Commentaries on
Shakespeare’s Tragedies
Shakespeare, William. The Life of Timon of Athens. (The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 850-904).
Of Interest: RSC Resources | ISE Resources | S-O Sources | 1623 Folio 696-717 (Folger) | Lucian’s The Misanthrope | Plutarch’s Life of Marcus Antonius (North) | Plutarch’s Life of Pericles (North)
ACT 1
Act 1, Scene 1 (850-57, Timon’s hangers-on—a poet, a painter, a merchant, and a jeweler—gather at his estate to talk about Timon and what they hope to get from him; Timon pays Ventidius’s fine to free him from jail, financially backs his servant Lucilius’s marriage proposal, and praises his guests’ efforts; he invites them to a feast, along with Alcibiades and the Cynic Apemantus, who rails at Timon and his entourage.)
At the opening of the play, a number of Timon’s apparently frequent friends and dinner guests wait inside Timon’s great house, and together they give us our initial, if indirect, look at the great man. First, the jeweler has an exquisite precious stone that he would like Timon to have, at the right price—that is, “If he will touch the estimate” (851, 1.1.15). The jeweler has a way of somehow being frankly commercialist and yet elegant in his praise of Timon.
Next, the painter displays his creation intended to honor the gracious Timon, and the poet duly praises the “Artificial strife” (851, 1.1.38) or craftsmanlike effort that must have gone into its making. The poet, in turn, gives us a view of Timon of Athens, for he has written a moral allegory: in his poem, he has “upon a high and pleasant hill / Feigned Fortune to be throned” (852, 1.1.64-65), with all sorts of people, in all states of virtue. Timon is called by Lady Fortune herself to make his way up the hill toward her.
But the Poet also gives us the darker side of the widely known medieval “Lady Fortune” motif: when the wheel shifts, all of Timon’s followers perceive his distress but still “let him set down, / Not one accompanying his declining foot” (853, 1.1.88-89). In other words, they save themselves and let him be dragged down to the base of the hill.
The painter doesn’t seem impressed, saying that he could easily point to “A thousand moral paintings” (853, 1.1.91) that could more effectually get the same point across. He does, however, think the poet wise to show Timon “that mean eyes have seen / The foot above the head” (853, 1.1.94-95). In other words, the poet’s words will put it to Timon if trouble besets him, baser people may not exactly idolize him as if he were a god: they will recognize his common humanity, and they will act to preserve themselves above all others.
Indeed, this is a point that the poet has already made in his own way. He has said with respect to Timon that, “His large fortune, / Upon his good and gracious nature hanging, / Subdues and properties to his love and tendance / All sorts of hearts” (852, 1.1.56-59). There is a hint in such language of something other than the remarkably innocent spirit in which Timon seems to see himself acting when he spreads largesse among his fellow Athenians. There is a hint in such unlimited giving of a drive to dominate others, to condition them to one’s will.
But at this point, none of Timon’s followers makes much of the poet’s suggestive word-painting. They are there, after all, to sell Timon something, not to reflect deeply on the man’s nature or his future well-being, so they need not engage in serious reflection on the unhappy implications of the poet’s representation of a fickle, ultimately unkind Fate.
Timon, too, is oblivious to any such considerations, and we catch our first glimpse of him when he is doing something characteristic: helping everyone who asks, anyone who is in need of money. He rescues Ventidius, who has been arrested for debts owed, and easily gives in to the Old Athenian who professes to be irate that one of Timon’s servants, Lucilius, wants to marry his daughter (853-54, 1.1.96-111, 112-53).
Timon’s reward is the robust thanks of those he benefits, and Lucilius even tenders a large promise, saying, “Never may / That state or fortune fall into my keeping / Which is not owed to you” (854, 1.1.151-53). This is the language one uses with an absolute monarch from whom all lands, titles, and benefits flow, not with a mere citizen in presumably democratic Athens. [1]
The painter and the jeweler flatter Timon as is apparently their habit, and then Apemantus the Cynic philosopher [2] puts in an appearance. In his mocking way, he tries to impart some wisdom to Timon and the onlookers, declaring that Timon is really no better than those who flatter him: “He that loves to be flattered is worthy ‘o’th’ flatterer (856, 1.1.219). Aside from that not very successful mission, the sum total of Apemantus’s present purpose seems to be to confirm that “the strain of man’s / bred out into baboon and monkey” (857, 1.1.243-44).
Ever the observer, Apemantus has come to the feast mainly, he says, “to see meat fill knaves and wine heat fools” (857, 1.1.253). Having announced that portfolio as a sour Cynic philosopher among the beautiful people—or those pretending to be such—Apemantus has done with the lords who have flocked to Timon’s feast. At least, for the moment. He will have another chance to shine when dinner is served.
Act 1, Scene 2 (857-63, Timon throws a fine dinner party, replete with a masque; he rejects Ventidius’s offer to repay him, and gives his guests thoughtful, expensive gifts; Apemantus, by contrast, calls out the guests’ obvious flattery of their host; the honest steward, Flavius, tells us—though not yet Timon—clearly that his employer is now spending money alarmingly beyond his means.)
Timon asserts his utopian personal philosophy: it consists of a social circle of “shiny happy people holding hands,” [3] a society grounded in the continual act of exchanging mostly symbolic, very expensive gifts that unite its members in friendship. In practice, however, Timon is the one bestowing the gifts—there is almost nothing reciprocal about the relationships he maintains with his admirers. They pay him with flattery and use him as an easy mark for their overpriced commodities, and he rewards them all the more for it.
When Ventidius tries to repay Timon—if indeed he is even serious in the offer, which seems doubtful—the latter turns down the repayment, saying “there’s none / Can truly say he gives if he receives” (858, 1.2.10-11). He does not see giving in economic terms, but processes it as an expression of generous friendship. Taking anything in return would cancel out the good intentions involved in the original act of giving. [4] It seems to be a principal tenet of “Timonomics” that chickens never come home to roost. But if they did, one should offer them a magnificent gift for their trouble.
Timon’s gloss on “ceremony” is presented to us when his guests make a decorous response to his generosity toward Ventidius, only to be told, “Ceremony was but devised at first / To set a gloss on faint deeds, hollow welcomes, / Recanting goodness, sorry ‘ere tis shown” (858, 1.2.16-18). It is entirely possible for decorum, ceremony, and the like to degenerate into hollow, dishonest formalism, but Timon’s dismissal seems peremptory and overly broad, all but inviting his guests to scorn his beneficence and take advantage of him at will. [5] Appreciation for life’s formalities was not so despised in Shakespeare’s own time. [6]
The strangeness of Timon’s conception of friendship appears when he says, “Why, I have / often wished myself poorer that I might come nearer to you. We are born to do benefits …” (859-60, 1.2.95-97). He is opposed to any immediate reciprocity, choosing instead to widen the arc of giving and receiving as much as possible, even wishing that someday—who knows when?—he might have need of his friends’ generosity just so they may have the same pleasure in giving that he himself enjoys, and grow even closer to him. This seems naïve, to say the least.
It is naïve, that is, because Timon himself continually short-circuits the possibility of any such reciprocity between himself and those who call themselves his friends. He will soon find that when he needs to “stress-test” his friendships in the manner that he all but invites here, he will be sorely disappointed.
Even as Timon enunciates his philosophy of perpetual beneficence, [7] Apemantus is at work tearing down his host’s fine gestures. In Scene 2, the Cynic gets a sustained opportunity to chip away at Timon’s naïveté, but in truth, his sour insight is no match for Timon’s effervescent nobility: he scorns the evening’s masque, an event that everyone else delights to behold, saying, “I should fear those that dance before me now / Would one day stamp upon me” (860, 1.2.136-37).
Even the magnificent line that follows upon this thought, “Men shut their doors against a setting sun” (860, 1.2.138)—if indeed Timon hears this line—drops to no effect amid so much good cheer, what with the conversation, dancing, and great food. Evidently, Apemantus sees all this entertainment as vanity; he finds in it, or in the dance of life itself, no harmony, and in pleasure no healing for the soul.
A similar fate belongs to Apemantus’s blunt question, “What needs / these feasts, pomps, and vainglories?” (863, 1.2.240-41)—a moment wherein the Cynic philosopher really does seem in earnest and determined to warn Timon about the danger he is in—as well as to the steward Flavius’s agonized, but as yet unshared, recognition of his master’s blindness to impending ruin in the form of “an empty coffer” (863, 1.2.190).
The steward is perplexed in the extreme by his employer’s heedless conduct: Timon will not, laments Flavius, “know his purse, or yield me this: / To show him what a beggar his heart is, / Being of no power to make his wishes good” (862, 1.2.191-93). In modern times, we sometimes joke about the very rich being so wealthy that they really have no idea how much money and property they possess, and that seems to be literally true of Timon of Athens.
Apemantus sums up his assessment of Timon, and the second scene as well, with what sounds like a heartfelt remark: “O, that men’s ears should be / To counsel deaf, but not to flattery (863, 1.2.246-47).
Indeed, Timon is too busy enjoying his utopian circle of admirers and dependents to pay attention to Apemantus’s barbed wisdom. Unfortunately for this Greek lord, however, Shakespeare seldom allows such utopian visions to go unchallenged: again and again, the playwright reinforces the point that there is no such thing as a flawless human system. There is no utopia, no perfect society, outside of fiction.
For Shakespeare and practically everyone else in his own time, human beings are ineradicably postlapsarian. As the wise clown Feste puts the matter in Twelfth Night, “Anything / that’s mended is but patched. Virtue that transgresses is but / patched with sin, and sin that amends is but patched with vir- / tue….” [8] At base, Timon does not have a realistic understanding of human nature, and he does not understand himself or his relationships with other human beings. While he is far from an ignoble or base man, no sustainable good can come of his philosophy of flattery-as-friendship and extreme giving.
ACT 2
Act 2, Scene 1 (863-64, A senator figures out that Timon is going broke, and sends his servant to call in from him the loans he has failed to repay.)
The second act’s beginning marks an abrupt perspectival transformation from the beginning of the first. We hear not from Timon’s flatterers but from someone who is well placed to bring Timon’s way of life crashing down: a senator to whom the philanthropist owes a lot of money. The senator sends his servant Caphis to call in Timon’s loan, with instructions to get right to the point: “Put on a most importunate aspect, / A visage of demand, for I do fear / When every feather sticks in his own wing / Lord Timon will be left a naked gull …” (864, 2.1.28-31).
Act 2, Scene 2 (864-69, Timon’s creditors send servants who assemble together and confront the spendthrift lord, insisting that their employers be made whole; Timon finally understands that he is flat broke, and sends his servants forth to borrow from his friends.)
Flavius again speaks in soliloquy, observing that Timon simply will not “cease his flow of riot” (864, 2.2.3) and live in anything close to a sane, much less frugal, manner. Just as Flavius determines to speak frankly with his employer, in come Caphis, Varro’s servant, and Isidore’s servant, all of them determined to call in the loans that have been extended to Flavius on behalf of Timon. At last, when all three of these men rush at Timon to press their masters’ overdue suits, he finally takes notice, however confusedly, of his real situation.
Flavius asks the servants of Timon’s creditors to hold off until dinnertime, so that he may explain to Timon the precise nature and extent of his troubles. Apemantus visits the creditors’ servants together with a Fool who seems to be a pimp, or “bawd,” and the two of them enjoy trading barbs with the servants. Meanwhile, Flavius takes advantage of the present distressing situation to give Timon a proper accounting.
Timon himself now uses the language of responsible economic stewardship, however unconvincingly, remonstrating with Flavius, “You make me marvel wherefore ere this time / Had you not fully laid my state before me, / That I might so have rated my expense / As I had leave of means” (867, 2.2.119-22). By this time, however, Flavius has no intention of allowing Timon to put the blame on him, and he tells him plainly, “You would not hear me. / At many leisures I proposed” (867, 2.2.122-23), admitting as well that on many occasions he actually wept over the sorry state of his finances.
Timon now acknowledges his predicament, though in a self-defensive way, saying to Flavius, “No villainous bounty yet hath passed my heart. / Unwisely, not ignobly, have I given” (868, 2.2.168-69). He also scolds Flavius for his supposed failure to trust in the power of friendship: “You shall perceive how you / Mistake my fortunes: I am wealthy in my friends” (868, 2.2.178-79). Even the Steward Flavius’s admission that he has already unsuccessfully sounded the Athenian senators about the possibility of a loan makes nary a dent in Timon’s unbounded belief in the good will and sufficiency of his charmed circle of friends.
The main function of the second scene, we can see by now, is to set Timon of Athens up for the steepest and cruelest possible fall as nearly everyone he thought he could count on will, in short order, reject him in the most shameful and transparently selfish way. Unlike some of today’s major financial institutions that have fallen on evil days, no one will be able to say of Timon that he is “too big to fail.” [9]
ACT 3
Act 3, Scene 1 (869-71, Timon’s servant Flaminius asks Lucullus for money, but Lucullus refuses to help.)
Timon’s servant Flaminius visits his sometime dinner companion Lucullus, who behaves like a thorough cad. He even goes so far as to offer Timon the equivalent of “I told you so” with regard to his profligacy, and tosses a bit of money at Flaminius to “forget” that he even met Lucullus. Flaminius scorns the dishonest offer, and when Lucullus exits, the servant declares, “I feel my master’s passion. This slave / Unto this hour has my lord’s meat in him” (871, 3.1.50-51).
It’s worth noting that among Timon’s circle, only his servants seem to honor him in a genuine and steady manner—a pattern that will hold true throughout the play. They seem well aware of Timon’s flaws and mistakes, but they also see the goodness of the man shining through even the worst of those flaws and mistakes. In its excessiveness, the master’s conduct may be foolhardy rather than truly magnificent, but his is at least arguably a far less blameworthy path to follow than that of, say, a wealthy person who remains a miser. [10]
Act 3, Scene 2 (871-72, Timon’s servant Servilius asks Lucius, another of Timon’s companions, for a big loan and he, too, refuses to help; bystanders speak with disgust about the ungrateful conduct of Timon’s friends, and praise Timon himself for his decency.)
Timon’s servant Servilius asks Lucius to lend Timon a large sum, and is immediately refused. Lucius is much more polite and “politic” in his rejection, but that is all that may be said in his favor. His politeness is an obvious cover for his heartless knavery.
Several strangers see what’s happening between Servilius and Lucius, and the First Stranger offers a robust condemnation of Lucius’s conduct, pointing out that Timon has showered benefits on him and helped him and his people in their hour of need. The First Stranger also tells us that he never had occasion to borrow any money of seek any favors from Timon, so perhaps that status of being “free and clear” makes it easier for him to render an objective appreciation of Timon’s true quality.
Act 3, Scene 3 (873, Timon’s companion Sempronius is asked to extend a loan to Timon, but again, the request is denied.)
Sempronius’s turn to be hit up for money comes next, and he’s more than equal to the task of finding a way to reject the request in the most ridiculous way possible. In this case, he pretends to take offense at Timon’s servant because the master came to him last. Oh, the outrage of it! Timon is answered with, “Who bates mine honor shall not know my coin” (873, 3.3.26). The servant is disgusted almost beyond words.
Act 3, Scene 4 (874-76, Timon’s creditors once again send their servants to him, but this time he faces them with an angry spirit and harsh words.)
The steward Flavius is in no mood to parry wits with the servants of Timon’s creditors, and he waves them aside with the rejoinder, “my lord and I have made an end; / I have no more to reckon, he to spend” (875, 3.4.54-55). That’s hardly acceptable to the impatient servants, but soon they must reckon with a newly enraged Timon. We have not seen this fire in him until now, but it’s there without denial: he is angry at having his way barred in his own house by importunate suitors for money he no longer has.
Timon’s language now takes on a metaphoricity that registers the seriousness of the catastrophe he has brought upon himself. When the “bills” or demands for repayment are thrust at him, he responds as if the bills were halberds, sharp weapons intended to stab him and draw his blood: “Knock me down with ‘em; cleave me to the girdle” [11] (876, 3.4.85). The creditors don’t know what to do with this new sensibility, and they leave dissatisfied in their common suit.
Act 3, Scene 5 (876, Timon, beside himself over the pitiless and rude behavior of his friends and creditors, tells Flavius to issue one last dinner invitation.)
Timon, having presented an angry face to his creditors, now orders Flavius to send out one final dinner invitation, and it’s clear that it will not be a pleasant occasion since he now refers to the future guests not as creditors but as “Devils” (876, 3.5.2).
Act 3, Scene 6 (877-79, Alcibiades earnestly entreats the Athenian senate to spare the life of a soldier who has committed manslaughter as revenge; the senate denies his suit, and when he persists in it, they banish him from Athens; Alcibiades is outraged at this treatment, and, in soliloquy, swears that he will win his soldiers over to attacking Athens.)
Alcibiades, a military officer who we might not think has much in common with a refined lord such as Timon, [12] now suffers a similarly humiliating defeat at the hands of Athens. When the captain asks that the law’s rigor be set aside on his say-so for a soldier of his who has apparently committed manslaughter in some kind of civil honor-based confrontation, the Athenian senators brusquely refuse a request that Alcibiades seems to have thought would be routine. The senators value neither the soldier’s concern for honor, nor Alcibiades’s belief that he is entitled to the state’s consideration for his own services.
When the Athenian senators summarily banish Alcibiades, the captain reacts with great bitterness. His banishment is almost welcome to him, he says in soliloquy: “It is a cause worthy my spleen and fury / That I may strike at Athens” (879, 3.6.111-12). Like Timon, who has found to his cost that his conception of “friendship” is by no means shared by his supposed friends, Alcibiades discovers that, as far as the esteemed senators of Athens are concerned, his military prowess in service of the great city are worth next to nothing.
Act 3, Scene 7 (879-82, Timon holds one last dinner for his supposed friends, but the fare is nothing but hot water; Timon curses the diners, splashes water at them, and drives them away violently; the guests think he must have gone mad.)
Timon’s erstwhile friends try to paper over their shameful treatment of him, but it does them no good. His prayer to the gods now is, “For these / my present friends, as they are to me nothing, so in nothing / bless them, and to nothing are they welcome” (3.7.77-79). For their duteous presence at Timon’s “Last Supper,” they receive only lukewarm water. In other words, they are treated to the proverbial “nice hot bowl of nothing.” That, and some painful blows as they exit. Timon has made the transformation from gracious host to dedicated misanthrope.
ACT 4
Act 4, Scene 1 (882-83, cursing Athens and everyone in it who once celebrated his wealth and influence, Timon abandons the city and withdraws to live in the woods, where he expects to perfect his hatred for all mankind.)
As Apemantus will say in the third scene, [13] Timon cannot maintain the middle way in anything, but runs to excess both in his generosity and now in his utter condemnation of all humanity. Here in Scene 1, we are subjected to Timon’s first sustained burst of words expressing his rage not just at his particular foes but at humankind.
Like King Lear, Timon sees nothing but systemic knavery everywhere he looks, even in institutions such as law and the conventions that uphold social hierarchy and sexual morality. To all these forces of righteousness and restraint, Timon offers a harsh prayer: “Decline to your confounding contraries, / And yet confusion live” (882, 4.1.20-21). Much of what Timon says here is rather close, at least in tone if not ultimately in wisdom, to King Lear’s awful insights into the corruption of human nature and the consequent perversion of the stays set up to keep that corruption in check. [14]
If we ask why Timon has gone to the woods, [15] we can know the answer by reading the conclusion to his prayer: “The gods confound—hear me, you good gods all!— / Th’Athenians both within and out that wall, / And grant as Timon grows his hate may grow / To the whole race of mankind, high and low.” (883, 4.1.37-40) Now that is a prayer to which any confirmed misanthropist can, as Timon does, say “Amen.”
Act 4, Scene 2 (883-84, Flavius the steward shares his own money with his anxious fellow servants, who must now leave Timon’s abandoned estate; Flavius says he will follow after Timon and do his best to perform the office of steward for him.)
Flavius, Timon’s former steward, meets with his fellow servants one last time and selflessly shares with these social underlings a portion of his remaining wealth, little as it is. This is to emulate his master’s gesture, but in a more down-to-earth way grounded in necessity, not in the grandiose and primarily symbolic manner of Timon. When the servants leave, Flavius denounces hope for the kind of riches Timon once commanded since, in the end, as experience has shown him, it brings only “misery and contempt” (883, 4.2.32).
What is Flavius’s steadfast support for Timon based on? Well, in his soliloquy he does not recognize the Aristotelian “golden mean” standard for assessing virtue, [16] but he seems to be acting on the basis of a standard that we, Shakespeare, and his audience would recognize: it’s the one Portia declares when she tells Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, “The quality of mercy is not strained.” [17] In other words, compassion and empathy should never have to be forced from a person; they should come naturally and be extended as many times as necessary.
Portia’s approach is not much different from Christ’s answer to Peter when the apostle asked how many times he should forgive a brother who has done him wrong: “I say not to thee, Unto seven times, but, Unto seventy times seven times.” [18] Flavius takes no personal offense at his old master’s mistakes and sometime shallowness, but forgives him. [19] It is unfortunate, to be sure, that Timon doesn’t return the sentiment, but Flavius remains loyal just the same.
Act 4, Scene 3 (884-96, while digging for edible roots, Timon finds gold; Alcibiades visits him along with two prostitutes, and Timon condemns Alcibiades but gives the women gold if they will promise to keep damaging Athens with venereal disease; next, Apemantus visits, and the two men argue, with Apemantus reproaching Timon for his lack of moderation and promising he’ll tell the Athenians about his gold; bandits arrive, and Timon gives them gold while encouraging them to continue plying their trade; finally, Timon’s steward visits him, lamenting his master’s condition and offering help, but Timon sends him away.)
Again sounding for all the world like the furious King Lear in the depths of his daughters’ betrayal and deep sensibility of his own guilt, Timon curses all human pretensions to anything vice and wickedness: who, he asks, can honestly “stand upright / And say, ‘This man’s a flatterer’? If one be, / So are they all, for every grece of fortune / Is smoothed by that below” (884, 4.3.14-17). Everything is governed by hierarchy and advantage-taking, no matter that these concepts are quickly hollowed out and rendered shams.
Timon has for some time now reckoned that all he wants from mother earth is edible roots, but in the strangest of coincidences—if such it is; perhaps the gods are involved—while digging for his next meal, he finds a large quantity of gold, perhaps in the form of coins. [20] At the moment, all Timon can do is tally the many bad effects of this supposedly precious yellow metal. He re-buries some of it when he hears a drum announcing someone’s approach, but he leaves a portion of the gold exposed, as he says, “for earnest.” [21]
The drum turns announces the entrance of none other than Captain Alcibiades with his soldiers and two prostitutes, Phrynia and Timandra. Timon at first curses at Alcibiades and tells him to betake his interest in gold elsewhere, but when the captain offers him gold, he rejects it with contempt, and offers him some in turn, encouraging him to destroy Athens and show no pity for even the most innocent: “Put armor on thine ears and on thine eyes, / Whose proof nor yells of mothers, maids, nor babes, / Nor sight of priests in holy vestments bleeding, / Shall pierce a jot” (887, 4.3.124-27).
As for Phrynia and Timandra, Timon is obsessively positive about the “world’s oldest profession” that they follow, and he showers them with gold to extract a promise that they will not leave off afflicting Athenian men (along with those they inadvertently harm) with the several diseases that come from irresponsible sexual relations. As Timon puts it, what the prostitutes can inflict on Athens is far worse than anything Alcibiades and his soldiers would do: “Be whores still,” he tells them, “and he whose pious breath seeks to convert you, / Be strong in whore, allure him, burn him up” (887, 4.3.140-42).
Next up in the queue to visit Timon is Apemantus, our favorite Cynic philosopher, and the two men have quite a back-and-forth, from which we should cover at least the highlights. Apemantus’s first gesture is to try to deflate what he must take to be Timon’s continued ego and arrogance by insisting that this onetime rich lord has come by his cynicism at cut-rate: “This is in thee,” he taunts Timon, “a nature but infected, / A poor unmanly melancholy sprung / From change of future. Why this spade, this place, / This slave-like habit, and these looks of care?” (889, 4.3.203-06)
Timon listens to some more of such talk, and then turns the argument around against Apemantus, saying, “Thou art a slave, whom Fortune’s tender arm / With favor never clasped, but bred a dog” (890, 4.3.251-52). Timon goes on to suggest that if this Cynic born to misery had had a rich person’s upbringing, he would not be so abstemious but would rather have thrown himself into a state of “general riot” and depravity (890, 4.3.257) just like any spoiled rich brat. “If thou hadst not been born the worst of men, / Thou hadst been a knave and flatterer” (890, 4.3.276-77).
Apemantus next responds to Timon’s question as to what he would do if he could do anything he wanted as follows: he would hand over the earth to wild animals “to be rid of the men” (891, 4.3.322). This logic Timon rejects utterly, calling it “a beastly ambition” (891, 4.3.326) to wish that men were no better than beasts. What he appears to mean is that he sees no advantage in living in a primal state. In such a state there obtains, as Thomas Hobbes would later write in Leviathan about life before civil contracts, nothing but a universal “war of every one against every one.” [22]
In this condition, Timon says, there really is no freedom since, as he asks, “What beast couldst / thou be that were not subject to a beast, and what a beast / art thou already , that seest not thy loss in transformation?” (4.3.340-42) This is in its way as unanswerable as King Lear’s refusal to accept his proposed reduction by Regan and Goneril to living in accordance with mere necessity, sans his hundred retainers: “Oh, reason not the need!” thundered the old king. [23] States of unadorned necessity or unaccommodated nature never seem to have appealed much to Shakespeare, if we judge by how those states fare in his plays.
Apemantus and Timon finally come nearly to blows, so heated is their argument. And strangely, Timon advances a confession that largely undoes what he had said by way of distinguishing between men and beasts: he tells Apemantus, “I am sick of this false world and will love naught / But even the mere necessities upon’t” (892, 4.3.369-70). His parting words to the Cynic amount to a paean to the destructive power of gold, and in turn, Apemantus promises to tell the Athenians that Timon has gold so that they will flock to him and pester him.
Following in the procession of Timon’s greeters are three bandits, who, with surprising delicacy, call themselves not thieves, but “men that much do want” (893, 4.3.408). No matter—Timon gives them gold enough and encourages them to go about their trade. He even offers a litany explaining how practically everything, including the sun and the moon and the sea, is really a thief, if you but consider its operation. The “men that much do want” don’t know quite what to make of Timon or anything he says, so off they go.
Timon’s final visitor in this scene is, as we might have expected, his loyal steward Flavius, who has come to check up on his old employer. Upon seeing Timon, Flavius exclaims, “Oh, monument / And wonder of good deeds evilly bestowed!” (894, 4.3.453-54) Timon’s generosity was right, implies the steward; he just bestowed in on the wrong people. But he also questions the very concept of friendship, saying, “What viler thing upon the earth than friends, / Who can bring noblest minds to basest ends” (894, 4.3.456-57). [24] In a corrupt society, he seems to ask, how can such a concept survive?
Conversing with Flavius, Timon finds himself compelled to admit that the corruption of the world is not quite universal: “I do proclaim / One honest man. Mistake me not, but one— / No more, I pray—and he’s a steward” (895, 4.3.488-90). This sounds almost like damning with faint praise, but at least Timon seems sincere in his praise, hemmed in though it is.
What are we to make of Timon’s parting gesture of offering Flavius gold—that horrible metal that he has already said has corrupted the world? Well, he gives this “gift” with one strong injunction: “Hate all, curse all, show charity to none, / But let the famished flesh slide from the bone / Ere thou relieve the beggar” (896, 4.3.519-21). Impervious to Flavius’s prayer to let him stay and bring comfort to his onetime master, Timon sends this one good man on his way, and there ends the long procession of people with whom Timon would prefer not to have seen.
ACT 5
Act 5, Scene 1 (896-98, the poet and painter come to Timon’s “home,” but not to see him—they hope to secure the gold that others say he now has; Timon ushers them out of his presence, so they receive nothing for their efforts.)
In one of the play’s most satisfying scenes, Timon tricks the poet and the painter into revealing the venality of their purpose in visiting him at his seaside hovel, and then runs them clean off the premises. You go, Timon! But seriously, before they are kicked to the curb, these two aesthetic grifters make a couple of statements worth mention.
The first is that the times suit not performance but mere promise-making, which, the painter says, “opens the eyes of expectation.” Furthermore, he says, except among “the plainer and simpler / kind of people, the deed of saying is quite out of use. / To promise is most courtly and fashionable …” (896, 5.1.23-26). This kind of talk might as well be taken from the work of Oscar Wilde or some other proponent of Victorian fin de siècle overturning of moral earnestness and realism. [25]
Except, to be sure, that Wilde and his companions were engaging in a legitimate critique of their societies, and our dear poet and painter really aren’t—they are simply parasites. In any case, we could, if we were so inclined, spin the painter’s silly remark into an observation about the superiority of suggestiveness in art over the full representation of something staid and dull, or something we have come to see only by way of a kind of visual shorthand. One of Wilde’s characters, for example—Vivian in “The Decay of Lying”—delightfully refers to an actual sunset as merely a “second-rate Turner” painting. [26]
Then there is the poet’s intention of promising Timon a fine satirical representation, “a personating” of Timon himself that would amount to “a satire against the softness of prosperity, with a discovery of the infinite flat- / teries that follow youth and opulency” (897, 5.1.32-34). Let’s call this something like a premonition of William Hogarth’s eighteenth-century series of paintings titled “A Rake’s Progress,” [27] which follows the downfall of a young gentleman when he proves unable to stay away from prostitutes, strong drink, and gambling.
The strange thing is, the poet seems to intend his promise of such work more as flattery than condemnation. So what kind of gesture is the artist engaging in here? It resembles the one made by the conspirator Decius Brutus in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, who says that he will draw the reluctant Caesar to the Capitol on the Ides of March by the following strategy: “when I tell him he hates flatterers, / He says he does, being then most flattered.” [28]
Act 5, Scene 2 (899-901, a pair of Athenian senators visit Timon, begging him to come to Athens and preserve the city from the ravages of Alcibiades’s army; Timon rejects their pleas and says he will withdraw to his rocky beachside hut and prepare to die.)
Two Athenian senators, having been delegated to speak for the senate and Athens more broadly, come to Timon’s seaside cave and try every argument they can think of, but nothing works. The newly minted misanthrope is impervious to bribery, flattery, appeals to leniency and fairness, or any other kind of temptation. The only interesting thing in this scene is Timon’s way of responding to all these vain appeals. Above all, it’s clear that he is merely toying with the senators, deliberately filling them with hope and then cruelly returning to his savage condemnations of Athens and all humanity.
But most interesting of all, perhaps, are his repeated references to the apathy that reigns in his thinking about other people’s suffering. This “apathy,” we can’t help but notice, is something about which Timon is oddly passionate—a contradiction if ever such was. How can a person be passionately apathetic? Timon conjures up the worst outrages against civilians during war, and then says simply, “I care not” (900, 5.2.62).
Timon’s last trick in this sadistic vein is his reference to a tree in his compound that he means to cut down soon, but that for the moment still stands. He then claims to have a way for Athenians to cure what ails them: “whoso please / To stop affliction, let him take his haste, / Come hither ere my tree hath felt the ax, / And hang himself” (901, 5.2.94-97). With that, the senators realize that their mission is hopeless: there will be no help from Timon’s quarter.
Timon’s final prayer is a call for his own personal extinction along with everyone else’s: “Lips, let four words go by and language end; / What is amiss, plague and infection mend. / Graves only be men’s works and death their gain. / Sun, hide thy beams. Timon hath done his reign” (901, 5.2.105-08). This can’t even accurately be called nihilism since, after all, nihilistic prescriptions have a point and are usually intended to pave the way for future action, future meaning. Timon’s call is closer to Macbeth’s summation of life as “a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.” [29]
Act 5, Scene 3 (901-02, Athenian senators fear the news that a messenger brings, which is that the city will be taken by Alcibiades; a courier has been sent from Alcibiades to Timon seeking his support; the senators betake themselves within the city’s walls.)
Alcibiades’s approach and breaching of Athens is imminent, and it’s clear that neither camp has any hope of securing Timon’s favor. The senators fearfully withdraw within the Athenian walls.
Act 5, Scene 4 (902, a soldier in Alcibiades’s forces finds Timon’s tomb; since he isn’t able to read the epitaph there, he makes a wax impression of it and will present it to the general.)
One of Alcibiades’s soldiers discovers Timon’s tomb. He is able to read a notice that Timon has stashed near the tomb: “Timon is dead, who hath outstretched his span. / Some beast read this; there does not live a man” (902, 5.4.3-4). The sad thing about this note is that Timon seems to have forgotten all about his steward Flavius, who he had confessed to the gods to be at least one honest person in the world. In any case, the soldier takes a wax imprint for Alcibiades of the tomb’s inscription since he can’t read the language it’s written in. [30]
Act 5, Scene 5 (902-04, Alcibiades marches to the gates of Athens with his army, threatening bloody revenge; the First and Second Senators plead with him to seek only a just redress and kill no more than ten percent of the people; Alcibiades agrees to punish only those who are selected by the authorities as his and Timon’s enemies, but not subject the city to the usual outrages faced by conquered cities; a soldier hands Timon’s epitaph to Alcibiades, who reads it to everyone present and offers peace to his native city of Athens.)
Alcibiades approaches Athens and halts outside the city’s walls. He sets forth his sense of grievance against his native town, and seems determined to attack. But in the end, the senators’ pleas for mitigation of harm sinks in (or perhaps just exhausts the dreaded captain), and he agrees not to engage in the usual indiscriminate mayhem that ancient armies generally practiced against defenseless enemy cities. [31]
In Timon of Athens, neither Timon nor Alcibiades is a particularly well developed character, so it is not entirely clear why the captain should take up Timon’s grievances as his own, which he in part does, or why he should take the legal condemnation of one of his own soldiers for manslaughter should in part lead him to attack his native city. [32]
These questions aside, however, there is matter in Alcibiades’s prompt acceptance of the Athenian terms for surrender. The play is a tragedy, but it does not end in what could have been unrestricted violence swallowing up the world it has conjured for us. The incensed captain softens his wrath, agreeing to accept delivery of those within the city walls who the authorities determine have genuinely harmed him and his friend Timon.
In truth, only Timon has died, and Alcibiades reads to us the sour-spirited final words of the once great Athenian lord: “Here lies a wretchèd corpse of wretchèd soul bereft. / Seek not my name. A plague consume you wicked caitiffs left. / Here lie I, Timon, who alive all living men did hate. / Pass by and curse thy fill, but pass and stay not here thy gait” (904, 5.5.70-73).
It’s hard to miss the contradictoriness of the line “Seek not my name” and “Here lie I, Timon,” [33] but in any event, it’s clear that Timon has not wavered: he has held on to an experience-based misanthropy to his bitter seaside end. What to make of it all, this strange riches-to-rags-and-imprecations career and lonely death of one Timon of Athens?
That Timon alone among the play’s key characters dies may indicate that his story simply does not bring us a viable stance toward life, or a sustainable way of regarding life’s meaning. It’s common to expect that tragic protagonists’ insights, however terrible the cost to the characters themselves may be, is worth something to them and us, but that value may not be available as a dignity-preserving, sustaining takeaway from Timon of Athens. It is a strange and brilliant play—a tragedy, but unique in its means and in its effect upon us. [34]
Edition. Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors. The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies + Digital Edition. 3rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93860-9.
Copyright © 2024 Alfred J. Drake
ENDNOTES
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[1] Regarding the theory of the divine right of kings, see King James I’s Basilikon Doron. (EEBO/U-Mich).
[2] On Cynic philosophy, see “Cynics.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed 8/22/2024. The Cynics are similar to the Stoics in that both think it is important to live according to nature and to avoid overvaluing things that are in themselves of little or no worth. They reject an emphasis on wealth and fine manners as these lead away from the principle of excellence and naturalness – this rejection is not hard to see in the extreme behavior of Apemantus, whose characteristic way of relating to others is biting sarcasm.
[3] The line is from R.E.M.’s 1991 song “Shiny Happy People Holding Hands” from the album Out of Time.
[4] It has often been observed that there is a competitive edge to the exchange of gifts; indeed, in many cultures over much of human history, gift-giving has been a way of reaffirming reciprocal obligations. One excellent study is Marcel Mauss’s 1954 study The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. W. W. Norton, 2000. ISBN-13: 978-0393320435.
[5] More, Thomas. Utopia. Henry Morley, ed. In the final chapter, “Of the Religions of the Utopians,” More’s narrator questions Raphael Hythloday’s enthusiasm for the communistic utopian society he visited; it seems to the narrator that such an egalitarian society must lack “splendor” and “majesty,” which he calls “the true ornaments of a nation.” Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 2/18/2024. The role of social and political hierarchy in the maintenance of civilization is a significant concern in Shakespeare’s plays.
[6] Ackroyd, Peter. Foundation: The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors. St. Martin’s Griffin, 2013 (repr.). ISBN-13: 978-1250037558. Ackroyd links this point to governance by tracing the development in England of what we would now call “the administrative state” or “the bureaucracy” in line with King Henry I’s persistent need to facilitate the taxing of his subjects. See 114-17.
[7] See Aristotle. Nichomachean Ethics. Becker 1106a26–b28. The basic point is that a “virtue” is to be located at the mean or mid-point between excess of a quality and deficiency. Excessive courage amounts to foolhardiness, for example, and deficiency of it amounts to cowardice. The “golden mean” indicates just the right amount of courage in one’s actions. Timon obviously veers from excessive and irresponsible generosity to extreme miserliness, once he has become disillusioned.
[8] Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, or What You Will. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 743-97. 704, 1.5.40-43.
[9] On the phrase “too big to fail,” see “Origins of too big to fail.” Clevelandfed.org. Accessed 8/22/2024.
[10] See Aristotle. Nichomachean Ethics. Becker 1106a26–b28.
[11] Norton’s footnote 7 for pg. 876 says that “bill” was another name for the weapon known as a halberd.
[12] The name “Alcibiades” is a famous one from the time of Classical Athens; the general was a friend of Socrates, and had quite a stormy history with his native city. See Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 8/22/2024.
[13] See Shakespeare, William. The Life of Timon of Athens. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 850-904. 890 4.3.301-05.
[14] Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Folio with additions from the Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. Combined text 764-840. See 824, 4.6.152-66. Ultimately, however, Timon does not come near the level of tragic dignity or insight that we find in Lear. Perhaps his best analogues would be the likes of Coriolanus in his ragings against Rome once the city banishes him, or Thersites’s persistent, outrageous railing at the Greek heroes who line the cast of Troilus and Cressida.
[15] Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. In his chapter “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For,” Thoreau writes, I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 8/22/2024.
[16] Aristotle. Again, see Nichomachean Ethics. Becker 1106a26–b28.
[17] Shakespeare, William. The Comical History of The Merchant of Venice. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 467-521. See 508-09, 4.1.182-200, where Portia explains that “The quality of mercy is not strained.”
[18] See Matthew 18:21-22. (1599 Geneva Bible, Biblegateway.com.)
[19] Either that, or Flavius simply believes that loyalty declared is not to be undeclared.
[20] The stage directions don’t specify what form the gold is in when Timon finds it, but buried coins would make obvious sense.
[21] See Norton marginal gloss of “for earnest”: “As a pledge.” 885.
[22] Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Hobbes writes that in such a primal state of war, human life would have been “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.” Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 8/22/2024.
[23] Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Folio with additions from the Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. Combined text 764-840. Lear exclaims, “Oh, reason not the need! Our basest beggars / Are in the poorest thing superfluous. / Allow not nature more than nature needs, / Man’s life is cheap as beast’s” (798, 2.4.259-62).
[24] On friendship’s importance among the Greeks and Romans, see Shakespeare’s Globe essay “Shakespeare and Friendship.” April 6, 2018. Accessed 8/22/2024. See also Cicero’s fine treatise De Amicitia, or “On Friendship,” and Seneca’s Letters, deal with the concept of friendship insightfully. See especially Letter IX.
[25] See the essays in Oscar Wilde’s critical volume Intentions. “The Decay of Lying” is particularly instructive. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 8/22/2024. See also “An Introduction to the Aesthetic Movement.” Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Accessed 8/22/2024.
[26] See the essays in Oscar Wilde’s critical volume Intentions. The quote referred to is in “The Decay of Lying.”
[27] Hogarth, William. “A Rake’s Progress.” (1733-35). See the article available at Sir John Soane’s Museum Collection Online. Accessed 8/22/2024. For the plates, see the display by smarthistory.org. Accessed 8/22/2024.
[28] Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 288-343. See 305, 2.1.207-08.
[29] Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Macbeth. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 917-69. See 965, 5.5.26-28.
[30] In his Life of Marcus Antonius, Plutarch says that the poem on the gravestone is to be attributed to the Greek poet Callimachus; the scroll writing belongs to Timon himself. See pg. 114/98. See Marjorie Garber on this point. Shakespeare after All. Anchor Books, 2004. Essay on Timon of Athens, 634-48. 636.
[31] On ancient armies’ habit of pillaging enemy towns, see “Attitude of Romans Towards the Defeated.” Imperiumromanum.pl. Accessed 8/22/2024. See also Gabriel Baker, Spare No One: Mass Violence in Roman Warfare. War and society. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. ISBN 978-1538112205.
[32] In Plutarch’s Life of Marcus Antonius, however, there is a clue regarding the affinity between Alcibiades and Timon: when Apemantus asks him why he spends time with Alcibiades, Timon says, “I know that one day he shall do great mischief unto the Athenians” (113). See Marjorie Garber on this point. Shakespeare after All. Anchor Books, 2004. Essay on Timon of Athens, 634-48. 636.
[33] There may be a bit of Timon’s ego in that contradictoriness. He implies that he wants to be forgotten, but he also wants people to remember his name as the man who was forgotten.
[34] See Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. Riverhead Books, 1998. In his essay “Timon of Athens” (588-99), the author locates Timon of Athens “somewhere between satire and farce,” and suggests that the play “anticipates the savage indignation of Jonathan Swift” (589).