VARRO’S SERVANT.
What is a whoremaster, fool?
FOOL.
A fool in good clothes, and something like thee. ’Tis a spirit;
sometime ’t appears like a lord, sometime like a lawyer, sometime like
a philosopher, with two stones more than’s artificial one. He is very
often like a knight; and generally, in all shapes that man goes up and
down in from fourscore to thirteen, this spirit walks in.
VARRO’S SERVANT.
Thou art not altogether a fool.
FOOL.
Nor thou altogether a wise man. As much foolery as I have, so much wit
thou lack’st.
APEMANTUS.
That answer might have become Apemantus.
VARRO’S SERVANT.
Aside, aside, here comes Lord Timon.
Enter Timon and Flavius.
APEMANTUS.
Come with me, fool, come.
FOOL.
I do not always follow lover, elder brother, and woman; sometime the
philosopher.
[_Exeunt Apemantus and Fool._]
FLAVIUS.
Pray you walk near. I’ll speak with you anon.
[_Exeunt Servants._]
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.
TIMON.
Go to.
Perchance some single vantages you took
When my indisposition put you back,
And that unaptness made your minister
Thus to excuse yourself.
FLAVIUS.
O my good lord,
At many times I brought in my accounts,
Laid them before you; you would throw them off
And say you found them in mine honesty.
When for some trifling present you have bid me
Return so much, I have shook my head and wept,
Yea, ’gainst th’ authority of manners, prayed you
To hold your hand more close. I did endure
Not seldom nor no slight checks, when I have
Prompted you in the ebb of your estate
And your great flow of debts. My loved lord,
Though you hear now, too late, yet now’s a time.
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? And at length
How goes our reckoning?
TIMON.
To Lacedaemon did my land extend.
FLAVIUS.
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 th’ exactest auditors
And set me on the proof. So the gods bless me,
When all our offices have been oppressed
With riotous feeders, when our vaults have wept
With drunken spilth of wine, when every room
Hath blazed with lights and brayed with minstrelsy,
I have retired me to a wasteful cock
And set mine eyes at flow.
TIMON.
Prithee, no more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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