COMMENTS By SHAKESPEAREAN SCHOLARS TIMON AND THE STEWARD The scene between Timon and the steward is unquestionably from the master-hand of our poet. The character of Timon as his ruin is approaching him is beautifully developed. His reproach of his steward, slightly unjust as it is, is in a tone perfectly in accordance with the kindness of his nature; and his rising anger is forgotten in a moment in his complete conviction of the integrity of that honest servant. His entire reliance upon the gratitude of his friends is most touching. Thoroughly Shakesperean is the steward's description of the coldness of the senators; and Timon's answer is no less characteristic of the great interpreter of human feelings.-KNight, Pictorial Shakespeare. APEMANTUS But Apemantus, who is intended as a foil to Timon, is despicable where Timon is only weak; he is incapable even of the selfishness of isolation from evil; he is born a misanthrope, Timon has misanthropy thrust upon him. Timon may be weak and morbid, but he is at least sincere and pure; Apemantus is a sham, and wallows withal in the mire.-LUCE, Handbook to Shakespeare's Works. SHAKESPEARE'S METHOD In the character of Timon, Shakspere gained dramatic remoteness from his own personality. It would have been contrary to the whole habit of the dramatist's genius to χχχίν have used one of his characters merely as a mask to conceal his visage, while he relieved himself with lyrical vehemence of the feelings that oppressed him. No: Shakspere, when Timon was written, had attained self-possession, and could transfer himself with real disinterestedness into the person of the young Athenian favorite of fortune. This, in more than one instance, was Shakspere's method, having discovered some single central point of sympathy between his chief character and his past or present self, to secure freedom from all mere lyrical intensity by studying that one common element under conditions remote from those which had ever been proper or peculiar to himself.DOWDEN, Shakspere-His Mind and Art. SHAKESPEARE'S SERIOUSNESS It Timon of Athens always appeared to us to be written with as intense a feeling of his subject as any one play of Shakespeare. It is one of the few in which he seems to be in earnest throughout, never to trifle nor go out of his way. He does not relax in his efforts, nor lose sight of the unity of his design. It is the only play of our author in which spleen is the predominant feeling of the mind. is as much a satire as a play: and contains some of the finest pieces of invective possible to be conceived, both in the snarling, captious answers of the cynic Apemantus, and in the impassioned and more terrible imprecations of Timon. The latter remind the classical reader of the force and swelling impetuosity of the moral declamations in Juvenal, while the former have all the keenness and caustic severity of the old Stoic philosophers. The soul of Diogenes appears to have been seated on the lips of Apemantus. The churlish profession of misanthropy in the cynic is contrasted with the profound feeling of it in Timon, and also with the soldier-like and determined resentment of Alcibiades against his countrymen, who have banished him, though this forms only an incidental episode in the trag edy.-HAZLITT, Characters of Shakespear's Plays. A LACK OF HARMONY The play appears to want that perfection of scope, plan, and range that would be in keeping with the style and finish of its better parts. There is a lack of harmony between the defective and unsatisfying dramatic structure and the faultless vigor and delicacy of the execution of large portions, that would be decisive, though the execution also did not betray the traces of different hands. Of the greater portion of the play it may be said, with confidence, that it displays the fullest and ripest energy of the poet's mind, his fancy, intellect and imagination in completest concert and force;-it is so far as nearly equal to Lear, to Othello, to Macbeth as the capability of the subject admits, and it does admit at least of comparison. The contrast of the weakness and negligence of other parts is unmistakable, weakness as obvious in form as in manner, and the best excellence of these parts seems due to having undergone a cursory correction more liberal of erasure, to which even the raggedness of the meter may be due, than of substitution. I will recollect my earliest impression on reading this play, and am scarcely disposed to swerve from it, it was that Shakespeare had put his hand to the drama of another author, with intent, in the first instance, to give it just so much, and no more revisal as would make it useful in representation, not deeming the theme susceptible or worthy of rewriting entirely: imagination, however, and invention were not to be controlled, and at last and by degrees he was drawn on to rewrite entirely first one scene and then another, until in mere aversion to adopt the whole play by complete revision of a dramatic subject matter he was not quite satisfied with, he left it as we have it, of gold and clay commixed, an incomplete if not sometimes inaccurate metamorphosis. It is scarcely necessary to specify the speech of Flavius, commencing, "What will this come to?-he commands us to provide and give great gifts," and the dialogues of Alcibiades and Senators as chief illustrations of these differences, which will escape few readers. The readiness with which Shakespeare adopted a plot is sufficient instruction whence he would derive such diversities in style.-LLOYD, Critical Essays. INEQUALITIES The impression made on most readers by Timon is that of great inequality. The versification is loose, and either unusually irregular or corrupted. Some portions of the piece are worked out with love, others appear to have been most carelessly treated. The many indifferent personages with no distinctly marked characters make the scenes here and there disconnected. The intensity and depth of feeling with which the subject, as a whole, is carried out cannot be denied; but compared with this earnestness, the burlesque scenes, where the borrowing servants of Timon are turned off, are too sharply contrasted. The composition is arranged with the old attention to unity of idea, but in some points it is loose and, as it were, unfinished. With the story of Timon there is united a second action between Alcibiades and the senate. This is carried on in exact parallel, and in the same sense as the main action; but it does not hang well together in all its parts. In Act V, sc. iii, it is intimated that Alcibiades has undertaken the war against Athens partly on Timon's account, but nothing further is said of this in the play. The reason of his rebellion is given in Act III, sc. v. He there pleads in vain for a friend who has been condemned to death for killing a man in a duel. The poet handles with his usual triumphant impartiality the question of dueling, and places the views of justice, order, and age in opposition to those of honor, passion, and youth, with the same decided indecision as that in which he has left the question of self-murder an open matter. But the discussion concerns some one entirely unknown; we learn nothing whatever of the man's person or home. Singularly enough, all commentators pass over this circumstance without remark, although no similar disconnected scene is to be found in the whole of Shakespeare. How these irregularities are to be accounted for is a matter of dispute. Coleridge thought that the original text of Shakespeare had been spoiled by actors. Knight considered the piece to be a revision of an older play, of which portions only were retained, so that Timon was to be looked upon as a companion piece to Pericles. Delius regards the play as an unfinished work, the outlines of which were left incomplete for representation. We, on our side, however, attribute the carelessness in a number of plays of this date to one common, though unfathomable, cause the state of the poet's mind. We must, however, add that some of the peculiarities in this or other works of the same date may arise also from the subject itself. Timon is a play with scarcely any real story. Shakespeare was led in his judicious manner by two mere hints to display the relation of Timon to Alcibiades and Apemantus; nevertheless, we can easily imagine that among these ancient materials, where he did not feel himself quite at home, he would not hazard too much in his inventions, that he would be timorous in the creation of entirely new persons, and that hence we may explain the many nameless figures which here, as in Antony and Coriolanus, are sometimes obliged to carry on the action.-GERVINUS, Shakespeare Commentaries. THE UNDER-PLOT Plutarch had mentioned that Timon, when he had forsaken all other men, made a companion of Alcibiades, because he knew that one day he would do great mischief unto the Athenians. From this slender hint Shakspere developed a highly characteristic underplot. He represents Alcibiades (who recalls the historical figure in nothing but name) as undergoing an experience akin to that of Timon, and meeting it in a diametrically opposite way. The two plots are not sufficiently interwoven, but their mutual bearing is quite clear, and it is strange that so many critics should have rejected Act III, sc. v, where we F |