Page 3173 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

APEMANTUS

What things in the world canst thou nearest compare to thy flatterers?

TIMON
Women nearest, but men − men are the things themselves. What wouldst
thou do with the world, Apemantus, [320] if it lay in thy power?

APEMANTUS
Give it the beasts, to be rid of the men.

TIMON
Wouldst thou have thyself fall in the confusion of men, and remain a beast

with the beasts?

APEMANTUS
Ay, Timon. [325]

TIMON
A beastly ambition, which the gods grant thee t’attain to. If thou wert the
lion, the fox would beguile thee; if thou wert the lamb, the fox would eat
thee; if thou wert the fox, the lion would suspect thee, when peradventure

thou wert accus’d by the ass; if thou wert [330] the ass, thy dulness would
torment thee, and still thou liv’dst but as a breakfast to the wolf; if thou wert
the wolf, thy greediness would afflict thee, and oft thou shouldst hazard thy
life for thy dinner; wert thou the unicorn, pride and wrath would confound

thee and [335] make thine own self the conquest of thy fury; wert thou
a bear, thou wouldst be kill’d by the horse; wert thou a horse, thou wouldst
be seiz’d by the leopard; wert thou a leopard, thou wert germane to the lion,
and the spots of thy kindred were jurors on thy life. All thy safety were [340]

remotion, and thy defence absence. What beast couldst thou be that were
not subject to a beast? And what a beast art thou already, that seest not thy
loss in transformation!

APEMANTUS
If thou couldst please me with speaking to [345] me, thou mightst have hit

upon it here; the commonwealth of Athens is become a forest of beasts.