THERE ARE still a large number of unsolved problems with regard to Timon of Athens – its text, its date, its relationship to the anonymous Timon, the contrast between the best scenes and the worst, and various loose ends. This account of the sources of the play must therefore be very tentative.
Berowne in Love’s Labour’s Lost refers to ‘critic Timon’.1 When Shakespeare was writing Julius Caesar, if not before, he would have read the account of Timon in Plutarch’s Life of Antonius. At some time he had read Painter’s account which mentions Timon’s wish to be buried on the shore ‘that the waues and surges mighte beate and vexe his dead carcas’.2 These words are echoed by Shakespeare. Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades is paired with that of Coriolanus, and Shakespeare used it somewhat perfunctorily for the scenes in which Alcibiades appears. From the Life of Antonius he took some details of prodigality and generosity, transferring the incidents to Timon.3
The relationship of the anonymous Timon to Shakespeare’s play is uncertain. Some think there was a common source; others suppose that the anonymous writer imitated Shakespeare’s play. It was generally argued that Shakespeare was unlikely to have known a play which was clearly not the work of a professional. The most probable explanation, however, is that the play was performed at one of the Inns of Court, and that Shakespeare had seen it. James C. Bulman has recently argued4 that
the two plays have a number of similarities which cannot be accounted for by their sharing of a source – neither Lucian, nor Plutarch, nor any Renaissance treatment of the Timon legend. Among these similarities are a strong emphasis on Timon in prosperity (three acts in each play); scenes in which his parasitic friends refuse to reciprocate his generosity; a mock-banquet at which Timon, destitute, rails at them (he pelts them with stones …); and the presence of a faithful steward who remonstrates against his extravagance, follows him into exile, and helps him to drive off the parasites.
Bulman goes on to suggest that Shakespeare derived ‘most, if not all, of his Lucian source material through’ the anonymous play. There are, however, a number of points5 in which Shakespeare appears to be imitating Lucian, whose dialogue was available in Latin (translated by Erasmus), French, and Italian. Honigmann thinks that Shakespeare read it in French or Italian, since Richesse and Richezza are feminine and Plutus is masculine. But since Plutus meets his dupes dressed in embroideries, wearing a lovely mask, so that they fall in love with his beauty, there is the same suggestion of prostitution in all three versions.6 Lucian compares the right use of wealth to marriage and prodigality to prostitution. All the women in Shakespeare’s play are prostitutes or masquers, since in Athenian society love like everything else is a mere commodity. Even the amiable Timandra, the concubine who buried Alcibiades out of affection for him, becomes a diseased whore. Plutarch tells how7
Timandra went and tooke his bodie which she wrapped vp in the best linnen she had, and buried him as honorably as she could possible, with suche things as she had, and could get together.
Shakespeare doubtless read Montaigne’s essay ‘Of Democritus and Heraclitus’ in which the cynicism of Diogenes is preferred to Timon’s misanthropy.8 He would know, too, the portrait of Diogenes in Lyly’s Campaspe; but it would appear that Shakespeare introduced Apemantus as a foil to the nobler disillusionment of Timon.
The iterative image, linking flatterers, dogs, and sweets,9 may serve to indicate that Shakespeare’s theme, at least in part, was how to tell a flatterer from a friend, on which Plutarch had a memorable essay;10 and the gold symbolism, stressed by Wilson Knight,11 is a means of showing the corruption of society in which the cash-nexus is predominant.12
It seems impossible that the play was ever performed in the text which has come down to us. There are bad joins, unexplained incidents, long gaps between announced and actual entrances, and whole scenes which read more like first drafts than memorial reconstructions. Under the circumstances a study of Shakespeare’s use of sources is not particularly revealing.