Shakespeare’s Use of the ‘Timon’ Comedy

Summary

Timon of Athens, fraught with inconsistencies and long regarded as unfinished, has been of particular interest to scholars who believe that finding the right source will resolve all its inherent problems. These scholars inevitably have cited either Plutarch's Life of Antony or Lucian's dialogue Misanthropos as the principle source through which the play ought to be approached; and their interpretations have alternated between the extremes of romantic tragedy and bitter satire. In a recent article I suggested that the MS Timon comedy, long discounted as a source because of its academic quality and because there was no significant evidence that it was ever performed, probably was performed c. 1602 at the Inns of Court, where Shakespeare could easily have seen it. I propose to examine in this paper, therefore, the comedy as a possible source for Timon of Athens, and to suggest some ideas Shakespeare may have gleaned from it.

Shakespeare had used North's translation (from the French of Amyot) of Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, published in 1579, as the major source for Julius Caesar as early as 1599, and as a minor source for even earlier plays. The fact that he used it extensively again for his two later Roman plays has encouraged critics to regard Timon of Athens as a play written at the same time, c. 1607; for he undoubtedly knew the brief sketch of Timon which comes at the end of the Life of Antony, and turned to it for details.