The Life of Timon of Athens

by William Shakespeare

FOOL.
Are you three usurers’ men?

ALL SERVANTS.
Ay, fool.

FOOL.
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’s house merrily and go away sadly. The reason of this?

VARRO’S SERVANT.
I could render one.

APEMANTUS.
Do it then, that we may account thee a whoremaster and a knave, which notwithstanding, thou shalt be no less esteemed.

VARRO’S SERVANT.
What is a whoremaster, fool?

FOOL.
A fool in good clothes, and something like thee. ’Tis a spirit; sometime ’t appears like a lord, sometime like a lawyer, sometime like a philosopher, with two stones more than’s artificial one. He is very often like a knight; and generally, in all shapes that man goes up and down in from fourscore to thirteen, this spirit walks in.

VARRO’S SERVANT.
Thou art not altogether a fool.

FOOL.
Nor thou altogether a wise man. As much foolery as I have, so much wit thou lack’st.

APEMANTUS.
That answer might have become Apemantus.