Timon of Athens Act Two – “And nature, as it grows again toward earth, Is fashion'd for the journey, dull and heavy.”

Timon of Athens Act Two – “And nature, as it grows again toward earth, Is fashion'd for the journey, dull and heavy.”

Outside his house, Senator Varro muses at the way that Timon's seems to be generous beyond all imaginings but never seems to run out of riches. He thinks that even if Timon’s riches are vast that at Timon’s rate of generousity that his riches can’t last. The Senator calls in his servant Caphis and tells him to go to Timon’s house to demand the debt Timon owes him and not to leave or take no for an answer. 

We cross back to Timon’s house where Flavius enters at the point of exacerbation with Timon’s generous but elaborate spending.

“No care, no stop! so senseless of expense,

That he will neither know how to maintain it,

Nor cease his flow of riot: takes no account

How things go from him, nor resumes no care

Of what is to continue: never mind

Was to be so unwise, to be so kind.”

Caphis, Varro's servant and Isidore's servant enter at the same time to reclaim the debts their masters are owed by Timon. When Timon enters, the servants put their masters demands of payment to him and when he asks them to leave and return the next day, they claim they have been put off many times before and that they will stay until paid. Timon questions Flavius:

”How goes the world, that I am thus encounter'd

With clamourous demands of date-broke bonds,

And the detention of long-since-due debts,

Against my honour?”

Then Flavius has a quiet word to Timon, telling how dire his financial situation is.

We have been waiting for a comic interlude and Shakespeare provides it some forty minutes into the action. When the servants who have been sent to collect their masters’ debts are left alone, they decide to have some sport with Apemantus and the Fool attached to Timon’s household. They throw riddles and strange questions at Apemantus and the Fool. The Fool finding out that they are servants to moneylenders infers to them that he works for a prostitute and he riddles them back.

“I think no usurer but has a fool to his servant: my

mistress is one, and I am her fool. When men come

to borrow of your masters, they approach sadly, and

go away merry; but they enter my mistress' house

merrily, and go away sadly: the reason of this?”

When Timon enters again with Flavius, he is in different mood. Flavius is able to dismiss the creditor servants for a moment and Timon asks Flavius why he was never made aware of the dire state of his finances. Flavius says that every time he broached the matter or even laid bills before Timon, he dismissed him. When Timon orders that Flavius sell off his property, Flavius says it is already mortgaged to the hilt. Timon then claims that Flavius mistakes his fortunes since Timon claims “I am wealthy in my friends…” and that he will approach them now and they will be generous. Flavius suggests that everyone only loved Timon for his generousity and that now his riches are gone and he cannot buy praise that Timon will find his friends gone. Timon disagrees and calls three of his servants to go off to three of his ‘friends’ to ask for money. He sends these servants off and berates Flavius:

“ …Ne'er speak, or think,

That Timon's fortunes 'mong his friends can sink.”

Flavius points out that he has already tried all this and used Timon’s signet ring to attempt to get money from these same men but to no avail. Timon refuses to believe that his ‘friends’ would not help him. Timon then asks Flavius to go to Ventidius who Timon has just helped and to ask for him for a loan. Flavius agrees to but remarks delusion of having a generous nature is that you can be deluded into thinking everyone else has one too:

“I would I could not think it: that thought is

bounty's foe;

Being free itself, it thinks all others so.”