Timon of Athens

By William Shakespeare

“Timon of Athens” was first published in the “First Folio” in 1623 and was likely written by William Shakespeare in 1605 or 1606. Often regarded as one of the more difficult of Shakespeare’s plays to categorize, “Timon of Athens” blends elements of comedy with components of tragedy in Timon’s allegorical downfall and death. The play depicts an Athenian man, Timon, who is popular and wealthy and who selflessly gives away his possessions to a large number of false friends. He extends help to everyone, from a friend in a debtor’s prison to a servant who needs money so he can marry his chosen bride. Timon has given away all of his wealth and possessions and soon finds himself in need, yet all of his friends turn their backs on him. Timon feels deeply betrayed and becomes savagely bitter, living the rest of his life in seclusion outside of the city. Considered one of Shakespeare’s more challenging works, it is now largely believed to be due to Thomas Middleton’s likely collaboration in writing the play. “Timon of Athens” remains compelling to this day in its intense and unrelenting condemnation of greed and corruption in society. This edition includes a biographical afterword, annotations by Henry N. Hudson, and an introduction by Charles Harold Herford.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digireads.com Publishing
• Release date: Jul 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9781420974270

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) is arguably the most famous playwright to ever live. Born in England, he attended grammar school but did not study at a university. In the 1590s, Shakespeare worked as partner and performer at the London-based acting company, the King’s Men. His earliest plays were Henry VI and Richard III, both based on the historical figures. During his career, Shakespeare produced nearly 40 plays that reached multiple countries and cultures. Some of his most notable titles include Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar. His acclaimed catalog earned him the title of the world’s greatest dramatist.

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TIMON OF ATHENS

By WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Annotated by

HENRY N. HUDSON

Introduction by

CHARLES HAROLD HERFORD

Timon of Athens

By William Shakespeare

Annotated by Henry N. Hudson

Introduction by Charles Harold Herford

Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-7368-6

eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-7427-0

This edition copyright © 2021. Digireads.com Publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Cover Image: a detail of an illustration for Timon of Athens, by John Moyr Smith (c. 1861 – c. 1944), from Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb, published by Chatto and Windus, London, c. 1879 / © Look and Learn / Bridgeman Images.

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE.

ACT I.

SCENE I.

SCENE II.

ACT II.

SCENE I.

SCENE II.

ACT III.

SCENE I.

SCENE II.

SCENE III.

SCENE IV.

SCENE V.

SCENE VI.

ACT IV.

SCENE I.

SCENE II.

SCENE III.

ACT V.

SCENE I.

SCENE II.

SCENE III.

SCENE IV.

BIOGRAPHICAL AFTERWORD

INTRODUCTION.

The Lyfe of Timon of Athens was first printed in the Folio of 1623, as the fourth of the Tragedies. It is there divided neither into Acts nor Scenes, and the text is very corrupt.

It is now generally agreed that large tracts of Timon are not the work of Shakespeare. The following table gives a conspectus of the most currently accepted division, and of the resulting distribution of the characters:—

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This division rests partly upon glaring diversities of style, partly on inconsistencies of treatment. Thus Apemantus in Timon’s house plays in i. 2. the cynic he is; whereas in i. x. 5 8 the poet tells how ‘even he drops down the knee before him and returns in peace most rich in Timon’s nod.’ The unknown writer was a capable playwright, and a facile, even brilliant writer. But it is generally easy to distinguish his rhetorical verse—which tends to run sporadically into rhymed couplets—from the dose-packed, pregnant verses of Shakespeare. Contrast, for instance, the two pieces of declamation not dissimilar in mood—Timon’s in iv. 1. and Flavius’ in iv. 2. 30-50.

These discrepancies did not escape the critics of the last century. But they were commonly satisfied to attribute them to careless printers or copyists. The view that it was an incomplete drama, with certain scenes fully worked out, others left in the first draft, was urged with great ingenuity by Ulrici and Kreyssig.{1} Knight first put forward the hypothesis that Shakespeare was reworking an old play; and Delius, after demolishing this view in his first critical essay,{2} resuscitated it twenty years later (1866){3} with all the resources of his mature scholarship. But Delius’ acuteness only brought out the difficulties of his hypothesis. For the more glaring the incongruity, the harder it became to explain how Shakespeare had permitted it to pass. Two years after Delius’ essay, accordingly, B. Tschischwitz came forward with the opposite view that Timon was a Shakespearean sketch subsequently completed. This view has been developed, in his own way, by Mr. Fleay, and now prevails in England. In Germany, though widely accepted, it has less completely triumphed over (i.). The defenders of (i.) have successfully maintained the general coherence of the plot against the disintegrating analysis of Delius; but they fail in the discrimination of style. Whole scenes of Timon show no vestige of Shakespeare’s manner at any period. The defenders of (ii.) had an apparently strong argument in the fact that Timon betrays a knowledge of classical sources not then translated into English, as also that there are slight signs of an older Timon play accessible to Shakespeare.{4} But an argument founded on Shakespeare’s ignorance of Latin and of French must always be extremely hazardous, and Lucian’s Timon had been translated into both. Lucian’s influence is apparent (as will be seen below) not only in isolated passages, but in the fundamental features of the plot,—in the conception of scenes absolutely Shakespearean in execution; while he foreshadowed far more nearly than any other accessible version the character of Shakespeare’s Timon. No one can assert that Shakespeare had not an older Timon play before him; but the hypothesis explains nothing that is not as easily explained without it. On the other hand, there are evidences that while Shakespeare probably shaped out Timon for himself, he left it incomplete. Notably, the epitaph of Timon (v. 4. 70-7 3) is an agglomerate of two separate epitaphs recorded by Plutarch, which Shakespeare cannot have intended to combine without change,—the one (v. 4. 70, 71), written by Timon himself, the other (v. 4. 72, 73), according to ancient tradition, by Callimachus. However this happened, it is evident that our text reproduces an unfinished draft MS. of Shakespeare’s (for this scene is certainly his) with the two inconsistent epitaphs jotted down together as alternatives for a future decision never made.

Of the revising ‘second author’ nothing definite can be said;{5} and of the circumstances of the revision equally little.{6} But he cannot be shown to have introduced any motive not implied in Shakespeare’s work. The banishment of Alcibiades (iii. 5.) is the ground of his hostile return (v. 4.). The futile missions of Timon’s servants to his friends (iii. 1.-4.) only carry out the operations already arranged in ii. 2.

The date of the Shakespearean Timon can only be conjectured from somewhat insecure æsthetic criteria. It belongs, in the cast and temper of its tragedy, as also in verse structure, unmistakably to the period of Macbeth and Coriolanus (1606-8); its fragmentary condition, and the decay it evinces in purely dramatic vigour, suggest that it was the last of the Tragedies, and marks the exhaustion of Shakespeare’s tragic vein. Pericles, which was printed in 1609, and Cymbeline, which appeared later still, though classed as tragedies, adventure into totally different regions of tragic effect : it is plausible to suppose that Timon preceded this new departure, i.e. was not later than 1608. This is supported by its close connexion in subject with the Plutarchian tragedies of 1607-8; Timon and Alcibiades being Plutarchian parallels to Antony and Coriolanus.

Plutarch told the story of Timon as a digression in his Life of Mark Antony. Shakespeare also knew it as told by Painter in the Palace of Pleasure (Novella 28). Both versions are little more than anecdotes, and relate only to the second phase of Timon’s career,—the morose seclusion of the misanthrope near Athens, his encounters with Apemantus and Alcibiades, his ironical invitation to his countrymen to hang themselves on his fig-tree ‘before it be cut down.’ Plutarch alone intimates in passing that his hatred of men arose from ‘the unthankfulness of those he had done good unto, and whom he took to be his friends.’ Apemantus is a man ‘of the very same nature’ whom he ‘sometimes would have in his company.’ When the Athenians held festival the two cynics feasted together by themselves. Apemantus said: ‘O here is a trim banquet, Timon.’ Timon answered, ‘Yea, so thou wert not here.’ Alcibiades on the contrary Timon would ‘make much· of, and kissed him very gladly.’ When asked why he singled him out for favour from the rest of men: ‘I do it,’ said he, ‘because I know that one day he shall do great mischief unto the Athenians.’ He died a natural death, and ordered his body to be buried upon the sea-shore, ‘that the waves and surges might beat and vex his dead carcass.’

There is little doubt that in addition to these meagre anecdotes, Shakespeare knew, directly or indirectly, the lively dialogue in which Lucian makes Timon’s story the vehicle of a satire upon ill-used wealth.{7} Here also his prodigal days are only referred to: we see him at the outset, a ruined man, squalid, ragged, unkempt, on the slopes of Hymettus, hurling maledictions, as he stoops over his spade, at Zeus, who, in spite of the praises of poets and the sacrifices of the devout, allows his thunderbolts to rust while crime grows rampant. Hermes explains that this Timon is one who has been ‘ruined, one may say, by his honesty, generosity, and pity for the poor, but in fact by his foolish heedlessness in choosing, as the recipients of his bounty, crows and wolves and vultures.’ Zeus recalls the bountiful sacrifices offered by Timon, and resolves to send Plutus (‘Wealth’) to his aid. Plutus finds him in the company of Poverty and Wisdom, and is at first rudely dismissed, but finally persuades him to accept riches once more. His pick presently unearths a mass of treasure, he buys a plot of land, and builds a tower to hold it Having thus secured a financial basis, he proceeds to shape his life on the principles of misanthropy. His code of morals includes such precepts as ‘to be his own neighbour, to love above all names that of a misanthrope, and if any man implores him to put out his burning house, to extinguish it with oil and pitch.’ Presently the flattering friends of old arrive. Gnathonides, who