The Life of Tymon of Athens, often shortened to Timon of Athens, is a play written by William Shakespeare and likely also Thomas Middleton in about 1606. It was published in the First Folio in 1623. Timon lavishes his wealth on parasitic companions until he is poor and rejected by them. He then denounces all of mankind, and isolates himself in a cave in the wilderness.
The earliest-known production of the play was in 1674, when Thomas Shadwell wrote an adaptation under the title The History of Timon of Athens, The Man-hater. Multiple other adaptations followed over the next century, by writers such as Thomas Hull, James Love and Richard Cumberland.
The straight Shakespearean text was performed at Smock Alley in Dublin in 1761, but adaptations continued to dominate the stage until well into the 20th century.
Timon of Athens was originally grouped with the tragedies, but recently some scholars have started regarding it as one of the problem plays.
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Synopsis
Timon is a wealthy and generous Athenian gentleman. He hosts a large banquet, attended by nearly all of Athens. Timon gives away money wastefully, and everyone around him pleads with him to receive more, except for Apemantus, a churlish philosopher (whose name means "feeling no pain") whose cynicism Timon cannot yet appreciate. He accepts art from a poet and a painter, and a jewel from a jeweler, only to later give his jewel away to another friend. Timon's servant, Lucilius, has been wooing the daughter of an old Athenian. The Athenian is furious with Lucilius's flirting, but Timon pays him three talents to fund the couple's marriage, because the happiness of his servant is worth the price. Timon is told that his friend, Ventidius, is in debtors' prison. He sends money to pay for Ventidius's debt, and Ventidius is released and attends Timon's banquet. Timon gives a speech on the value of friendship, and later, the guests are entertained by a masque, followed by dancing. As the party winds down, Timon continues to wastefully give away to his friends: his horses, as well as other possessions. The act is divided rather arbitrarily into two scenes, but the experimental or unfinished nature of the play is reflected in that it does not naturally break into a five-act structure.
Unbeknownst to him, Timon has given away all his wealth, and is deep in debt. Flavius, Timon's steward, is upset by the way Timon is spending his wealth; overextending his munificence by showering patronage over parasitic writers and artists, and saving his dubious friends from their financial straits; Flavius confronts Timon when he returns from a hunt. Timon is upset that Flavius did not warn him of his debt before, and begins to direct his anger onto Flavius, who says that he has tried repeatedly in the past without success, and now he is at the end: all of Timon's land has been sold. Shadowing Timon is another guest at the banquet: Apemantus, who terrorises Timon's shallow companions with his caustic raillery. Along with a Fool, he attacks Timon's creditors when they show up to make their demands for immediate payment. Timon has no money to repay his debt, thus he sends out his servants to request money from those friends he considers closest.
Timon's servants are turned down, one by one, by Timon's false friends. Elsewhere, one of Alcibiades's junior officers, in a rage, kills a man in "hot blood". Alcibiades pleads with the Senate for mercy, arguing that a crime of passion should not carry as severe a sentence as premeditated murder. The senators disagree, and, when Alcibiades persists, banish him forever. Alcibiades vows revenge, with the support of his troops. The act finishes with Timon discussing with his servants the revenge he will carry out at his next banquet.
Timon hosts a smaller party, intended only for those he feels have betrayed him. The serving trays are set before the diners, but contain only rocks and lukewarm water. Timon ambushes his false friends and flees Athens. The loyal Flavius vows to find him.
Cursing the city walls, Timon goes into the wilderness and makes his crude home in a cave, sustaining himself on roots. Here he discovers an underground trove of gold. The knowledge of his discovery spreads. Alcibiades, Apemantus, and three bandits are able to find Timon before Flavius does. Accompanying Alcibiades are two prostitutes, Phrynia and Timandra, who trade barbs with the bitter Timon on the subject of venereal disease. Timon offers most of the gold to the rebel Alcibiades to subsidise his assault on the city, which Timon now wants to see destroyed, as his experiences have reduced him to misanthropy. He gives the rest to his whores, to spread disease, and much of the remainder to the poet and the painter, who arrive soon after, leaving little for the senators who visit him. Apemantus appears and accuses Timon of copying his pessimistic ways, and there is a mutually misanthropic exchange of invective.
Flavius arrives. Flavius asks Timon for money as well, but also asks for Timon to return to society. Timon acknowledges that he has had one true friend in Flavius, a shining example of an otherwise diseased and impure race, but laments that Flavius is a mere servant. He invites the last set of envoys from Athens, who hoped Timon might placate Alcibiades, to go hang themselves, and then dies in the wilderness. Alcibiades, marching on Athens, throws down his glove, and ends the play reading the bitter epitaph Timon wrote for himself, part of which was composed by Callimachus:
Date and text
The play's date is uncertain, though its bitter tone links it with Coriolanus and King Lear. John Day's play Humour Out of Breath, published in 1608, contains a reference to "the lord that gave all to his followers, and begged more for himself" – a possible allusion to Timon that would, if valid, support a date of composition before 1608. It has been proposed that Shakespeare himself took the role of the Poet, who has the fifth-largest line count in the play.
The play was entered into the Stationers' Register in 1623. There are no contemporary allusions to the play by which its date of composition may be determined, nor is there an agreed means of explaining the play's "loose ends and inconsistencies". Editors since the twentieth century have sought to remedy these defects through conjectures about Shakespeare's emotional development (Chambers); hypotheses concerning the play's "unfinished state" (Ellis-Fermor) and "scribal interference" (Oliver); and through statistical analyses of vocabulary, stage directions, and so forth.
Assuming the play is a collaboration between Shakespeare and Middleton, its date has been placed in the period 1605–1608, most likely 1606.
In his 2004 edition for the Oxford Shakespeare, John Jowett argues the lack of act divisions in the Folio text is an important factor in determining a date. The King's Men only began to use act divisions in their scripts when they occupied the indoor Blackfriars Theatre in August 1608 as their winter playhouse. Timon is notoriously difficult to divide into acts, suggesting to Jowett that it was written at a time when act divisions were of no concern to the writer, hence it must have been written prior to August 1608. A terminus post quem may come from a possible topical allusion to the Gunpowder Plot of November 1605; "those that under hot ardent zeal would set whole realms on fire" (scene 7, 32–33). In the context of the play, the line is referring to religious zeal, but some scholars feel it is a subtle reference to the events of November.
The play may also have been influenced by a pamphlet published in June 1605, Two Unnatural and Bloody Murders, which served as the primary source for Thomas Middleton's A Yorkshire Tragedy. This would narrow the possible range of dates to sometime between November 1605 and August 1608. Furthermore, MacDonald P. Jackson's rare-word test found the conjectured Shakespearean parts of the text date to 1605–1606. Going further, Jackson found that if one examines the non-Shakespearean sections in the context of Middleton's career, a date of 1605–1606 also results.