th half so good a will.

Brutus, good night!

I like Shakespeare's servants. They seem to show that he sprang from
servants or common people rather than from lords and masters, for he
deals with them very gently. It must be understood that servants, bond
and free, were born unto the same house and served it for generations;
and so down to modern England, where the old nurse and the tottering old
gardener often nursed and played with "Master Will," when his father,
the dead and gone old squire, was a young man.

See where Timon's servants stand in the only patch of sunlight in that
black and bitter story:

Enter Flavius, with two or three SERVANTS.

1 Serv.: Hear you, master steward, where's our master?
Are we undone? cast off? nothing remaining?

Flav.: Alack, my fellows, what should I say to you?
Let me be recorded by the righteous gods,
I am as poor as you.

1 Serv.: Such a house broke!
So noble a master fall'n! All gone! and not
One friend to take his fortune by the arm,
And go along with him!

2 Serv.: As we do turn our backs
From our companion thrown into his grave,
So his familiars to his buried fortunes
Slink all away; leave their false vows with him,
Like empty purses pick'd; and his poor self,
A dedicated beggar to the air,
With his disease of all-shunn'd poverty,
Walks, like contempt, alone. More of our fellows.

Enter other Servants

Flav.: All broken implements of a ruin'd house.

3 Serv.: Yet do our hearts wear Timon's livery;
That see I by our faces; we are fellows still,
Serving alike in sorrow: leak'd is our bark,
And we, poor mates, stand on the dying deck,
Hearing the surges threat; we must all part
Into this sea of air.

Flav.: Good fellows all,
The latest of my wealth I'll share amongst you.
Wherever we shall meet, for Timon's sake
Let's yet be fellows; let's shake our heads, and say,
As 'twere a knell unto our master's fortunes,
"We have seen better days." Let each take some.
(Giving them money.)
Nay, put o