Page 3169 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

To vex thee.

TIMON
Always a villain’s office, or a fool’s.
Dost please thyself in ’t?

APEMANTUS
Ay.

TIMON
What, a knave too? [240]

APEMANTUS
If thou didst put this sour cold habit on

To castigate thy pride ’twere well; but thou
Dost it enforcedly. Thou’dst courtier be again
Wert thou not beggar. Willing misery
Outlives incertain pomp, is crown’d before; [245]

The one is filling still, never complete,
The other, at high wish. Best state, contentless,
Hath a distracted and most wretched being,
Worse than the worst, content.

Thou shouldst desire to die, being miserable. [250]

TIMON
Not by his breath that is more miserable.
Thou art a slave, whom Fortune’s tender arm
With favour never clasp’d, but bred a dog.

Hadst thou like us from our first swath proceeded
The sweet degrees that this brief world affords [255]
To such as may the passive drugs of it
Freely command, thou wouldst have plung’d thyself
In general riot, melted down thy youth

In different beds of lust, and never learn’d
The icy precepts of respect, but followed [260]
The sugar’d game before thee. But myself −

Who had the world as my confectionary,