It may be inferred also from the pagination of the Folio that it was still under revision, or perhaps not completed, when that volume was being printed. There is apparently an extant play on the subject of Timon composed in 1600, but it is agreed that it bears no resemblance to Shakespeare's. This is all that is known about the play. Yet Sir Sidney Lee, in his Life of William Shakespeare, writes, "Although Shakespeare's powers showed no sign of exhaustion, he reverted in the year following the colossal effort of Lear (1607) to his earlier habit of collaboration, and with another's aid composed two dramas Timon of Athens' and 'Pericles.'" There is not a shadow of authority for this statement, as one of fact, as regards Timon. But Sir Sidney Lee has a habit of turning the products of his own imagination into history. There is no evidence for the date, and the theory of collaboration is pure conjecture. One can understand the anxiety of an orthodox critic to find a date which comes within the limits of Shakespeare's life, but this does not justify the invention of one. Also in the theory of collaboration such a critic may find relief from a good deal in this play which troubles his mind. For my own part I can find no evidence whatever of collaboration. Unequal as the play is, there is a unity of tone and expression throughout, and, in taking this view, I have Coleridge on my side. It is commonly stated that the play is based on Plutarch, and the source of Lucian is slurred over, because Shakespeare, as is supposed, could not read Greek. Before examining this, let us see what the play says, for that is the important thing. A poet, a painter; and others are waiting for an audience with Timon, hoping that he will buy their wares. The poet is represented as having portrayed Timon under an allegory: Sir, I have upon a high and pleasant hill Feign'd Fortune to be throned: the base o'the mount 1 See the account of this in the preface to the Cambridge Shakespeare. The paging indicates that a space was left blank and the printing of Julius Caesar begun before that of Timon was finished. That labour on the bosom of this sphere To propagate their states: amongst them all, One do I personate of Lord Timon's frame, Whom Fortune with her ivory hand wafts to her; All those which were his fellows but of late, Make sacred even his stirrup, and through him Drink the free air. Pain. Ay, marry, what of these? Poet. When Fortune in her shift and change of mood Which labour'd after him to the mountain's top, (I. i.) This forms a prelude and epitome of the play, like the old "dumb show," which was designed to give an unlettered audience an idea of what the play was about through the eye. Timon is then shown as weakly bestowing his money on everybody who applies to him, and feasting his friends, without any regard to his means, from sheer goodness of heart. Apemantus, a cynic philosopher, acts as a sort of " chorus," like the fool in the other plays. Timon's credit having gone, he is assailed by his creditors. He expostulates with his steward for not having “laid his state before him," who replies that he did, but could not get him to listen. Timon sees an opportunity in his necessity of testing his friends and welcomes it. They all make excuses and refuse to lend him anything. His creditors assail Timon in his house with their bills, and his fury begins. He determines to give his friends one more banquet. At this point a scene (III. v.) is introduced which has been made one of the arguments for the "collaboration" theory. Alcibiades is shown urging a suit in the senate for a reprieve of a friend from death for manslaughter. The argument he uses is summed up in the line O my lords, But they reply: As you are great, be pitifully good. We are for the law; he dies; urge it no more On height of our displeasure. And, on Alcibiades persisting, they banish him. On their departure Alcibiades denounces them : Now the gods keep you old enough; that you may live Only in bone, that none may look on you! I'm worse than mad: I have kept back their foes, While they have told their money, and let out Their coins upon large interest, I myself Rich only in large hurts. The scene, however, is necessary for the play, as it prepares the way for Timon's vituperation of the Senators in IV. i., which otherwise would be too sudden, and for the recantation of the Senate at the end of the play when they want Timon's help against the invasion of Alcibiades. Moreover the writing of the scene is entirely in Shakespeare's manner. Timon then holds his banquet, and, on the dishes being uncovered, they are found to contain nothing but warm water, which Timon throws in the faces of the guests, with a speech of violent abuse, ending What, all in motion? Henceforth be no feast, Whereat a villain's not a welcome guest. Burn, house sink, Athens ! henceforth hated be Of Timon, man and all humanity! The cause for this outburst is felt to be absurdly inadequate, as, although Timon's friends had taken advantage of his bounty, he had brought his ruin on himself by a childish course of conduct, and had shown that he could not be trusted with a loan. There is thus no dramatic propriety about the play, nor, as we shall see presently, can the treatment be accounted for by the sources of the story, by which the author was in no way bound. An explanation therefore must be sought in the author's desire to express his own feelings in connection with some experience in his life. No other explanation will account for the strangeness of the writing. The next scene, the first of Act IV., headed "Without the walls of Athens," opens with a terrible speech. Timon is imagined as leaving Athens, and as he steals away he turns round and reviles it and all its inhabitants: Let me look back upon thee. O thou wall, That girdlest in those wolves, dive in the earth, He then calls down on them a plague of general incontinency and confusion. The lines are too horrible to quote, but among them is a special imprecation on the "Senators": Thou cold sciatica, Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt and the speech ends : The gods confound-hear me, ye good gods all- And grant, as Timon grows, his hate may grow These lines might perhaps be regarded as conventional to describe the state of mind of the misanthrope of tradition; not so, however, the particularities of the previous lines, for which there was no necessity. A short scene follows between Timon's steward and the servants. They lament their undoing through the fall of their master : First Serv. Such a house broke ! So noble a master fall'n! All gone! and not And go along with him! Sec. Serv. As we do turn our backs Slink all away. In his notes on Bacon, Aubrey (Brief Lives) has the following: "Upon his being in disfavour his servants suddenly went away; he compared them to the flying of the vermin when the house was falling." Other servants enter and the steward persuades them to take some of his own money. O, the fierce wretchedness that glory brings us! Poor honest lord! brought low by his own heart, It is an affecting scene, but, so far from being appropriate to the story of Timon, it represents the breaking up of a great Elizabethan establishment. From this point onwards the play is occupied with the ravings of Timon, who, in accordance with the story, as found not in Plutarch but in Lucian, has betaken himself to a cave. He digs for roots and finds gold, which gives an occasion for moralizing. He is visited by Alcibiades, and by Phryne and Timandra, two women of the town, and after more moralizing of a dreadful character and much abuse, he gives them gold. Apemantus appears on the scene, and is sarcastic about Timon's spade and self-enforced misery. He gets the following remarkable answer from Timon: Thou art a slave, whom Fortune's tender arm To such as may the passive drugs of it Freely command, thou wouldst have plunged thyself In general riot; melted down thy youth In different beds of lust; and never learn'd The icy precepts of respect, but follow'd The sugar'd game before thee. But myself, Who had the world as my confectionary, The mouths, the tongues, the eyes and hearts of men Hath made thee hard in't. Why shouldst thou hate men? |