Apemantus: “No, tis to thyself. Poor rogues and usurer’s men! Bawds between gold and want!”

All Servants: “What are we, Apemantus?”

Apemantus: “Asses.”

All Servants: “Why?”

Apemantus: “That you ask me what you are, and do not know yourselves. Speak to them, fool.”

Fool: “How do you, gentlemen?”

All Servants: “Good, fool.”

Fool: “Are you three usurers’ men?”

All Servants: “Ay, fool.”

Fool: “I think no usurer but has a fool to his servant. My mistress is one, and I am her fool. When men come to borrow of your masters, they approach sadly and go away merry. But they enter my mistress’ house merrily and go away sadly. The reason for this?”

Varro’s Servant: “I could render one.”

Apemantus: “Do it then, that we may account thee a whoremaster and a knave. which notwithstanding, thou shall be no less esteemed.”

Varro’s Servant: “What is a whoremaster, fool?”

Fool: “A fool in good clothes, and sometimes like thee. Tis a spirit. Sometimes it appears like a lord; sometimes like a lawyer; sometimes like a philosopher; he is very often like a knight; and generally, in all shapes of man this spirit walks in.”

Varro’s Servant: “Thou are not altogether a fool.”

Fool: “Nor are thou altogether a wise man. As much foolery as I have, so much wit thou lacks.”

Enter Timon and Flavius

Flavius: “Pray you walk near; I’ll speak with you anon.”

Timon: “You make me marvel wherefore ere this time had you not fully laid my state before me, that I might so have rated my expense as I had leave of means.”

Flavius: “You would not hear me at many leisures I proposed. O, my good lord, at many times I brought in my accounts and laid them before you; you would throw them off. You have bid me return so much, I have shook my head and wept. Against the authority of manners, I prayed you to hold your hand more close. My loved lord, though you hear now, it is too late. The greatest of your having lacks a half to pay your present debts.’

Timon: “Let all my land be sold.”

Flavius: “Tis all engaged, some forfeited and gone; and what remains will hardly stop the mouth of present dues. The future comes apace. What shall defend the interim? O, my good lord, the world is but a word; were it all yours to give it in a breath, how quickly were it gone!”

Timon: “You tell me true.”

Flavius: “If you suspect my husbandry or falsehood, call me before the exactest auditors and set me on the proof. So the gods bless me, when all our offices have been oppressed with riotous feeders, I set my eyes at flow.”

Timon: “Prithee, no more.”

Flavius: “‘Great Timon, noble, worthy, royal Timon!’ Ah, when the means are gone that buy this praise, the breath is gone whereof this praise is made.”

Timon: “Come, sermon me no further. Unwisely, not ignobly, have I given. Why does thou weep? Does thou the conscience lack to think I shall lack friends? Secure thy heart: if I would broach the vessels of my love, and try the argument of hearts by borrowing, men and women’s fortunes could I frankly use as I could bid thee speak.”

Flavius: “Assurance bless your thoughts!”

Timon: “And, in some sort, these wants of mine are crowned that I account them blessings; for by these shall I try friends. You shall perceive how you mistake my fortunes. I am wealthy in my friends. Within there! Flaminius! Servilius!!

Enter Flaminius and Servilius (more servants to Timon)

Timon: “I will dispatch you severally – you to Lord Lucius; to Lord Lucullus you; you too Sempronius. Commend me to their loves; and I am proud, say, that my occasions have found time to use them toward a supply of money. Let the request be fifty talents.”

Exit the servants

Timon: “Go you, sir, to the senators, of whom I have I have deserved this hearing. Bid them to send on the instant a thousand talents to me.”

Flavius: “I have been bold to them to use your signet and your name; but they do shake their heads, and I am here no richer in return.”

Timon: “Is it true? Can it be?”

Flavius: “They answer, in a joint and corporate voice, that now they are at fall, want treasure, cannot do what they would, are sorry – you are honourable – but something has been amiss – would all were well – tis a pity – and so after distasteful looks they froze me into silence.”

Timon: “You gods, reward them! Prithee, man, look cherry. These old fellows have their ingratitude in them hereditary. Their blood is caked, tis cold, it seldom flows; tis lack of kindly warmth; they are not kind. Go to Ventidius. Prithee not be sad, thou art true and honest; no blame belongs to thee. Ventidius lately buried his father, by whose death he has stepped into a great estate. When he was poor, imprisoned and in scarcity of friends, I cleared him with five talents. Greet him from me, bid him suppose from good necessity touches his friend, which craves to be remembered with those five talents. Never speak or think that Timon’s fortunes among his friends can sink.”

Flavius: “I would I could not think it. That thought is bounty’s foe; being free itself, it thinks all others so.”

Summary and Analysis

Flavius, Timon’s servant, is astonished by his master’s spending. Timon refuses to hear a word from Flavius about the ruination of his expenses. In short, he is going broke due to his generosity with his friends. Servants from lords who Timon owes money to have come to collect their due. When Timon asks them to come back another day they inform him that they have been sent away too many times. When Timon questions Flavius about why he was never informed of his perilous financial state, Flavius explains that he tired to tell him many times but that he simply would not listen. Nonetheless Timon is all but certain that he can borrow money from his many friends who he has been so lavish with for so long. He sends three servants to three friends, requesting a loan, but Flavius has already tried this and was denied. They said that they were very busy and quite sorry but they could not advance Timon a loan. BY the end of the scene Timon remains confident that he can get the help he needs from those he has helped prosper for so long. It is early in the play, but this is the downfall. Timon has borrowed lots of money in order to remain so generous and now he is broke and the creditors are at his door. He must hope to borrow money from certain friends to pay back money to others. He ignored Flavius for too long and now the situation is very serious indeed. A fool appears in this scene, and he ridicules the creditor’s servants with all of the typical wit of Shakespearean fools. But the real fool is increasingly Timon. Act III will prove his final attempts to secure the money he needs from the people he trusts. It will prove the true turning point in the play and in his life.

Act III (6 scenes)

Scene i

Lucullus’ house

Flaminius, waiting to speak with Lucullus. Enter a servant.

Servant: “My lord, he is going to you.”

Flaminius: “I thank you, sir.”

Lucullus: (aside) “One of Timon’s men? A gift, I warrant. Why, this hits right; I dreamt of a silver basin. Flaminius, you are very welcome, sir. And how does that honourable, complete, free-hearted gentleman of Athens, thy very bountiful good lord and master?”

Flaminius: “His health is well, sir.”

Lucullus: “What has thou there under thy cloak, pretty Flaminius?”

Flaminius: “Faith, nothing but an empty box, sir, which in my lord’s behalf I come to entreat your honour to supply; who, having great and instant occasion to use fifty talents, has sent me to your lordship to furnish him, nothing doubting your present assistance therein.”

Lucullus: “La, la, la la! ‘Nothing doubting’ says he? Alas, good lord! A Noble gentleman tis, if he would not keep so good a house. Many a time and often I had dined with him and told him to spend less; and yet he would embrace no counsel. Every man has his fault, and honesty is his. I have told him, but could never get him from it. Draw near, honest Flaminius. Thy lord is a bountiful gentleman; but thou art wise, and thou knows well enough, although thou comes to me, that this is no time to lend money, especially upon bare friendship without security. Here’s three solidares for thee. Good boy, wink at me, and say thou saw me not. Fair thee well.”

Flaminius: “Is it possible the world should so much differ? Fly, damned baseness, to him that worships thee.” (throws the money back)

Lucullus: “Ha! Now I see thou art a fool, and fit for thy master.”

Exit Lucullus

Flaminius: “Let molten coin be thy damnation, thou disease of a friend! Has friendship such a faint and milky heart it turns in less than two nights? O, you gods, I feel my master’s passion! This slave unto his honour has my lord’s meat in him. Why should it thrive and turn to nutriment when he is turned to poison? O, may diseases only work upon it! And when he’s sick to death, let not that part of nature which my lord paid for be of any power to expel sickness, but prolong his hour!”

Summary and Analysis

In this scene Timon’s servant, Flaminius, appeals to Lucullus, who has long benefitted from Timon’s generosity. Lucullus praises Timon but also claims to have warned him many times to reduce his spending. Concluding that it is not a good time to lend money to friends, he gives Flaminius some coins as a bribe to lie and say that he never spoke with him. Flaminius throws the coins back at Lucullus, curses him and wishes him prolonged sickness and death.

Act III

Scene ii

A public place

Enter Lucius with 3 strangers

Lucius: “Who, the Lord Timon? He is my very good friend and an honourable gentleman.”

1 Stranger: “We know him for no less, though we are but strangers to him. But I can tell you one thing, my lord: Lord Timon’s happy hours are done and past, and his estate shrinks from him.”

Lucius: “Fie, no: do not believe it; he cannot want for money.

2 Stranger: “But believe you this, my lord, that not long ago one of his men was with the Lord Lucullus to borrow so many talents; nay, urged extremely for it, yet was denied.”

Lucius: “How? What a strange case was that! Denied that honourable man! For my own part, I must needs confess, I have received some small kindnesses from him, as money, plates, jewels and such trifles; yet had he mistook him and sent to me, I should never have denied his occasions so many talents.”

Enter Servilius

Lucius: “Servilius? You are kindly met, sir. Commend me to thy honourable virtuous lord, my very exquisite friend.”

Servilius: “May it please your honour, my lord has sent -“

Lucius: “Ha! What has he sent? I am so much endeared to that lord; he’s ever sending. How shall I thank him? And what has he sent me now?”

Servilius: “Has only sent his present occasion now, my lord, requesting your lordship to supply his instant use with so many talents.”

Lucius: “I know his lordship is but merry with me; he cannot want fifty-five hundred talents.”

Servilius: “If his occasion were not virtuous I should not urge it half so faithfully.”

Lucius: “Does thou speak seriously, Servilius?”

Servilius: “Upon my soul, tis true, sir.”

Lucius: “Servilius, now before the gods, I am not able to do. I was sending to use Lord Timon myself. Commend me bountifully to my good lordship, because I have no power to be kind. And tell him this for me: I count it one of my greatest afflictions, say, that I cannot pleasure such an honourable gentleman. Good Servilius, would you befriend me so far as to use my own words to him?”

Servilius: “Yes, sir, I shall.”

Lucius: “I’ll look you out a good turn, Servilius.”

Exit Servilius

1 Stranger: “Do you observe this, Hostilius?”

2 Stranger: “Ay, too well.”

1 Stranger: “Why, this is the world’s soul, and just of the same piece is every flatterers spirit. Who can call him his friend who dips in the same dish? For in my knowing, Timon has been this lord’s father, and kept his credit with his purse; supported his estate; nay, Timon’s money has paid his men their wages. And yet, O see the monstrousness of man when he looks out in an ungrateful shape! He does deny him what charitable men afford to beggars.”

3 Stranger: “Religion groans at it. I perceive that men must learn now with pity to dispense; for policy sits above conscience.”

Summary and Analysis

A second lord, Lucius, who benefited enormously from Timon’s generosity, turns away his servant in this scene. At first these strangers tell him that Lucullus denied Timon a loan. He can’t believe that Timon could want for money and is horrified that Lucullus would not supply him with what he needed. But then comes Servilius, Timon’s servant, who asks the same of Lucius, who suddenly does not have such money available and pleasantly sends Servilius on his way with nothing. The strangers are disgusted, as Timon was like a father to Lucius, maintaining his credit, supporting his estate and even paying the wages of his workers. And now he claims to have nothing available to help Timon in his hour of need. It is becoming clear that none of the people Timon supported will assist him in the least when he needs it the most.

Act III

Scene iii

Sempronius’ house. Enter Sempronius and a servant of Timon’s.

Sempronius: “Must he needs trouble by this? He might have tried Lucius or Lucullus; and now Ventidius is wealthy too, whom he redeemed from prison. All of these owe their estates unto him.”

Servant: “My lord, they have all been touched and found to be base metal, for they have all denied him.”

Sempronius: “They have denied him and he now sends for me? It shows but little love or judgment in him. Must I be his last refuge? Must I take the cure upon me? I am angry at him. His occasions might have wood me first. For, in my conscience, I was the first man to ever receive a gift from him. And does he think so backwardly of me now that I’ll requite it last? No. It may prove an argument of laughter to the rest and I among lords be thought a fool. But now return with this faint reply: who baits my honour shall not know my coin.”

Exit Sempronius

Servant: “Excellent! Your lordship’s a goodly villain. And I cannot think but, in the end, the villainies of man will set him clear. How fairly this lord strives to appear foul! This was my lord’s best hope; now all are fled, save only the gods. Now his friends are dead.”

Summary and Analysis

This was Timon’s last hope and Sempronius denies him because he was only asked after Lucius and Lucullus. He is slighted to have been asked last and leaves the room angry. Of course, he needed some excuse and apparently this was the best he could do. Timon has been abandoned by those he lavishly adorned with gifts for years. The great philanthropist is about to turn misanthropic in a hurry.

Act III

Scene iv

A hall in Timon’s house

Enter two of Varro’s men, meeting Lucius’ servant, all being servants of Timon’s creditors, to wait for his coming out. Enter Titus and Hortensius.

Hortensius: “Lucius! What, do we meet together?”

Lucius’ Servant: “Ay, and I think one business does command us all; for mine is money.”

Titus: “So is theirs and ours.”

Enter Philotus

Philotus: “Is not my lord seen yet?”

Lucius’ Servant: “Not yet.”

Philotus: “I wonder on it; he was wont to shine at seven.”

Lucius’ Servant: “Ay, but the days are waxed shorter with him. Tis deepest winter in Timon’s purse. That is, one may reach deep enough and yet find little.”

Philotus: “I am of your fear for that.”

Lucius’ Servant: “Mark how strange it shows Timon in this should pay more than he owes, even as your lord should wear rich jewels.”

Hortensius: “I know my lord has spent Timon’s wealth, and now ingratitude makes it worse than stealth.”

1 Varro’s Servant: “Mine is three thousand crowns. What’s yours?”

Lucius’ Servant: “Five thousand mine.”

1 Varro’s Servant: “Tis much deep.”

Enter Flaminius

Titus: “One of Lord Timon’s men.”

Lucius’ Servant: “Flaminius! Sir, a word. Pray, is my lord ready to come forth?”

Flaminius: “No, indeed, he is not.”

Titus: “We attend his lordship. Pray, signify so much.”

Flaminius: “I need not tell him; he knows you are too diligent.”

Exit Flaminius

Lucius’ Servant: “Ha! Is not that his steward? Call him! Call him!”

Titus: “Do you hear, sir? We wait for certain money here, sir.”

Flavius: “If money were as certain as your waiting, twere sure enough. Why then preferred you not your sums and bills when your false masters eat of my lord’s meat? Then they could smile and fawn upon his debts, and take down the interest into their gluttenous gullets.”

Lucius’ Servant: “Ay, but this answer will not serve.”

Flavius: “If it will not serve, tis not so base as you, for you serve knaves.”

Enter Servilius

Titus: “O, here’s Servilius; now we shall know some answer.”

Servilius: “If I might beseech you, gentlemen, to repair some other hour, I should derive much from it; for take of my soul, my lord leans wondrously toward discontent. His comfortable temper has forsook him; he’s much out of health and keeps to his chamber.”

Lucius’ Servant: “Methinks he should the sooner pay his debts, and make a clear way to the gods.”

Servillius: “Good gods!”

Enter Timon, in a rage

Titus: “My lord, here is my bill.”

Lucius’ Servant: “Here’s mine.”

Hortensius: “And mine, my lord.”

Both Varro’s Servants: “And ours, my lord.”

Philotus: “All our bills.”

Timon: “Knock me down with them. Cut my heart in sums. Tell out my blood. Tear me, take me, and the gods fall upon you!”

Exit Timon

Hortensius: “These debts may be called desperate ones, for a madman owes them.”

Re-enter Timon and Flavius

Timon: “They have even taken my breath from me, the slaves. Creditors? Devils! What if it be so? Go, bid all my friends again. I’ll once more feast the rascals.”

Flavius: “O, my lord, you only speak from your distracted soul; there is not so much left to furnish out a moderate table.”

Timon: “Go, I charge thee, invite them all; let in the tide of knaves once more; my cook and I will provide.”

Summary and Analysis

Timon’s creditors and their servants have assembled out in front of his house and wait for hm to come out. They want their money that he owes them all. The servants comment that it is strange indeed that their masters are wearing spectacular jewelry given to them as gifts from Timon at the same time they are demanding money from him. These servants understand the hypocrisy of their master’s enjoyment of Timon’s gifts to them which made Timon poor. Timon’s servants angrier ask these creditors why they did not present him with their bills while they were enjoying one of his feasts. Timon emerges in a rage and he curses them as they swarm all around him. Timon goes back inside with a plan to host one more feast for these so called friends. It will be a feast they will never forget. Timon was certain his friends would stand up for him in his hour of need. The fact that they did no such thing changes him forever.

Act III

Scene v

The Senate House

Enter three Senators and Alcibiades

1 Senator: “My lord, the fault is bloody. Tis necessary he should die: nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.”

2 Senator: “Most true; the law shall bruise him.”

Alcibiades: “Honour, health and compassion to the Senate! I am a humble suitor to your virtues; for pity is the virtue of the law, and none but tyrants use it cruelly. It pleases time and fortune to lie heavy upon a friend of mine, who in hot blood has stepped into the law. He is a man of comely virtues. With a noble fury and a fair spirit, seeing his reputation touched to death, he did oppose his foe.”

1 Senator: “You undergo too strict a paradox, striving to make an ugly deed look fair; your words have taken such pains as if they laboured to bring manslaughter into form and set quarrelling upon the head of valour. You cannot make gross sins look clear.”

Alcibiades: “My lords, then pardon me if I speak like a captain. My lords, as you are great, be pitifully good. Who cannot condemn rashness in cold blood? To kill, I grant, is sin’s extremest gust; but, in defence, by mercy, tis most just. Weigh but the crime with this.”

2 Senator: “You breathe in vain.”

Alcibiades: “In vain! His service done at Lacedaemon and Byzantium were a sufficient briber for his life. He has done fair service, and slain in fight many of your enemies.”

2 Senator: “He’s a sworn rioter; he has a sin that often drowns him and takes his valour prisoner. In that beastly fury he has been known to commit outrages and cherish factions. Tis inferred to us his days are foul and his drink dangerous.”

1 Senator: “He dies.”

Alcibiades: “Hard fate! He might have died in war. Take my deserts to him, and join them both. I’ll pawn my victories, all my honours to you, upon his good returns.”

1 Senator: “We are for the law: he dies. Urge it no more. He forfeits his own blood that spills another.”

Alcibiades: “Must it be so? It must not be. My lords, I do beseech you to know me and call me to your remembrances. I cannot think but your age has forgotten me. It could not else be I should prove so base to sue, and be denied such common grace. My wounds ache at you.”

1 Senator: “Do you dare our anger? We banish thee forever.”

Alcibiades: “Banish me! Banish your dotage! Banish usury that makes the Senate ugly.”

1 Senator: “If after two days should Athens contain thee, attend our weightier judgment. He shall be executed presently.”

Exit Senators

Alcibiades: “Now the gods keep you old enough that you may live only in bone, that none may look on you. I’m worse than mad. I have kept back their foes and am rich only in large hurts. All those for this? Banishment! I hate not to be banished; it is a cause worthy my spleen and fury, that I might spike at Athens.”

Summary and Analysis

A subplot is developed here. Alcibiades pleads before the Senate to spare his friend, who killed a man in self defence in a state of momentary rage. He makes his case that the man is virtuous and was a great soldier in defence of Athens. The Senate will not relent and sentence the man to die. Alcibiades persists and they banish him. Alcibiades is furious, as a soldier who has many times defended Athens, and accepts his banishment as an opportunity to ‘strike at Athens’. Now both Timon and Alcibiades are outraged against the society they have each served. Their stories will intersect soon enough.

Act III

Scene vi

A banquet hall in Timon’s house

Tabes set. Servants attending. Enter the lord and friends of Timon.

2 Lord: “I think this honourable lord did but try us this other day. I hope it is not so low with him as he made it seem in the trial of his several friends. It should not be, by the persuasion of his new feasting.”

1 Lord: “He has sent me an earnest invitation.”

2 Lord: “I am sorrow, when he sent to borrow of me, that my provision was out.”

1 Lord: “I am sick of that grief too, as I understand how all things go.”

2 Lord: “Everyman here is so. What would he have borrowed of you?”

1 Lord: “A thousand pieces.”

2 Lord: “Here he comes.”

Enter Timon

Timon: “With all my heart, gentlemen, how fair you?”

1 Lord: “Ever at best, hearing well of your lordship. I hope it remains not unkindly with your lordship that I returned you an empty messenger.”

Timon: “O, sir, let it not trouble you.”

2 Lord: “My most honourable lord, I am even sickened of shame that, when your lordship this other day sent to me, I was so unfortunate a beggar.”

Timon:”Think not on it, sir.”

2 Lord: “If you had sent but two hours before -“

Timon: “Let it not cumber your better remembrance.”

The banquet is brought in.

2 Lord: “All covered dishes.”

1 Lord: “How do you? What’s the news?”

3 Lord: “Alcibiades is banished. Hear you of it?”

1 and 2 Lords: “Alcibiades banished!”

3 Lord: “Tis so; be sure of it.”

1 Lord: “How? How?”

Timon: “My worthy friends, will you draw near? Your diet shall be in all places alike. Sit, sit. The gods require our thanks. You great benefactors, sprinkle our society with thankfulness. For your own gifts make yourselves praised; but reserve still to give. Lend to each man enough, that one need not lend to another. The rest of your foes, O gods, the Senate of Athens, together with the common lag of people, what is amiss in them, you gods, make suitable for destruction. For these my present friends, as they are to me nothing, so in nothing bless them, and to nothing are they welcome. Uncover, dogs, and lap.”

The dishes are uncovered and seen to be full of warm water.

Some Speak: “What does his lordship mean?”

Some Others: “I know not.”

Timon: “May you a better feast never behold. Smoke and lukewarm water is your perfection. This is Timon’s last; who, stuck with your flatteries, washes it off, and sprinkles it in your faces your reeking villainy. (Timon throws water in their faces.) Live loathed and long, smiling, detested parasites, courteous destroyers, affable wolves, meek bears, you fools of fortune, trencher friends, time’s flies, slaves and vapours. What, does thou go? Soft, take thy physic first. (Timon throws the dishes at them and throws them out) What, all in motion? Sink Athens! Henceforth hated be of Timon all of humanity!”

Exit Timon. Re-enter the lords.

2 Lord: “Know you the quality of Lord Timon’s fury?”

1 Lord: “He is but a mad lord. He gave me a jewel the other day and now he has beat it out of me. Did you see my jewel?”

3 Lord: “Did you see my cap?”

4 Lord: “Here lies my gown.”

1 Lord: “Let’s make no stay.”

2 Lord: “Lord Timon’s mad.”

3 Lord: “I feel it upon my bones.”

4 Lord: “On day he gives us diamonds, next day stones.”

Summary and Analysis

The various lords assemble at Timon’s feast, figuring he must have merely been testing them when asking for money. They express regret that they were not able to help him. When Timon arrives they apologize to him for not being able to lend him money. He asks them to be seated and they chat about Alcibiades’ banishment. Then he speaks before the meal and harshly condemns the assembled guests: ‘These my present friends are nothing to me, so in nothing bless them, and to nothing they are welcome. Uncover dogs, and lap.’ Their feast is lukewarm water and stones, which Timon throws in their faces, criticizing and condemning them bitterly, claiming that henceforth he is an enemy to all of humanity. The lords merely think he has gone mad, assuming no responsibility for their behaviour. Timon changes utterly at this point, having treated his friends with kindness and generosity only to be abandoned by them all in his time of need. It is a bitter lesson and Timon deserts Athens and humanity to live alone in the wildness, a misanthrope of utmost proportion. At this point Shakespearean heroes often have revelations which save and redeem them. Not Timon. He becomes the opposite of all that he was and tragically collapses into bitterness and rage.

Act IV (3 scenes)

Scene i

Beyond the walls of Athens.

Enter Timon

Timon: “O Athens, let me look back upon thee. O thou wall that girdles in those wolves. 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 on the instant. Do it in your parent’s eyes. Bankrupts, hold fast; to with your knives and cut your trustees’ throats. Bound servants, steal. Large handed robbers your grave masters are. Maid, to thy master’s bed. Thy mistress is in the brothel. Pluck the lined crutch from the old limping sire, and with it beat out his brains. Piety and fear, peace, justice, truth, night-rest, 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 strokes. Thy cold sciatica, cripple our Senators, that their limbs may halt as lamely as their manners. Lust and liberty, creep into the minds and the marrow of our youth, that against the stream of virtue they may strive and drown themselves in riot. Itches and blotches sow all Athenian bosoms, and their crop be general leprosy! Breathe infected breath, that their society, as their friendship, may be merely poison! Nothing I’ll bear from thee but nakedness, thou detestable town! Timon will to the woods, where he shall find the unkindest beast more kind than mankind. The gods confound the Athenians both within and beyond that wall! And grant, as Timon grows, his hate may grow to the whole race of mankind, high and low! Amen.”

Summary and Analysis

Timon stands outside the walls of Athens and wishes every evil on the city and all of its inhabitants. This is his scene to rant and what a rant it is. He washes his hands of humanity and proceeds as a hermit to the woods. What a very different Timon than we encountered in Act I. And as this is a tragedy, we can expect no grand reconciliation between he and his former ‘friends’. This journey into misanthropy is a one way trip.

Act IV

Scene ii

Athens. Timon’s house

Enter Flavius and two other servants

1 Servant: “Master steward, where is our master? Are we undone, cast off, nothing remaining?”

Flavius: “Alack my fellows, what shall I say to you? I am as poor as you.”

1 Servant: “Such a house broke. So noble a master fallen. All gone and not one friend to take his fortune by the arm and go along with him?”

2 Servant: “So his familiars to his buried fortunes slink all away; leave their false vows with him, like empty purses picked; and his poor self, a dedicated beggar to the air, with his disease of shunned poverty, walks, like contempt, alone.”

Enter other servants

Flavius: “All broken implements of a ruined house

2 Servant: “Yet I see by our faces we are still fellows, serving alike in sorrow.”

Flavius: “Good fellows, all. The latest of my wealth I’ll share amongst you. Let’s each take some. We have seen better days. Wherever we shall meet, for Timon’s sake, let’s yet be fellows. Thus part we rich in sorrows, parting poor.

They each exit their own way

Flavius: “O the fierce wretchedness that glory brings us. Who would not wish to be from wealth exempt, since riches point to misery and contempt? Who would be so mocked with glory, or to live but in a dream of friendship? Poor honest lord, brought low by his own heart, undone by goodness! Strange it is when man’s worst sin is he does too much good! Who then dares to be half so kind again. My dearest lord – blest to be most accurst, rich only to be wretched – thy great fortunes are made thy chief afflictions. Alas, kind lord! He’s flung in rage from this ungrateful seat of monstrous friends. I’ll follow and enquire him out. I’ll ever serve his mind with my best will; while I have gold, I’ll be his steward still.”

Summary and Analysis

The servants remain behind in Timon’s house, wondering how such a thing could have befallen their household. They are Timon’s loyal friends, after all. They determine to look after one another, in his name. Flavius reflects on how Timon’s one time good fortune brought about his worst suffering. He is going to seek out Timon and ‘be his steward still’. Flavius no doubt learned his generosity of spirit from Timon and shares his bit of money with all of his fellow servants, despite how such generosity has utterly crushed his master. It would seem that giving to poor servants is different than giving to rich lords. 

Act IV

Scene iii

The woods near the sea-shore before Timon’s cave

Enter Timon

Timon: “O blessed breeding sun, draw from the earth rotten humidity. Infect the air! There’s nothing level in our cursed natures but direct villainy. Therefore be abhorred all feasts, societies, and throngs of men! Destruction fang mankind! Earth, yield me roots. (Timon digs) Who seeks for better, sauce his palate with operant poison. What is here? Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold? Ha, you gods! Why this? This yellow slave will knit and break religious, lesser the accursed, make leprosy adored, place thieves and give them title with senators on the bench. This is it that makes the widow wed again. Come, damed earth, thou common whore of mankind. Yet, I’ll bury thee. (He keeps some of the gold)

Enter Alcibiades in warlike manner with mistresses Phrynia and Yimandra

Alcibiades: “What are thou there? Speak.”

Timon: “A beast, as thou art. The canker gnaw thy heart for showing me again the eyes of man!”

Alcibiades: “What is thy name? Is man so hateful to thee who art thyself a man?”

Timon: “I am Misanthropos, and hate mankind. For thy part, I do wish thou were a dog, that I might love thee something.”

Alcibiades: “I know thee well; but in thy fortunes am unlearned and strange.”

Timon: “I know thee too. And more than that I know thee I not desire to know. With man’s blood paint the ground. Religious canons and civil laws are cruel. This fell whore of thine has in her more destruction than thy sword.”

Phrynia: “Thy lips rot off!”

Timon: “I will not kiss thee; then the rot returns to thine own life again.”

Alcibiades: “How came the noble Timon to this change?”

Timon: “As the moon does, by wanting light to give. But then renew I could not, like the moon; there were no suns to borrow of.”

Alcibiades: “Noble Timon, what friendship may I do thee?”

Timon: “None but to maintain my opinion.”

Alcibiades: “What is it, Timon?”

Timon: “Promise me friendship, but perform none. If thou will not promise, the gods plague thee. If thou does perform, confound thee.”

Alcibiades: “I have heard in some sort of thy miseries.”

Timon: “Thou saw them when I had prosperity.”

Alcibiades: “I see them now. Then was a blessed time.”

Timon: “As thine is now, held with a brace of harlots.”

Timandra: “Is this the Athenian minion whom the world voiced so regardfully?”

Timon: “Art thou Timandra?”

Timandra: “Yes.”

Timon: “Be a whore still; they love thee not who use thee. Give them disease.”

Timandra: “Hang thee, monster!”

Alcibiades: “Pardon him, sweet Timandra, for his wits are drowned and lost in his calamities. I have little gold of late, brave Timon. I have heard and grieved how cursed Athens, mindless of thy worth, forgetting thy great deeds, but for thy sword and fortune, trod upon them.”

Timon: “I prithee, beat thy drum and get thee gone.”

Alcibiades: “I am thy friend, and pity thee, dear Timon.”

Timon: “How does thou pity him whom thou does trouble? I had rather be alone.”

Alcibiades: “Why, fare thee well: here is some gold for thee.”

Timon: “Keep it; I cannot eat it.”

Alcibiades: “When I have laid proud Athens on a heap -“

Timon: “War thou against Athens?”

Alcibiades: “Ay, Timon, and have cause.”

Timon: “The gods confound them all in thy conquest; and thee after, when thou has conquered! Go on, here’s gold. Be as a planetary plague. Let not thy sword skip one. Pity not honoured age for his white beard: he is a usurer. Strike me the counterfeit matron: it is her habit only that is honest; herself’s a bawd. Let not the virgin’s cheek make soft thy trenchant sword. Spare not the babe. Think it a bastard whom the oracle has doubtfully pronounced thy throat shall cut, and mince it sans remorse. Put armour on thy ears and eyes, whose yells of mothers, maids or babes, nor sight of priests in holy vestments bleeding, shall pierce a jot. There’s gold to pay thy soldiers, make large confusion; and, thy fury spent, confounded be thyself! Speak not, be gone.”

Alcibiades: “Has thou gold yet? I’ll take the gold thou gives me, not thy counsel.”

Phrynia and Timandra: “Give us some gold, good Timon. Has thou more?”

Timon: “Enough to make a whore forswear her trade. Hold up, you sluts, you are not oathable, although I know you’ll swear, terribly swear. Spare your oaths. Be whores still; and he whose pious breath seeks to convert you, be strong whores, allure him, burn him up. Be quite contrary! And thatch your poor tin roofs with burdens of the dead. Whore still.”

Phrynia and Timandra: “Well, more gold. Believe it that we’ll do anything for gold.”

Timon: “Consumptions sow in hollow bones of man; strike their sharp shins. Crack the lawyer’s voice that he may never more false title plead. Make curled pated ruffians bald and let the unscarred braggarts of the war derive some pain from you. Plague all, that your activity may defeat and quell the source of all erections. There’s more gold. Do you damn others, and let this damn you. And ditches grave you all!”

Phrynia and Timandra: “More counsel with more money, bounteous Timon.”

Timon: “More whoring and mischief first.”

Alcibiades: “Strike up the drum toward Athens. Farewell, Timon. If I thrive well, I’ll visit thee again.”

Timon: “If I hope well, I’ll never see thee more.”

Alcibiades: “I never did thee harm.”

Timon: “Yes, thou spoke well of me.”

Alcibiades: “Calls thou that harm?”

Timon: “Man daily find it. Get thee away, and take thy beagles with thee.”

Alcibiades: “We but offend him.”

Exit Alcibiades and his whores

Timon: “Common mother, thou whose womb unmeasurable and infinite breast teams and feeds all, dry up thy fertile and conceptious womb, and let it no more bring out ungrateful man.”

Enter Apemantus

Timon: “More man? Plague, plague!”

Apemantus: “I was directed hither. Men report thou does affect my manners and does use them.”

Timon: “Tis then because thou does not keep a dog, whom I would imitate. Consumption catch thee!”

Apemantus: “This is in thee a nature but infected, a poor unmanly melancholy sprung from change of fortune. Why this spade? This place? The slave-like habit and these looks of care? Thy flatterers yet wear silk, drink wine, lie soft, hug their diseased perfumes and have forgotten that ever Timon was. Be thou a flatterer now, and seek to thrive by that which has undone thee. Thou gave thine ears to knaves and all approachers. Tis most just that thou turn rascal. Do not assume my likeness.”

Timon: “Were I like thee, I’d throw away myself.”

Apemantus: “Thou has cast away thyself, being like thyself; a madman so long and now a fool.”

Timon: “A fool of thee. Depart.”

Apemntus: “I love thee better now then ever I did.”

Timon: “I hate thee worse.”

Apemantus: “Why?”

Timon: “Thy flatters misery.”

Alcibiades: “I flatter not.”

Timon: “Why does thou seek me out?”

Apemantus: “To vex thee.”

Timon: “Always a villain’s office, or a fool’s. Does please thyself in it?”

Apemantus: “Ay.”

Timon: “What, a knave too?”

Apemantus: “If thou did put this sour-cold habit on to castigate thy pride, t’were well; but thou did it enforcedly. Thou should desire to die, being miserable.”

Timon: “Thou art a slave whom fortune’s tender arm with favour never clasped, but bred a dog. Why should thou hate men? They never flattered thee. Hence, be gone. If thou had not been born the worst of men, thou had been a knave and a flatterer.”

Apemantus: “Art thou proud yet?”

Timon: “Ay, that I am not thee. Get thee gone. That the whole life of Athens were in this (eats a root) thus would I eat it.”

Apemantus: “Here, I will mend thy feast.” (offers Timon food)

Timon: “First mend my company: take away thyself.”

Apemantus: “So I shall mend my own by the lack of thine.”

Timon: “Tis not well mended so; it is but botched. If not, I would it were.”

Apemanus: “The middle of humanity thou never knew, but the extremity of both ends. When thou was in thy gilt and perfume, they mocked thee for too much curiosity; in thy rags thou art despised for the contrary. What man did thou ever know unthrifty that was beloved after his means?”

Timon: “What would thou do with the world, Apemantus, if it lay in thy power?”

Apemantus: “Give it to the beasts, to be rid of the men.”

Timon: “Would thou remain a beast with the beasts?”

Apemantus: “Ay, Timon.”

Timon: “A beastly ambition. If thou were the lion, the fox would beguile thee; if thou were the lamb, the fox would eat thee; if you were the fox, the lion would suspect thee when thou were accused by the ass; if thou were the ass, thy dullness would torment thee; and still thou lived but as a breakfast for the wolf; if thou were the wolf, thy greediness would afflict thee. Were thou the unicorn, pride and wrath would confound thee; were thou a bear, thou would be killed by the horse; were thou the horse, thou would be seized by the leopard. What beast could thou be that was not subject to a beast? And what a beast thou art already, thy sees not thy loss in transformation.”

Apemantus: “The commonwealth of Athens has become a forest of beasts.”

Timon: “How has the ass broke the wall, that thou are out of the city?”

Apemantus: “Yonder comes a poet and a painter. The plague of company light upon thee! When I know not what else to do, I’ll see thee again.”

Timon: “When there is nothing living but thee, thou shall be welcome. I had rather be a beggar’s dog than Apemantus.”

Apemantus: “Thou are the cap of all the fools alive.”

Timon: “Would thou were clean enough to spit upon.”

Apemantus: “A plague on thee! Thou are too bad to curse.”

Timon: “All villains that do stand by thee are pure.”

Apemantus: “There is no leprosy but what thou speaks.”

Timon: “If I name thee, I’ll beat thee, but I should infect my hands.”

Apemantus: “I would my tongue could rot them off!”

Timon: “Away thou issue of a mangy dog! Choler does kill me that thou art alive.”

Apemantus: “Would thou would burst!”

Timon: “Away, thou tedious rogue! I am sorry I shall lose a stone by thee.”

Timon throws a stone at him.

Apemantus: “Beast!

Timon: “Slave!”

Apemantus: “Toad!”

Timon: “Rogue, rogue, rogue! I am sick of this false world, and will live nought but even the mere necessities upon it. Then, Timon, presently prepare thy grave. Lie where the foam of the sea may beat thy gravestone daily; make thy epitaph; that death in me at others’ lives may laugh. (looks at the gold) O thou sweet king-killer and dear divorce between natural son and sire! Thou bright defiler of Hymen’s purest bed! Thou valiant Mars! Thou ever fresh, loved and delicate wooer! Thou visible god, who speaks with every tongue to every purpose! Think thy slave man rebels, and by thy virtue set them into confounding odds, that beasts may have the world in empire!”

Apemantus: “Would t’were so! But not till I am dead. I’ll say thou has gold. Thou will be thronged to shortly. Live and love thy misery!”

Timon: “Live long so, and so die. I am quit.”

Exit Apemantus

Timon: “More things like men. Eat, Timon, and abhor them.”

Enter bandits

1 Bandit: “Where should he have this gold? The mere want of gold and the falling from of his friends drove him into this melancholy.”

2 Bandit: “It is noised he has a mass of treasure.”

1 Bandit: “He bears it not about him; Tis hid.”

3 Bandit: “Let us make the assay upon him.”

1 Bandit: “Save thee, Timon!”

Timon: “Now, thieves?”

1 Bandit: “Soldiers, not thieves. We are not thieves but men who much do want.”

Timon: “Why should you want? Behold, the earth has roots; within this mile break forth a hundred springs; nature on each bush lays her full mess before you. Want? Why want?”

1 Bandit; “We cannot live on grass, berries and water, as beast and birds and fish.”

Timon: “Nor on the beasts themselves; you must eat men. Rascal thieves, here is gold. Take wealth and lives together; do villainy, do. I’ll example you of thievery: the sun’s a thief and robs the vast sea; the moon’s an arrant thief, her pale fire she snatches from the sun; the sea’s a thief, whose liquid surge resolves the moon into salt tears; the earth’s a thief, that feeds and breeds by a composure stolen from general excrement. Each thing’s a thief. Love not yourselves; away, rob one another. There’s more gold. Cut throats. All who you meet are thieves. To Athens go, break open shops; nothing you can steal but thieves do lose it. Steal not less for this I give you; let gold confound you howsoever! Amen.

3 Bandit: “He has almost charmed me from my profession by persuading me to it.”

1 Bandit: “Tis in the malice of mankind that he thus advises us.”

2 Bandit: “I’ll believe him as an enemy, and give over my trade.”

Exit bandits

Enter Flavius

Flavius: “O you gods! Is yonder despised and ruinous man my lord? Full of dear and failing? O monument and wonder of good deeds evil bestowed! What an alteration of honour has desperate want made! What viler thing upon the earth than friends, who can bring noblest minds to basest ends! How rarely does it meet with this time’s guise, when man was wished to love his enemies! I will present my honest grief unto him, and as my lord still serve him with my life. My dearest master!”

Timon: “Away! What art thou?”

Flavius: “Have you forgotten me, sir?”

Timon: “I have forgotten all men; then if thou grant thou art a man, I have forgotten thee.”

Flacius: An honest poor servant of yours.”

Timon: “Then I know thee not. I never had an honest man about me. All I kept were knaves, to serve meat to villains.”

Flavius: “The gods are witness, never did a poor steward wear a truer grief for his undone lord than mine eyes for you.”

Timon: “What, does thou weep? Come nearer. Then I love thee because thou art a woman and disclaims flinty mankind, whose eyes do never give but thorough lust and laughter. Pity is sleeping. Strange times, that weep with laughing, not with weeping!”

Flavius:”I beg of you to know me, my good lord, to accept my grief and to entertain me as your steward still.”

Timon: “Had I a steward so true, so just? It almost turns my dangerous nature mild. Let me behold thy face. Forgive my general rashness, you perpetual-sober gods! I do proclaim one honest man – mistake me not, but one; no more, I pray – and he’s a steward. But all, save thee, I fell with curses. Methinks thou art more honest now than wise; for by oppressing and betraying me thou might have sooner gotten another service. For many so arrive at second masters upon their first lord’s neck. But tell me true, is not thy kindness subtle, covetous, expecting in return twenty to one?”

Flavius: “No, my most worthy master, in whose breast doubt and suspect, alas, are placed too late! You should have feared false times when you did feast. That which I show, heaven knows, is merely love, duty and zeal to your unmatched mind. Any benefit that points to me, I’d exchange for this one wish, that you had power and wealth to requite me by making rich yourself.”

Timon: “Look thee, tis so! Thou singly honest man, here, take. The gods, out of my misery, have sent thee treasure. Go, live rich and happy, but thus conditioned: thou shall hate all, curse all, show charity to none, but let the famished flesh slide from the bone ere thou relieve the beggar. Give to dogs what thou denies men; let prisons swallow them, debts wither them to nothing, and may diseases lick up their false bloods! And so farewell and thrive.”

Flavius: “O, let me stay and comfort you, my master.”

Timon: “If thou hates curses, stay not: fly while thou are blest and free, never see thou man, and let me never see thee.”

Summary and Analysis

Timon emerges from his cave cursing and raging about flatterers and wishing that everything human would come to destruction. ‘There is nothing in our cursed nature but direct villainy.’ While digging for roots he comes upon gold and goes off on a tangent about the terrible qualities of wealth. He has clearly been deeply traumatized in being rejected by his so called friends and he takes it out on the entire species of mankind. Alcibiades arrives with two prostitutes and Timon wants nothing to do with them, only encouraging the prostitutes to continue whoring and to spread diseases. He rejects any help Alcibiades offers and insists he leave. But when Alcibiades mentions that he plans on sacking Athens, Timon is suddenly interested, telling Alcibiades to spare no one, not even ‘the honourably aged’ or ‘the babes’. Timon says he hopes never to see Alcibiades again, but before he leaves his whores ask Timon for gold. He gives them gold and instructs them to spread plagues and consumption through their whoring and ‘quell the source of all erections’. Alcibiades and the prostitutes leave and Apemantus arrives. Timon curses him but Apemantus notes that Titus has been led to this distraction by the flattering lords, who abandoned him just as soon as his wealth evaporated. Timon tells him to leave but Apemantus says he loves Timon more than ever before. Timon rails against Apemantus and the two trade insult after insult until Timon throws a rock at him and he finally leaves. Bandits and thieves arrive next, intent on the gold they have heard that he has. He offers them gold, provided they do villainy and cut throats. He especially urges them to Athens, in order that they wreak havoc and destruction there. ‘To Athens go!’ Finally, Timon is visited by Flavius, his former loyal and dedicated servant. Timon assumes not to know him, as he never knew anyone loyal. Seeing the state Timon is in causes Flavius to weep, which softens Timon. When Flavius offers money for his former master, it causes Timon to admit that there is, in fact, one good person in this entire world. Flavius offers to stay with Titus and look after him out here in the wilderness but Titus gives him gold and tells him to leave. Titus has left Athens in order to be alone, but once out in the wilderness he receives one visitor after another. After finding gold he offers it to anyone who can help bring down Athens. Alcibiades gets some because he plans to attack Athens and the prostitutes and bandits do since they can speed diseases and wreck havoc among the population. When Alcibiades arrived Timon referred to himself as Misanthropos and he certainly has become just that. He went from one extreme to another in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately for him, there will be no turning back.

Act V (4 scenes)

Scene i

The woods before Timon’s cave.

Enter poet and painter

Poet: “What’s to be thought of him? Does the rumour hold for true that he is so full of gold?”

Painter: “Certain. Alcibiades reports it; Phrynia and Yinandra had gold from him. He likewise enriched poor straggling soldiers with great quantity. Tis said he gave unto his steward a mighty sum.”

Poet: “Then this breaking of his has been but a try for his friends?”

Painter: “Nothing else. You shall see him in Athens again. Therefore tis not amiss we tender our loves to him in this supposed distress of his; it will show honesty in us, and is very likely to load our purposes.”

Poet: “What have you now to present to him?”

Painter: “Nothing at this time but my visitation. Only I will promise him an excellent piece.”

Poet: “I must serve him so, too, and tell him of an intent that is coming toward him.”

Enter Timon from his cave

Timon: (aside) “Excellent workman! Thou cannot paint a man so bad as is thyself.”

Poet: “Hail, worthy Timon!”

Painter: “Our late noble master!”

Timon: “Have I once lived to see two honest men?”

Poet: “Sir, having often of your open bounty tasted, hearing you were returned, your friends fallen off, I am rapt and cannot cover the monstrous bulk of this ingratitude with any size of words.”

Painter: “He and myself have travailed in the great shower of your gifts.”

Timon: “Ay, you are honest men.”

Painter: “We are hither come to offer you our service.”

Timon: “Most honest men! Why, how shall I requite you? Can you eat roots and drink cold water – No? You have heard that I have gold; I am sure you have. Speak truth; you are honest men.”

Painter: “So it is said, my noble lord, but therefore came not my friend nor I.”

Timon: “Good honest men! But for all of this, my honest-natured friends, I must needs say you have a little fault.”

Both: “Beseech your honour to make it known to us.”

Timon: “You’ll take it ill.”

Both: “Most thankfully, my lord.”

Timon: “Will you indeed?”

Both: “Doubt it not, my lord.”

Timon: “There’s never a one of you but trusts a knave that mightily deceives you.”

Both: “Do we, my lord?”

Timon: “Ay, and you hear him, see him, love him, feed him; yet remain assured that he’s a made up villain.”

Pinter: “I know not such, my lord.”

Poet: “Nor I.”

Timon: “Look you, I love you well; I’ll give you gold, rid me these villains from you companies. Hang them or stab them, drown them in a draught, confound them by some course, and come to me, I’ll give you gold enough.”

Both: “Name them, my lord; let’s know them.”

Timon: “You that way, and you this. Each man apart. Yet an arch-villain keeps each company. Hence, pack! There’s gold. You came for gold, you slaves. Out, rascal dogs! (beats and drives them out)

Enter Flavius and two senators.

Flacius: “It is vain that you would speak with Timon for he is set only to himself that nothing but himself which looks like man is friendly with him.”

1 Senator: “Bring us to his cave. It is our part and promise to the Athenians to speak with Timon.”

2 Senator: “Bring us to him, and chance it as it may.”

Flavius: “Here is his cave. Lord Timon! Timon! Look out and speak to friends. The Athenians by two of their most reverend Senate greet thee. Speak to them, noble Timon.”

Timon comes out of his cave

Timon: “Thou sun that comfort, burn. Speak and be hanged! For each true word a blister, and each false be as a cauterizing to the roof of the tongue.”

2 Senator: “The Senators of Athens greet thee, Timon.”

Timon: “I thank them, and would send them back the plague, could I but catch it for them.”

1 Senator: “The Senators with one consent of love entreat thee back to Athens. Ay, even such heaps and sums of love and wealth as shall to thee blot out what wrongs were theirs and write in thee the figures of their love, ever to read them thine.”

Timon: “Lend me a fool’s heart and a woman’s eyes and I’ll beweep these comforts, worthy Senators.”

1 Senator: “Therefore, so please thee to return with us, and of our Athens to take the captainship, allowed with absolute power, and live with authority. So soon we shall drive back Alcibiades into the wilds, who, like a boar too savage, does root up his country’s peace.”

2 Senator: “And shakes his threatening sword against the walls of Athens.”

Timon: “Therefore, sir, if Alcibiades kills my countrymen, let Alcibiades know this of Timon, that Timon cares not. So I leave you to the protection of the prosperous gods, as thieves to keepers.”

Flavius: “Stay not; all’s in vain.”

Timon: “Why, I am writing my epitaph. It will be seen tomorrow. My long sickness of health and living now begin to mend Go, be Alcibiades your plague, and you his.”

1 Senator: “We speak in vain.”

Timon: “Commend me to my countrymen and tell them that to see their griefs and pangs of love in life’s uncertain voyage, I will some kindness do them.”

1 Senator: “These words become your lips. I like this well.”

Timon: “I have a tree that invites me to cut down, and shortly must I fell it. Tell my friends, tell Athens, to stop affliction, let him take his haste, come hither, ere my tree has felt the axe, and hang himself. I pray you do my greeting. Come not to me again. Let my gravestone be your oracle. What is amiss, let plague and infection mend!”

2 Senator: “Our hope in him is dad. Let us return.”

Summary and Analysis

Timon has had many visitors and aside from Flavius, they all get the same treatment essentially. When the painter and the poet arrived you had to expect what was in store for them. Likewise with the wealthy Senators. He toys with both sets of visitors, but wishes the same plagues and afflictions with the same demand that they not ever return. Its tough being a hermit with all of the traffic Timon receives.

Act V

Scene ii

Before he walls of Athens

Enter two senators with a messenger.

Messenger: “Alcibiades’ expedition promises present approach.”

2 Senator: “We stand much in hazard if they bring not Timon.”

3 Senator: “No talk of Timon, nothing of him is expected. Let’s go in and prepare. Ours is the fall, I fear.”

Summary and Analysis

Athens awaits the onslaught of Alcibiades’ army and their only hope appears to be the intervention of Timon, which is not forthcoming.

Act V

Scene iii

The woods, Timon cave and a rough tomb

Enter a soldier, seeking Timon

Soldier: “By all description, this should be the place. Who’s here? Speak! No answer? What is this? Timon is dead. Here does not live a man. Dead, sure; and this his grave. What’s on this tomb I cannot read; the character I’ll take with wax.”

Summary and Analysis

A soldier comes upon what he believes to be the grave of Timon. He cannot read the epitaph but takes an impression of it to show his superiors. Shakespeare does not afford Timon a final speech before his death, which is highly unusual in his plays. Perhaps he felt he had already said all that there is to say. His death occurs off stage, as well, which, again, is exceptional for the main character of a play.

Act V

Scene iv

Before the walls of Athens

Enter Alcibiades

Alcibiades: “Sound to this coward and lascivious town our terrible approach. Till now you have gone on and filled the time with all licentious measure, making your wills the scope of justice; till now, myself, and such as slept within the shadow of your power, have breathed our sufferance vainly. Now the time is flush, when crouching marrow cries of itself ‘no more!'”

1 Senator: “Noble and young, when thy first griefs were but a mere conceit, we sent to thee, to give thy rages balm, to wipe out our ingratitude with loves above their quantity.”

2 Senator: “So did we woo transformed Timon to our city’s love by humble message. We were not all unkind, nor all deserve the common stroke of war.”

1 Senator: “All have not offended. On those who have, revenge. Spare thy Athenian cradle, and those kin, which, in the bluster of thy wrath, must fall with those who have offended. Like a shepherd approach the fold and cull the infected forth, but kill not altogether.”

2 Senator: “What thou will, thou rather shall enforce it with thy smile then hew to it with thy sword. Throw thy glove, that thou will use the wars as thy redress and not as our confusion.”

Alcibiades: “Then there’s my glove; descend, and open your uncharged ports. Those enemies of Timon’s and mine own, whom you yourselves shall set out for reproof, fall, and no more. And, to atone your fears with my more noble meaning, not a man shall offend the dream of regular justice in your city’s bounds, but shall be rendered to your public laws at heaviest answer.”

The Senators open the gates.

Enter Soldier as messenger.

Soldier: “My noble general, Timon is dead; and on his gravestone this inscription.”

Alcibiades reads the eptitaph: “‘Here lies a wretched corpse, of wretched soul bereft; a plague consume you wicked and despicable cowards left! Here lie I, Timon, who alive all living men did hate. Pass by, but pass by and stay not.’ Dead is noble Timon. Make war breed peace, make peace stint war. Let our drums strike.”

Summary and Analysis

Alcibiades and his forces approach Athens with the intention of wreaking a terrible vengeance- filled havoc . The Senators make their case that not all deserve to be ransacked. He is welcomed into Athens but is asked not to kill everyone, only those deserving of his wrath. It is agreed that the Senators will turn over all of the offenders and that the rest of Athens will be spared. The soldier who had rubbed the impression of Timon’s epitaph arrives with news that Timon is dead. Alcibiades reads the impression and honours the memory of Timon and enters the city of Athens in peace. Timon had encouraged Alcibiades to destroy everything and everyone in Athens but Alcibiades chooses to distinguish between the deserving and the underserving, sparing the innocent and abiding by the laws of Athens. Timon was a man of extremes. His generosity knew no bounds and once abandoned by his so-called friends neither did his rage against humanity. He died a miserable misanthrop.

Final Thoughts

Timon of Athens is about the rise and fall of a man lacking in insight and clarity. When he was extremely wealthy he lavished affection on everyone around him and was seemingly well loved in return. Apemantus saw through this ‘love’ and declared his admirers mere flatterers. And sure enough, once Timon’s money was gone, so were the flatterers and he felt deceived and abused, turning bitter over his own miscalculation that they once truly loved him. His decision was to condemn all of humanity rather than own up to his own errors about how generosity breeds love. Was Timon a good man or merely a naive and foolish one? He demonstrated poor judgement on each extreme of the spectrum, believing he was genuinely loved for his generosity and then condemning all of the human race for the apparent slight when he could not find anyone to help spare him his financial ruin, while they continued to relish his gifts and gold. But good and wise people surrounded him. Apemantus saw it coming all along but Timon would not listen to him. Flavius, his servant, was loyal to the very end and Alcibiades tried to befriend Timon, who, by that time, was far too gone to connect to anyone. He trusted the wrong people and then condemned the entire human race because of his own blindness to these Athenian flatterers. Not good judgement on Timon’s part. If there are any heroes in this play they are perhaps the three aforementioned characters who saw the truth (Apemantus), remained loyal (Flavius) and agreed not to destroy all of Athens due to the offence of a handful of men (Alcibiades). Shakespeare sourced his material for Timon of Athens from two different Greek works: Plutarch’s ‘Lives’ and a satire by Lucian, entitled ‘Timon the Misanthrope’. As far as we can tell Timon was never performed in Shakespeare’s lifetime and the first definitive staging is not until 1851! Even today, this is not a play which is often produced and remains on the fringes of Shakespeare’s works. Per usual, Youtube has several well performed versions available with many clips and some good analysis.