A Fool and His MoneyIt is not the first play people think of when they think of Shakespeare; probably closer to 32nd or 33rd. As a dramatic work, it is deficient, especially when it gets to the home stretch.
But Timon Of Athens makes an impression, of unbridled contempt for humanity, society, womankind, even art, that gives this play a rare kind of charge and makes it a unique entry in the Bard’s canon.
The play introduces us to the title character, an Athenian playboy who throws lavish banquets and gives expensive presents mainly to flatterers and opportunistic hangers-on whose oiliness is made clear in the opening act. Only Apemantus, a professional Cynic in the philosophical tradition, tells Timon what he really thinks. Alas, Timon's spending winds up bankrupting him in short order, and his former friends become merciless creditors. Even the state refuses to aid Timon despite his support of Athens in the past. Utterly embittered, Timon decides to leave his ungrateful city and disdains the presence of any who chance to come near him in the seaside cave where he makes his new home.
The play lacks Shakespeare's characteristic cool and grounded sensibility. Timon goes from a cheery giver of ludicrous bounty ("O what a precious comfort 'tis to have so many like brothers commanding one another's fortunes." [Act I, scene ii, lines 104-06]) to caustic outcast whose hatred of the world includes himself ("Hate all, curse all, show charity to none,/But let the famished flesh slide from the bone/Ere thou relieve the beggar." [IV.iii.536-38]) without so much as a deep breath. He misses the nobility of King Lear or the depth of Coriolanus, title characters in Shakespearean tragedies believed to have been written at the same time.
The play opens in a unique enough way, with a conversation between two artists, a Poet and a Painter, in which they trade insincere blandishments and pant over the money they will earn from spendthrift Timon. "Our poesy is a gum, which oozes/From whence 'tis nourished." (I.i.21-22) They are soon joined by a Merchant and a Jeweler, as well as others of higher and lower social rank which suggest Athens is a city of leeches even before we meet the title character and object of their leeching.
Apemantus stands out for the way he tells Timon what a fool he is while Timon himself still rides high and unconcerned:
Timon's "friends" fall away as soon as he hits the inevitable iceberg of debt. He thinks he can count on them to loan him the money he needs to get back on his feet; he thinks wrong, as his servants discover when he sends them out to ask for help.
The loan-begging scenes are especially rich satire, as each of the three men Timon's servants hit up for funds has a different way of rejecting the entreaty. One complains that he wishes he only had the money to give, another argues that Timon is such a free-spender it would be a misuse to give him more. The third complains, in my favorite scene, that Timon should reach out to other friends first. When the servant explains Timon already has, the false friend huffs that he is insulted to be placed after them in Timon's consideration.
The moral is drawn out by an observer to one of these failed loan requests:
Who can call him
His friend that dips in the same dish? for, in
My knowing, Timon has been this lord's father,
And kept his credit with his purse,
Supported his estate; nay, Timon's money
Has paid his men their wages: he ne'er drinks,
But Timon's silver treads upon his lip;
And yet--O, see the monstrousness of man
When he looks out in an ungrateful shape!--
He does deny him, in respect of his,
What charitable men afford to beggars. (III.ii.69-80)
It's around this point that the play seems to lose its bearings. Timon, seeing the true state of Athens' affections for him, goes really, really mad. Abandoning Athens, he wanders poor and naked to a seaside cave where, digging for roots to eat, he discovers more gold, enough to presumably put him back on his feet. But he is too deep in anger to think of such a thing. Instead, he gives the money to a former friend, Alcibiades, now also an exile from Athens, but one who has an army with him, which Alcibiades plans to use against his former city.
Timon tells Alcibiades not to be one of those compassionate conquerors, either, but really make Athens suffer:
Be as a planetary plague, when Jove
Will o'er some high-viced city hang his poison
In the sick air: let not thy sword skip one:
Pity not honour'd age for his white beard;
He is an usurer: strike me the counterfeit matron;
It is her habit only that is honest,
Herself's a bawd: let not the virgin's cheek
Make soft thy trenchant sword; for those milk-paps,
That through the window-bars bore at men's eyes,
Are not within the leaf of pity writ,
But set them down horrible traitors: spare not the babe,
Whose dimpled smiles from fools exhaust their mercy;
Think it a bastard, whom the oracle
Hath doubtfully pronounced thy throat shall cut,
And mince it sans remorse... (IV.iii.109-23)
The play introduces us to the title character, an Athenian playboy who throws lavish banquets and gives expensive presents mainly to flatterers and opportunistic hangers-on whose oiliness is made clear in the opening act. Only Apemantus, a professional Cynic in the philosophical tradition, tells Timon what he really thinks. Alas, Timon's spending winds up bankrupting him in short order, and his former friends become merciless creditors. Even the state refuses to aid Timon despite his support of Athens in the past. Utterly embittered, Timon decides to leave his ungrateful city and disdains the presence of any who chance to come near him in the seaside cave where he makes his new home.
The play lacks Shakespeare's characteristic cool and grounded sensibility. Timon goes from a cheery giver of ludicrous bounty ("O what a precious comfort 'tis to have so many like brothers commanding one another's fortunes." [Act I, scene ii, lines 104-06]) to caustic outcast whose hatred of the world includes himself ("Hate all, curse all, show charity to none,/But let the famished flesh slide from the bone/Ere thou relieve the beggar." [IV.iii.536-38]) without so much as a deep breath. He misses the nobility of King Lear or the depth of Coriolanus, title characters in Shakespearean tragedies believed to have been written at the same time.
The play opens in a unique enough way, with a conversation between two artists, a Poet and a Painter, in which they trade insincere blandishments and pant over the money they will earn from spendthrift Timon. "Our poesy is a gum, which oozes/From whence 'tis nourished." (I.i.21-22) They are soon joined by a Merchant and a Jeweler, as well as others of higher and lower social rank which suggest Athens is a city of leeches even before we meet the title character and object of their leeching.
Apemantus stands out for the way he tells Timon what a fool he is while Timon himself still rides high and unconcerned:
I scorn thy meat; 'twould choke
me, for I should
ne'er flatter thee. O you gods, what a number of
men eat Timon, and he sees 'em not! It grieves me
to see so many dip their meat in one man's blood;
and all the madness is, he cheers them up too.
I wonder men dare trust themselves with men:
Methinks they should invite them without knives;
Good for their meat, and safer for their lives. (I.ii.37-44)
ne'er flatter thee. O you gods, what a number of
men eat Timon, and he sees 'em not! It grieves me
to see so many dip their meat in one man's blood;
and all the madness is, he cheers them up too.
I wonder men dare trust themselves with men:
Methinks they should invite them without knives;
Good for their meat, and safer for their lives. (I.ii.37-44)
The loan-begging scenes are especially rich satire, as each of the three men Timon's servants hit up for funds has a different way of rejecting the entreaty. One complains that he wishes he only had the money to give, another argues that Timon is such a free-spender it would be a misuse to give him more. The third complains, in my favorite scene, that Timon should reach out to other friends first. When the servant explains Timon already has, the false friend huffs that he is insulted to be placed after them in Timon's consideration.
The moral is drawn out by an observer to one of these failed loan requests:
Who can call him
His friend that dips in the same dish? for, in
My knowing, Timon has been this lord's father,
And kept his credit with his purse,
Supported his estate; nay, Timon's money
Has paid his men their wages: he ne'er drinks,
But Timon's silver treads upon his lip;
And yet--O, see the monstrousness of man
When he looks out in an ungrateful shape!--
He does deny him, in respect of his,
What charitable men afford to beggars. (III.ii.69-80)
It's around this point that the play seems to lose its bearings. Timon, seeing the true state of Athens' affections for him, goes really, really mad. Abandoning Athens, he wanders poor and naked to a seaside cave where, digging for roots to eat, he discovers more gold, enough to presumably put him back on his feet. But he is too deep in anger to think of such a thing. Instead, he gives the money to a former friend, Alcibiades, now also an exile from Athens, but one who has an army with him, which Alcibiades plans to use against his former city.
Timon tells Alcibiades not to be one of those compassionate conquerors, either, but really make Athens suffer:
Be as a planetary plague, when Jove
Will o'er some high-viced city hang his poison
In the sick air: let not thy sword skip one:
Pity not honour'd age for his white beard;
He is an usurer: strike me the counterfeit matron;
It is her habit only that is honest,
Herself's a bawd: let not the virgin's cheek
Make soft thy trenchant sword; for those milk-paps,
That through the window-bars bore at men's eyes,
Are not within the leaf of pity writ,
But set them down horrible traitors: spare not the babe,
Whose dimpled smiles from fools exhaust their mercy;
Think it a bastard, whom the oracle
Hath doubtfully pronounced thy throat shall cut,
And mince it sans remorse... (IV.iii.109-23)
 |
| In Act IV, Scene 3, Timon gives Alcibiades some gold to help destroy Athens with, while the only female characters in the play with lines, a pair of opportunistic prostitutes, look on with open avarice. From a 1767 painting by Nathaniel Dance at https://www.wordsmith.org/words/timon.html |
He's really a tough-love kind of protagonist, not the sort one warms to the more one gets to know him. Given all this, it's hard to feel much when he dies, even more so when his death occurs off-stage. By Act V, most of the on-stage action is focused on Alcibiades, who returns to Athens to conquer those who victimized both himself and Timon, albeit without the blood-and-thunder Timon requested. Some comments are exchanged about the sad end of "noble Timon" and the need for peace, and that's it.
Part of my interest in Timon is with the play itself; part of it is the circumstances around its composition. Scholars have theorized that the play was not wholly Shakespeare's own. Some suggest the noted Jacobean dramatist Thomas Middleton, who supposedly added a scene and the character of Hecate to Shakespeare's much better-known tragedy MacBeth, is evident as a collaborator here as well. Others theorize that Shakespeare retooled an already-existing play by George Wilkins; apparently this was the case with another Shakespeare play, Pericles.
There is also the idea, which bears up with my readings, that Timon was unfinished, perhaps even abandoned, as Shakespeare tried unsuccessfully to raise Timon to the level of his other tragedies. The whole Alcibiades subplot is painfully tacked on, without much attempt at connecting it to Timon's situation. Characters seem to randomly find their way to Timon's isolated cave, where he bandies insults with them in a thick, lunkish manner. Apemantus even makes a return appearance, offering one of the play's key lines ("The middle of humanity thou never knewest, but the extremity of both ends." [IV.iii.301-02]) but also some insult-trading with Timon that reads like the lame bickering of eight-year-old boys in a schoolyard:
APEMANTUS: Thou art the cap of all the fools alive.
TIMON: Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon!
APEMANTUS: A plague on thee! thou art too bad to curse.
TIMON: All villains that do stand by thee are pure. (IV.iii.362-65)
The shame of not knowing if the play was indeed a finished effort or not is for me in wondering about the handling of various subplots. It would, for example, be good to know if Shakespeare had intended something more than we get for the character of Ventidius, a character fifth-billed in the play as "one of Timon's false friends" whom Timon is seen in his opening-scene entrance bailing out of prison. The thing is, we never actually see Ventidius acting falsely. In his one scene, he actually tries to pay Timon back double his bail, only to have Timon decline it.
Had Shakespeare planned to give Ventidius a bigger scene later on when his falsity is revealed? Or perhaps, like Alcibiades, Apemantus, and Timon's loyal servant Flavius, was Ventidius supposed to be Shakespeare's example of the dog that didn't bark, a noble who didn't act ungratefully and hence helps demonstrate how the extreme depth of Timon's contempt for humanity is unwarranted?
There are other reasons to read Timon. It's the only Shakespeare play I know of (other than perhaps Coriolanus) set in a democracy rather than a kingdom; like Coriolanus it showcases Shakespeare's Hobbesian distrust of that form of government. It is a tragedy where the tragic flaw is somewhat unique (he gives 'til it hurts) and financial concerns predominate, though Shakespeare seems to get lost when dealing with actual amounts.
Shakespeare's particularly harsh tone throughout the play is perhaps the strongest takeaway, with most everyone being revealed as bad company and women especially called out for being depraved vessels of venereal disease. There is a sourness about this play that is rather bracing, and suggests an author at the end of his tether in the face of economic hardship and deep personal dissatisfaction.
If so, it seems to get the better of him too often here. Timon is an arresting play with compelling imagery and a strong start, but it doesn't arrive at a great tragic conclusion so much as wilt in the face of humanity's awful reality. For this, there are people who may find Timon more relevant than most of Shakespeare's happier plays; I agree it is weighty and worthy of interest, but it hardly seems one to spotlight when telling friends why I love the Bard.
Part of my interest in Timon is with the play itself; part of it is the circumstances around its composition. Scholars have theorized that the play was not wholly Shakespeare's own. Some suggest the noted Jacobean dramatist Thomas Middleton, who supposedly added a scene and the character of Hecate to Shakespeare's much better-known tragedy MacBeth, is evident as a collaborator here as well. Others theorize that Shakespeare retooled an already-existing play by George Wilkins; apparently this was the case with another Shakespeare play, Pericles.
There is also the idea, which bears up with my readings, that Timon was unfinished, perhaps even abandoned, as Shakespeare tried unsuccessfully to raise Timon to the level of his other tragedies. The whole Alcibiades subplot is painfully tacked on, without much attempt at connecting it to Timon's situation. Characters seem to randomly find their way to Timon's isolated cave, where he bandies insults with them in a thick, lunkish manner. Apemantus even makes a return appearance, offering one of the play's key lines ("The middle of humanity thou never knewest, but the extremity of both ends." [IV.iii.301-02]) but also some insult-trading with Timon that reads like the lame bickering of eight-year-old boys in a schoolyard:
APEMANTUS: Thou art the cap of all the fools alive.
TIMON: Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon!
APEMANTUS: A plague on thee! thou art too bad to curse.
TIMON: All villains that do stand by thee are pure. (IV.iii.362-65)
The shame of not knowing if the play was indeed a finished effort or not is for me in wondering about the handling of various subplots. It would, for example, be good to know if Shakespeare had intended something more than we get for the character of Ventidius, a character fifth-billed in the play as "one of Timon's false friends" whom Timon is seen in his opening-scene entrance bailing out of prison. The thing is, we never actually see Ventidius acting falsely. In his one scene, he actually tries to pay Timon back double his bail, only to have Timon decline it.
Had Shakespeare planned to give Ventidius a bigger scene later on when his falsity is revealed? Or perhaps, like Alcibiades, Apemantus, and Timon's loyal servant Flavius, was Ventidius supposed to be Shakespeare's example of the dog that didn't bark, a noble who didn't act ungratefully and hence helps demonstrate how the extreme depth of Timon's contempt for humanity is unwarranted?
There are other reasons to read Timon. It's the only Shakespeare play I know of (other than perhaps Coriolanus) set in a democracy rather than a kingdom; like Coriolanus it showcases Shakespeare's Hobbesian distrust of that form of government. It is a tragedy where the tragic flaw is somewhat unique (he gives 'til it hurts) and financial concerns predominate, though Shakespeare seems to get lost when dealing with actual amounts.
Shakespeare's particularly harsh tone throughout the play is perhaps the strongest takeaway, with most everyone being revealed as bad company and women especially called out for being depraved vessels of venereal disease. There is a sourness about this play that is rather bracing, and suggests an author at the end of his tether in the face of economic hardship and deep personal dissatisfaction.
If so, it seems to get the better of him too often here. Timon is an arresting play with compelling imagery and a strong start, but it doesn't arrive at a great tragic conclusion so much as wilt in the face of humanity's awful reality. For this, there are people who may find Timon more relevant than most of Shakespeare's happier plays; I agree it is weighty and worthy of interest, but it hardly seems one to spotlight when telling friends why I love the Bard.
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