Pain. You are rapt, sir, in some work, some dedication Poet. To the great lord. A thing slipp'd idly from me. From whence 'tis nourish'd: the fire i' the flint Each bound it chafes. What have you there? Pain. A picture, sir. Poet. Upon the heels of my presentment, sir. Let's see your piece. Pain. 'Tis a good piece. Poet. So 'tis: this comes off well and excellent. 27. chafes] Theobald, chases Ff. 21. rapt] engrossed, wholly absorbed; the past participle of the old verb to 66 rap"; "M. E. rapen, to hasten, act hastily; thence to 'snatch,' 'seize hastily.' The past participle rapt later became confused with the Lat. raptus, and very soon the Latin word, being better known, caused the English word to be entirely lost sight of, so that it is now obsolete" (Skeat, Ety. Dict.). The present rap" and the participle "rapt’ are frequent in دو the dramatists. 26. Provokes itself] has no need of "The troubled Tiber chafing with her shores," 25 30 Poet. Admirable! how this grace Speaks his own standing! what a mental power Pain. It is a pretty mocking of the life. Poet. Here is a touch; is 't good? It tutors nature: artificial strife 35 I will say of it, 40 Lives in these touches, livelier than life. Enter certain Senators, who pass over the stage. Pain. How this lord is followed! Poet. The senators of Athens: happy man! some 33, 34. how this . . . standing] how eloquently the grace imparted by your skill gives meaning to the posture (of the figure designed)! Clarke explains, "How true to the life of the original is this graceful attitude!" Hudson, "How the graceful attitude of this figure expresses its firmness of character!" The former of these explanations implies that there was known original, who could only be Timon. But the whole of the speech is opposed to the idea that he is portrayed; for grace, mental power, and imagination are not the characteristics that would be especially ascribed to him. In the latter explanation it seems to me that the firmness is unduly emphasised. The versions given by Warburton and Steevens are by no means happy. Johnson conjectured "Speaks understanding." 35, 36. how big... lip!] not, I think, how powerful an imagination, but how powerfully imagination, etc., the idea being that of pregnancy, as in Julius Cæsar, III. i. 282, "Thy heart is big, get thee apart and weep.' 36, 37. to the dumbness. inter pret] It would be easy enough to give words to this dumb gesture. The allusion, as Malone points out, is to the interpreter in the puppet-shows or "motions" of the time. Cp. Hamlet, III. ii. 256; The Two Gentlemen of Verona, II. i. 101. 38. a pretty life] not a bad counterfeit of the living and breathing man; cp. The Winter's Tale, v. iii. 19, 20. 40, 41. artificial. life] here, in these touches, art outvies nature in lifelike personation. Malone compares Venus and Adonis, 289–292, and Drayton, The Barons' Wars: "Done for the last with such exceeding life, As art therein with nature were at strife." Cp. also Cymbeline, II. iv. 82-85, and The Advancement of Learning, II. viii. 3, "which kalendar will be the more artificial and serviceable, if," Pain. Look, moe! Poet. You see this confluence, this great flood of visitors, 45 I have, in this rough work, shaped out a man, In a wide sea of wax: no levell'd malice for high and low alike had that privi- 66 44. moe!] according to Skeat, the distinction between "mo," or "moe," and " more (for which we have now only the single form "more") is that "mo" referred to number, "more" to size. This is denied by other grammarians, according to whom both mo" and "more" were used as comparatives of "many." Wright, As You Like It, III. ii. 243 [278], says the distinction appears to be that "mo," or "moe," is used only with the plural, or words involving a plural sense, more "with both singular and plural. 45. You see. visitors] The Poet points to this " confluence as so well illustrating the aptness of the picture he has drawn in his poem. 66 47. this beneath world] so in Lear, II. ii. 170, "this under globe." 48. entertainment] here probably in a neutral sense, reception, though frequently in Shakespeare of hospitality, kind treatment, etc. 48, 49. my free particularly] my theme drives freely and does not pause to mark any one in particular; cp. Coriolanus, IV. v. 72. 50. In a wide sea of wax] The earliest explanation of these words was that in them we have an allusion to the ancient practice of writing with a style on tablets coated with wax-an explanation which well merits the scorn that Ingleby, The Still Lion, p. 84, 66 50 pours upon it. But that scholar's own view that we have here " merely an affected and pedantic mode of indicating a sea that widens with the flood,' seems scarcely more tenable. This view he bases on "the certain fact that the substantive, wax, occurs in 2 Henry IV. 1. ii. 180, 'A wassail candle, my lord; all tallow if I did say of wax, my growth would approve the truth." But if "a sea of wax may mean, as he says a little further on, a waxing sea," then it seems to me that we need have no difficulty in explaining anything. Collier, ed. 2, gives "verse"; Cartwright conjectures "vice"; Staunton, "tax"; Kinnear, man. I believe we should read or wast" (i.e. waste), as the substantive is spelt in the three best quartos and the first folio of Hamlet, 1. ii. 198, "In the dead wast and middle of the night"; while in The Winter's Tale, I. i. 33, and Pericles, iii. I. I, we have the form "vast." It was Tennyson, I believe, who said that Jonson moved "in a wide sea of glue," and perhaps we are here in that same case. hold] Here 66 50, 51. no levell'd. again there is a considerable difficulty. The interpretation turns mainly upon the sense to be given to the word "comma." Literally meaning piece cut off," it was in Shakespeare's day used in three different senses(1) a short member of a sentence, a clause; (2) as a punctuation mark used to separate the smallest member of a sentence; (3) as a musical term = a But flies an eagle flight, bold and forth on, Pain. How shall I understand you? Poet. I will unbolt to you. You see how all conditions, how all minds, 55 Their services to Lord Timon: his large fortune, minute "interval," or difference of "comma" here meant "6 clause," we "The heat no more remains than Or where birds cut the air the 52. But flies] i.e. but it (sc. the course) flies. бо 53. tract] here="trace," with which the word is connected, both being ultimately of Latin origin; "track, on the other hand, though often confounded with both "trace" and "tract," has no etymological connection with either. دو 54. How shall. you?] This has been thought to be a hit at the Poet's affectation of language. It may mean merely, "I don't quite see your drift." 54. unbolt] lay open, make plain. 55. conditions] The two next lines show, I think, that the word here means 'dispositions,' temperaments,' rather than "ranks,' Schmidt explains. دو 66 66 as 56. glib] smooth, slippery; cp. Lear, 1. i. 227. The ugly word "glibbery," of which Marston is so fond, and the use of which is satirised in Jonson's Poetaster, v. i., appears to have been coined from "glib" and "slippery.” 57. tender down] lay down as an offering. Shakespeare has two verbs of the same form, "tender " (Lat. teneo), offer; "tender" (Lat. tener), hold dear, and in Hamlet, I. iii. 107, 109, he plays upon the two senses. 58-61. his large hearts] his ample wealth, made to follow the dictates of his gracious nature, by gentle violence compels the hearts of men of every kind and degree to own allegi Pain. To Apemantus, that few things loves better I saw them speak together. 65 Poet. Sir, I have upon a high and pleasant hill Feign'd Fortune to be thron'd: the base o' the mount Is rank'd with all deserts, all kinds of natures, Whom her; ance to his fostering love; for "properties = makes his own, cp. King John, v. ii. 79, "I am too high-born to be propertied," though there the word is used in a sinister sense; for "tendance," cp. Cymbeline, v. v. 53: "in which time she purposed, By watching, weeping, tendance, kissing to O'ercome you with her show." Here "sorts" seems to embrace not merely "kind,” 'species," but also "rank," " quality." 61. glass-faced] reflecting as in a mirror every look of his. 63. to abhor himself] to loathe, and to express that loathing of himself. See his speeches below, lines 230-235. Rolfe suggests that "here the idea may be that Apemantus makes himself abhorrent to others instead of trying to please or flatter them." There seems no ground for this sense. 65. in Timon's nod] in having been welcomed by Timon with so much as a bend of the head. To the remark by Steevens that in the ensuing scenes 70 her ivory hand wafts to |