[Enter certain Senators, and pass over.

  Painter.  How this lord’s followed!

  Poet.  The senators of Athens:  happy men!

This informs us who they are that pass over.  The Poet also keeps up the Ercles vein; while the Painter’s eye is caught.

  Painter.  Look, more!

  Poet.  You see this confluence, this great flood of visitors.

  I have, in this rough work, shaped out a man
  Whom this beneath world doth embrace and hug
  With amplest entertainment:  my free drift
  Halts not particularly, but moves itself
  In a wide sea of wax:  no levelled malice
  Infects one comma in the course I hold: 
  But flies an eagle flight, bold, and forth on,
  Leaving no tract behind.

This flight of rhetoric is intended to produce a sort of musical effect, in preparing us by its lofty sound for readily apprehending the lord Timon with “amplest entertainment.”  The same is true of all that follows.  The Poet and Painter do but sound a lordly note of preparation, and move the curtain that is to be lifted before a scene of profusion.  Call it by what name we please, it surely was not accident or unconscious inspiration,—­a rapture or frenzy,—­which led Shakspeare to open this play in this manner.  If we remember the old use of choruses, which was to lift up and excite the fancy, we may well believe that he intended this flourishing Poet to act as a chorus,—­to be a “mighty whiffler,” going before, elevating “the flat unraised spirits” of his auditory, and working on their “imaginary forces.”  He is a rhetorical character, designed to rouse the attention of the house by the pomp of his language, and to set their fancies in motion by his broad conceptions.  How well he does it!  No wonder the Painter is a little confused as he listens to him.

  Painter.  How shall I understand you?

  Poet.  I’ll unbolt to you.

  You see how all conditions, how all minds,
  (As well of glib and slippery creatures, as
  Of grave and austere quality,) tender down
  Their services to Lord Timon; his large fortune,
  Upon his good and gracious nature hanging,
  Subdues and properties to his love and tendance
  All sorts of hearts; yea, from the glass-faced flatterer
  To Apemantus, that few things loves better
  Than to abhor himself; even he drops down
  The knee before him, and returns in peace,
  Most rich in Timon’s nod.

There was almost a necessity that the spectator should be made acquainted with the character of Timon before his appearance; for his profuseness could be illustrated, after being known, better than it could make itself known in dialogue and action in which he should bear a part.  And of the hundreds of English plays opening with an explanation or narrative of foregone matters, there is none where the formality is concealed