He forsooke the citie and companie of his frendes, and built him a house in the sea, by the Ile of Pharos, upon certaine forced mountes which he caused to be cast into the sea, and dwelt there, as a man that banished him selfe from all mens companie; saying he would live Timons life, bicause he had the like wrong offered him, that was affore offered unto Timon: and that for the unthankefulnes of those he had done good unto, and whom he tooke to be his frendes he was angry with all men, and would trust no man.
In reference to this withdrawal of Antony’s to the Timoneon, as he called his solitary house, Plutarch inserts the story of Timon of Athens, and there is reason to believe that Shakespeare made his contributions to the play of that name just before he wrote Macbeth, about the year 1606.[187]
(b) In Macbeth itself he has utilised the Marcus Antonius probably for one passage and certainly for another. In describing the scarcity of food among the Roman army in Parthia, Plutarch says:
In the ende they were compelled to live of erbes and rootes, but they found few of them that men doe commonly eate of, and were enforced to tast of them that were never eaten before: among the which there was one that killed them, and made them out of their witts. For he that had once eaten of it, his memorye was gone from him, and he knewe no manner of thing.
Shakespeare is most likely thinking of this when after the disappearance of the witches, he makes Banquo exclaim in bewilderment:
Were such things here as we do speak about?
Or have we eaten on the insane root
That takes the reason prisoner.
(I. iii. 83.)
In any case Macbeth contains an unmistakable reminiscence of the soothsayer’s warning to Antony.