Page 3184 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

piece.

POET
I must serve him so too, tell him of an intent that’s [20] coming toward him.

PAINTER
Good as the best. Promising is the very air o’ th’ time; it opens the eyes of
expectation. Performance is ever the duller for his act; and, but in the plainer
and simpler kind of people, the deed of saying is quite out of [25] use. To

promise is most courtly and fashionable; performance is a kind of will or
testament which argues a great sickness in his judgment that makes it.

Enter Timon from his cave.

TIMON
[aside] Excellent workman, thou canst not paint a man so bad as is thyself.
[30]

POET
I am thinking what I shall say I have provided for him. It must be a

personating of himself; a satire against the softness of prosperity, with a
discovery of the infinite flatteries that follow youth and opulency. [35]

TIMON
[aside] Must thou needs stand for a villain in thine own work? Wilt thou whip
thine own faults in other men? Do so, I have gold for thee.

POET

Nay, let’s seek him:
Then do we sin against our own estate,
When we may profit meet, and come too late. [40]

PAINTER
True.
When the day serves, before black-corner’d night

Find what thou want’st, by free and offer’d light.
Come.