ABSTRACT
In their co-authored play, Timon of Athens, Shakespeare and Middleton revise a long tradition of Timon’s story by giving the legendary hater a backstory as a lover of humanity. Such revision is not without precedent. In Lucian’s satire Misanthropos, Timon complains to Zeus about the ingratitude of friends he has benefited who now abandon him in his poverty. And Timon, an anonymous academic comedy considered a likely source for Shakespeare and Middleton, devotes three acts to Timon’s generosity as a wealthy merchant and landowner who “scatters” his wealth “among the Commons & the poor,” for which he is “magnified by the peoples crye.”1 Unlike Timon of Athens, however, neither precedent seriously addresses Timon’s diametric turn from philanthropy to misanthropy. Lucian’s Timon seems to have come to terms with his poverty, hiring out as a day laborer, before the intervention of the bumbling gods turns him into a misanthropic hoarder of gold. As for the comic Timon, having spent his fury in the woods repelling suitors for his found gold, “[his] heart growes milde & laies aside its hate,” and he asks for applause to “cause Timon to the Citty to repaire” (p. 86; ll. 2622, 2629). Only Shakespeare and Middleton endow Timon with seemingly infinite wealth and a social vision that would reorder Athenian business as usual. Confronted with the collapse of both, only this Timon goes the distance as the philanthropist who comes fully to embody the misanthrope.
