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Part I Greek 5 The Life of Timon Of Athens

Shakespeare wrote a narrative poeendary days of Greek history He wrote only one play that was based- in a very tenuous way-in the days of Greece's greatest glory, the fifth century bc

This century was the Golden Age of Athens, when she beat off giant Persia and built a naval ereat leaders like Thereat dramatists like Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes; great sculptors like Phidias; great scientists like Anaxagoras; great philosophers like Socrates and Plato

But Shakespeare chose to enerally considered one of his least satisfactory Many critics consider it to be an unfinished play, one that Shakespeare returned to on and off, never patching it to his liking, and eventually abandoning it

the Lord Timon

The play opens in the house of a rich man A Poet, a Painter, a Jeweler, and a Merchant all enter They are given no names but are identified only by their professions The Jeweler has a jewel and the Merchant says:

O pray let's see't For the Lord Timon, sir?

- Act I, scene i, line 13

The Lord Timon is the owner of the house; the center tohich all these and others are tending

Timon is, apparently, a historical character who lived in Athens during the Peloponnesian War (431-404 bc-eight centuries after the Trojan War), so that weof the play in the last quarter of the fifth century bc

Timon's fame to his contemporaries and near successors, such as Aristophanes and Plato, lay entirely in the fact that he was a misanthrope In fact, he was referred to as "Timon Misanthropes" ("Timon the ManHater") He lived by himself, professed to hate mankind and to detest human society To the sociable Greeks, to whom conversation and social intercourse were the breath of life, there was so monstrous in this Plutarch, in his "Life of Mark Antony," describes how, at a low point in his career, Antony decided for a while to imitate Timon and withdraw from human society Shakespeareon his play Antony and Cleopatra (see page I-370) and conceived the idea of writing a play centered on the condition of misanthropy And, indeed, Timon of Athens seems to have been written immediately after Antony and Cleopatra, in 1606 or 1607

The senators of Athens

Additional :

The senators of Athens, happy men!

- Act I, scene i, line 40

Throughout the play Shakespeare treats Athens, hose social and political life he is unacquainted, as though it were Rome, a city hich he wasquite equivalent to the well-known legislators of Rohout the play, has the rulers of Athens act like the stern, irascible, grasping Roay, impulsive, weathercock democrats they really were

Indeed, so anxious does Shakespeare appear to be to deal with Rome rather than with Athens, that almost every character in the play has a Roman name This is quite out of the question in reality, of course No Roman name was ever heard of in Athens of Timon's time Rome itself had never been heard of If Rome had forced itself on the attention of any Athenian of the tie of utterly no account

Feigned Fortune

But Ti of the play, an extremely wealthy man of alive et his share

Yet the Poet, at least, is not entirely fooled by the superficial appearance of wealth and happiness that surrounds Timon He speaks of his poetry to the Painter, and describes its content by saying:

Sir, I have upon a high and pleasant hill

Feigned Fortune to be throned

- Act I, scene i, lines 63-64

The goddess of fortune (Fortuna to the Romans and Tyche to the Greeks) becae Alexander the Great had co Greece vast conquests and vast derangements The individual Greek cities caenerals and arrew richer while the poor grew poorer

Fortune was a deity of chance and was just right for the age following Alexander the Great; an age which saw the passing of youth and confidence, and in which good and evil seemed to be handed out at random and without any consideration of desert

The Poet explains that Fortune beckons benignly and Ti with him all those he befriends But Fortune is fickle and Timon may be kicked down the hill by her In that case, none of the friends he took up the hill with him will follow him down

Shakespeare is, in this way, preparing the audience for the consideration of what it was that made Timon a misanthrope

Plutarch says only that " for the unthankfulness of those he had done good unto and whory with all men and would trust no man"

Another sith was by a Greek writer, Lucian, born in Syria about ad 120 He had written twenty-six Dialogues of the Gods, in which he poked satirical fun at conventional religion, but so pleasantly that even the pious must have found it difficult to take offense

His best essay is considered to be "Timon," in which he uses the theratitude of others to poke fun at Jupiter and at Wealth He expands on the hint in Plutarch and enerous ared himself for his friends and then found none ould help him

Shakespeare adopted this notion, but reue and replaced it with savagery

a dog

Ti all those present with affability and generosity, giving to all who ask, denying no one He accepts their rather sickening sycophancy with good humor, but accepts it

There is only one sour note and that is when the philosopher Apemantus enters He is churlish and his every speech is a curt insult The Painter strikes back with:

Y'are a dog

- Act I, scene i, line 202

This is not a htly anachronistic one

About 400 bc a philosopher naht that virtue was more important than riches or comfort and that, indeed, poverty elco One of his pupils was Diogenes, who lived near Corinth about 350 bc and who carried Antisthenes' teachings to an extreme

Diogenes lived in the greatest possible destitution to show that people needed no belongings to be virtuous He loudly derided all the polite social custo them as hypocrisy

Diogenes and those who followed hi philosophers seemed to bark and snarl at all that like") because of their snarling, and this becalish

Diogenes accepted the naenes the Cynic" Apemantus is pictured in this play as a Cynic a century before the ter, he is really dis him as a Cynic

Apemantus' insults extend even to Timon When the Poet tries to defend Tily:

He that loves to be flattered

is worthy o'th'flatterer

- Act I, scene i, lines 229-30

This is the first clear statement that Timon, despite appearances, is not entirely to be adood, or in order to be flattered and fawned upon? There is so so public, ostentatious, and indiscrirow suspect

'Tis Alcibiades

A er comes in with the announcement of new visitors;

Tis Alcibiades and some twenty horse,

- Act I, scene i, line 246

Alcibiades is the only character in the play who has an ieneral of noble birth, handsome and brilliant, who in the end turned traitor and did Athens infinite harm

He is brought into the play because Plutarch uses him as an occasion for an example of Timon's misanthropy The one man Timon made much of was Alcibiades, and when asked why that was, Timon answered, harshly, "I do it because I know that one day he shall do great mischief unto the Athenians"

This is rather better and ht than individuals are likely to have, and in all probability the story is apocryphal and was invented long after Alcibiades had demonstrated the harm he did Athens

Plutus, the god of gold

Tiht as he is wont to do In fact, one Lord who means to partake of it says of him:

He pours it out Plutus,

the god of gold, Is but his steward

- Act I, scene i, lines 283-84

Plutus is related, by na of the underworld, and represents the wealth of the soil, both e I-115)

The later Greeks considered Plutus to be a son of Fortune, who had been blinded by Jupiter so that he gives his gifts indiscriue, Wealth is also pictured as blind and as giving his gifts to anyone he happens to buain, Timon's wealth is associated with chance and its slippery nature made plain

What's ive, but won't receive He says as uests at the feast Ventidius tries to thank him for favors received, but Timon says:

You mistake my love;

I gave it freely ever, and there's none

Can truly say he gives, if he receives

- Act I, scene ii, lines 9-11

In this respect, though, Tiod can always give, never receive Further, which he apparently considers the supreme pleasure Would he reserve the supreme pleasure exclusively for himself?

It is al hi without receiving He will not condescend to be human and in that respect he (so to speak) hates mankind Perhaps Shakespeare meant to show (if he could have polished the play into final form) that a man does not beco Perhaps he meant to show that Timon did not pass froed from one form of misanthropy to another

A thousand talents

The banquet ends in a general donation to everyone by Tioing bankrupt soon The guess is correct and even conservative, for though Tiod, to inquire into the status of his wealth) he is already deep in debt

His creditors (who off) will be restrained no longer, and not long after the banquet Timon is told the situation All astonished, he finds out that all his land is sold, all his cash is spent, all his assets gone Yet he will not accept the reproaches of his steward but is cheerfully confident he can borrow fro friends

He sends his servants to various people who are in debt to hie sums The steward, Flavius, he sends to the senators so that the city treasury iven it He tells Flavius:

Bid 'em send o'th'instant

A thousand talents to me

- Act II, scene ii, lines 208-9

A talent was a huge sum of money It is equal to nearly sixty pounds of silver, and by modern standards it is equivalent to about two thousand dollars What Ti for "o'th'instant" o million dollars The city of Athens could not possibly have made available that sum of money to a private person "o'th'instant"

The ridiculous size of the sum requested is sometimes taken as an indication that Shakespeare did not kno much a talent orth, and either hadn't done the necessary research by the tiot around to changing the figures throughout

What is even more likely to be a mistake appears a little later, as scene after scene passes in which Timon's servants vainly try to borrow money from those whom earlier the once rich man had so loaded with benefits Thus, Lucius, one of those so benefited, says, incredulously, to one of the pleading servants:

/ know his lordship is but merry with me

He cannot want fifty five hundred talents

- Act III, scene ii, lines 40-41

He cannot indeed That would be some 160 tons of silver A private person of Timon's time simply could not have had so much wealth to hand out on thebetween fifty talents and five hundred talents, wondering if the latter was too great, and, having written in both, never got around to erasing one or the other by the time he had abandoned the play

It is te to despise those whoratitude But let us be reasonable Tier to deenerosity Should those friends now deliver their money to so of personal finance? Whatever they gave him would surely be lost forever and at once

Naturally, Timon did not look at it that way at all His pretensions to superhuman wealth and benevolence had been punctured and he found hie of frustration and humiliation as a result

At Lacedaemon

Meanwhile, Alcibiades is having an argument of his oith the Athenian Senate Some soldier is under sentence of death forfor a reversal of the sentence on the grounds that death caer that had come about because the man under sentence had been bitterly offended