Timon of Athens

The real Timon of Athens lived there in the fifth century BCE, making him a contemporary of Socrates and Pericles. Shakespeare presents Timon as a figure who suffers such profound disillusionment that he becomes a misanthrope, or man-hater. This makes him a more interesting character than the caricature he had become to Shakespeare's contemporaries, for whom "Timonist" was a slang term for an unsociable man.

Timon of Athens, one of William Shakespeare's plays includes the wealthy, magnificent, and extravagantly generous figure of Timon before his transformation. Timon expects that, having received as gifts all that he owned, his friends will be equally generous to him.

Once his creditors clamor for repayment, Timon finds that his idealization of friendship is an illusion. He repudiates his friends, abandons Athens, and retreats to the woods. Yet his misanthropy arises from the destruction of an admirable illusion, from which his subsequent hatred can never be entirely disentangled.

Many scholars believe that Timon of Athens is an unfinished play, one that Shakespeare never polished into final form, and that is was not performed during his lifetime. He is thought to have written it in 1605-08, and it was published in the 1623 First Folio. Among Shakespeare's sources was North's translation of Plutarch's Lives.

Early editions

First Folio

LUNA: First Folio: 2g1v - 2h6r

Hamnet: STC 22273 Fo. 1 no. 68

Second Folio

LUNA: Second Folio: 2j6r - 2l4v

Hamnet: STC 22274 Fo. 2 no. 07

Modern editions

Timon of Athens can be read online with Folger Digital Texts and purchased from Simon and Schuster.

Hamnet link to Folger Edition: PR2753 .M6 1992 copy 2 v.32

Notes

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