Five-minute digest

Timon of Athens

William Shakespeare

Summary

Timon of Athens is a stark, almost parable-like tragedy in two halves: in the first, a rich Athenian lord gives away everything; in the second, the same man, abandoned, curses everything. It is probably a collaboration between Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton, and it survives in a form many editors think unfinished, which helps explain its rough edges and its unusual shape. As the play opens, poets, painters, jewellers and merchants crowd Timon's hall hoping for patronage. Timon pays Ventidius's debts to free him from prison, endows his servant Lucilius so that he may marry, and hosts a lavish banquet with a masque, showering his guests with jewels and horses. Only two people refuse to be dazzled. The cynic philosopher Apemantus eats roots and drinks water at the feast and mocks the flatterers who are, in his phrase, eating Timon. The steward Flavius knows that the coffers are empty and that Timon's lands are mortgaged, but Timon will not hear him. When the creditors call in their bonds, Timon sends his servants confidently to the friends he has enriched. Lucullus offers the servant a bribe to say he was not at home; Lucius regrets that he happens to be unprovided; Sempronius takes offence at not being asked first. Meanwhile Alcibiades, a captain, pleads with the Senate for the life of a soldier who killed in hot blood, and is banished for his insistence. Timon invites his false friends to one last banquet, uncovers dishes of warm water, flings it in their faces and drives them out. The second half takes place outside the city. Timon tears off his clothes, curses Athens, and lives in a cave by the sea, digging for roots. He finds gold instead and uses it as a weapon: he funds Alcibiades's army against Athens, pays the courtesans Phrynia and Timandra to spread disease, and lectures a band of thieves that sun, moon, sea and earth are all thieves too. Apemantus visits, and the two men trade insults in a contest over who truly despises the world. Flavius alone comes to share his last money with his master, and Timon, moved against his will, admits that there is one honest man. When senators beg him to save Athens from Alcibiades, he offers them only a tree to hang themselves on, and announces that he has made his grave on the edge of the sea. His death happens offstage and unexplained. Alcibiades, receiving the senators' submission, reads Timon's bitter epitaph and promises to punish only the guilty. The play is short and schematic, but it asks pointed questions. Was Timon's generosity a virtue or a way of buying love? Is his misanthropy a clear sight of the world or a mirror of his earlier blindness, swinging, as Apemantus says, from one extreme to the other? And what does Flavius, who loves his master after his fall, show about the friendship money cannot buy? Teachers should know that the cave scenes contain coarse sexual and venereal imagery.

Top Lessons

Liberality is not the same as love
Timon gives freely, but he gives without judgment and partly to be surrounded by thanks. Aristotle distinguished the liberal man, who gives to the right people in the right amount, from the prodigal who gives to anyone; Timon's servants and Apemantus see the difference before he does. The first half lets students ask whether generosity that ignores truth and stewardship is a virtue at all.
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The extremity of both ends
Apemantus's sharpest charge is that Timon never knew the middle of humanity: he loved all men blindly and then hated all men blindly. The misanthrope's despair is the trusting host's naivety turned inside out. The play's structure, two halves facing each other, asks whether hatred learned from betrayal is truer than the love it replaced.
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Flavius and the friend who stays
Flavius warns, grieves, gives away his own savings, and follows his master into exile. In his soliloquy before the cave he recalls the command to love one's enemies. He is the play's evidence against Timon's verdict on mankind, and Timon is forced to admit it. Students can set his steady service beside the lords' polished excuses.
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Gold that makes black white
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Verified Quotes

“I wonder men dare trust themselves with men”

— William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act 1, Scene 2 (Project Gutenberg #1536 (modern spelling)).Quote card

Ethan Frome, VII
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“Immortal gods, I crave no pelf”

— William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act 1, Scene 2 (Project Gutenberg #1536 (modern spelling)).Quote card

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“Men shut their doors against a setting sun”

— William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act 1, Scene 2 (Project Gutenberg #1536 (modern spelling)).Quote card

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“Uncover, dogs, and lap”

— William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act 3, Scene 6 (Project Gutenberg #1536 (modern spelling)).Quote card

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“But nakedness, thou detestable town”

— William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act 4, Scene 1 (Project Gutenberg #1536 (modern spelling)).Quote card

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“We have seen better days”

— William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act 4, Scene 2 (Project Gutenberg #1536 (modern spelling)).Quote card

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“Poor honest lord, brought low by his own heart”

— William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act 4, Scene 2 (Project Gutenberg #1536 (modern spelling)).Quote card

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“For bounty, that makes gods, does still mar men”

— William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act 4, Scene 2 (Project Gutenberg #1536 (modern spelling)).Quote card

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Richard frames reconciliation as humoral treatment: purging choler without bloodletting, and his doctors' advice that the month is wrong for bleeding.
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“Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold”

— William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act 4, Scene 3 (Project Gutenberg #1536 (modern spelling)).Quote card

First Inaugural Address, Inaugural address, paragraph on defense
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“I am Misanthropos and hate mankind”

— William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act 4, Scene 3 (Project Gutenberg #1536 (modern spelling)).Quote card

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The angel and the voice. Christine's father told her that every great artist is visited by the Angel of Music. Erik uses that childlike faith to make himself her teacher and master. The novel shows how a gift and a hope can be turned into a means of control, and how hard it is for Christine to separate the beauty of the music from the man who sings it.
Richard II, Act 1, Scene 1
Richard frames reconciliation as humoral treatment: purging choler without bloodletting, and his doctors' advice that the month is wrong for bleeding.
Science and the Modern World, Ch. IV, The Eighteenth Century
The earlier period was the age of faith, based upon reason. In the later period, they let sleeping dogs lie: it was the age of reason, based upon faith Contrasting the Middle Ages with the Enlightenment, Whitehead illustrates with Anselm's proofs and Hume's trust in the order of nature.
The Shorter Poems and Samson Agonistes, Full Text
though less In power and excellence but favour'd more Of him who rules above so was his will Pronounc'd among the Gods and by an Oath That shook Heav'ns whol circumference confirm'd Thither let us bend all our thoughts to learn What creatures there inhabit of what mould Or substance how endu'd and what thir Power And where thir weakness how attempted best By force or suttlety Though Heav'n be shut And Heav'ns high Arbitrator sit secure In his own strength this place may lye expos'd The utmost border of his Kingd...

“And nothing brings me all things”

— William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act 5, Scene 2 (Gutenberg #1536 numbering; Act 5, Scene 1 in most modern editions) (Project Gutenberg #1536 (modern spelling)).Quote card

The Canzoniere (Sonnets and Canzoni), with the Triumphs, To Laura in Death
every blossom with a sigh How oft deep musing on my woes complete Along the dark and silent glens I lie In thought again that dearest form to meet By death possess'd and therefore wish to die How oft I see her rising from the tide Of Sorga like some goddess of the flood Or pensive wander by the river's side Or tread the flowery mazes of the wood Bright as in life while angel pity throws O'er her fair face the impress of my woes MERIVALE SONNET XIV Alma felice che sovente torni HE THANKS HER THAT FROM TIME TO TIM...
The Souls of Black Folk, Chapter XI, Of the Passing of the First-Born
The birth of Burghardt, his illness in Atlanta, the watch beside him as the physician comes and goes, his death and burial, and the father's mixed grief and consolation.
Troilus and Cressida, Act V, Scene X
Hector is dead; there is no more to say Troilus brings news of Hector's death to the Trojan army.
Sermons on the Song of Songs, Summary
Bernard's Sermons on the Song of Songs are among the central monuments of medieval monastic spirituality. They do not offer a continuous modern commentary on every verse. Instead, Bernard lingers over phrases from the biblical love poem and turns them into meditations on the soul's desire for God, the church's relation to Christ, humility, contemplation, temptation, and charity. The erotic language of the Song becomes a disciplined vocabulary for spiritual longing. Bernard speaks to monks who have renounced ordi...
The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, Dedication
which stands between the Rehearsal and the Critic but nearer to the former and Pasquin the maturest example of Fielding's satiric work in drama These accordingly have been selected the rest I have read and he who likes may read I have read many worse things than even the worst of them but not often worse things by so good a writer as Henry Fielding The next question concerned the selection of writings more miscellaneous still so as to give in little a complete idea of Fielding's various powers and experiments Tw...

“And let my gravestone be your oracle”

— William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act 5, Scene 2 (Gutenberg #1536 numbering; Act 5, Scene 1 in most modern editions) (Project Gutenberg #1536 (modern spelling)).Quote card

Philebus, Full Text
by him in the Meno the Phaedo and the Phaedrus has given way to a psychological one The omission is rendered more significant by his having occasion to speak of memory as the basis of desire Of the ideas he treats in the same sceptical spirit which appears in his criticism of them in the Parmenides He touches on the same difficulties and he gives no answer to them His mode of speaking of the analytical and synthetical processes may be compared with his discussion of the same subject in the Phaedrus here he dwell...
Measure for Measure, Medical lens
Measure for Measure is not a medical play, but it is unusually concentrated on mortality and on the bodily consequences of the sexual trade the law is trying to suppress. The 'absolute for death' speech is a set piece of consolatio, cataloguing the diseases and decline of age (gout, serpigo, rheum, palsy) as reasons not to cling to life; Claudio's reply is a study of acute dread of death and the imagined afterlife. Lucio's opening banter with the gentlemen is a run of jokes on venereal disease (the 'French crown...
Measure for Measure, Act 3, Scene 1
The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature is a paradise To what we fear of death The conclusion of Claudio's speech, which leads directly to his plea that Isabella yield.
The Waste Land, Lesson: Thirst and water
Thirst and water. Water in the poem is ambiguous: the drowned Phlebas and Madame Sosostris's warning make it deadly, while Part V's rocky land longs for rain. Like the barren kingdom of the Grail legend, the land waits for a healing that only comes as distant thunder and the promise of rain.
Antony and Cleopatra, Act 1, Scene 3
Cleopatra stages sudden sickness and faintness to keep Antony from leaving, calling for her lace to be cut: illness used as theatre.

“Here lie I, Timon, who alive all living men did hate”

— William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act 5, Scene 5 (Gutenberg #1536 numbering; Act 5, Scene 4 in most modern editions) (Project Gutenberg #1536 (modern spelling)).Quote card

Jane Eyre, Full Text
night-gown and when it lay there safe and warm I was comparatively happy believing it to be happy likewise Long did the hours seem while I waited the departure of the company and listened for the sound of Bessie s step on the stairs sometimes she would come up in the interval to seek her thimble or her scissors or perhaps to bring me something by way of supper a bun or a cheese-cake then she would sit on the bed while I ate it and when I had finished she would tuck the clothes round me and twice she kissed me an...
The Meek One, Part Ii
you know--and wallow in the mud on purpose out of misery You know men take to drink from grief well maybe I am here from grief Come tell me what is there good here Here you and I came together just now and did not say one word to one another all the time and it was only afterwards you began staring at me like a wild creature and I at you Is that loving Is that how one human being should meet another It's hideous that's what it is Yes she assented sharply and hurriedly I was positively astounded by the promptitud...
Parzival: A Knightly Epic, Full Text
decadence and the Arthurian romances which first found shape in Northern France had just passed into Germany there to be gladly welcomed and to receive at the hands of German poets the impress of an ethical and philosophical interpretation foreign to their original form It was in these romances that Wolfram in common with other of his contemporaries found his chief inspiration in the Parzival his master-work he has told again the story of the Quest for and winning of the Grail told it in connection with the Perc...
The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, Full Text
to get home in time for one of these meetings I shall never forget how tired and wilted she looked that evening when I unhitched her how she drooped in her stall too tired to eat or even to lie down Next morning it was plain that her lungs were inflamed all the dreadful symptoms were just the same as my own when I had pneumonia Father sent for a Methodist minister a very energetic resourceful man who was a blacksmith farmer butcher and horse-doctor as well as minister but all his gifts and skill were of no avail...
Philebus, Full Text
by him in the Meno the Phaedo and the Phaedrus has given way to a psychological one The omission is rendered more significant by his having occasion to speak of memory as the basis of desire Of the ideas he treats in the same sceptical spirit which appears in his criticism of them in the Parmenides He touches on the same difficulties and he gives no answer to them His mode of speaking of the analytical and synthetical processes may be compared with his discussion of the same subject in the Phaedrus here he dwell...

Medical Lens

Timon's curses in 4.3 contain one of the most detailed catalogues of syphilis in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama: bone pain, hoarse voice, baldness, the collapsed nasal bridge, and the sweating-tub and restricted diet used as treatment. They show how familiar the disease and its cure were to a London audience. Apemantus diagnoses Timon's change as melancholy sprung from loss of fortune; that is a character's reading in the period's terms, and modern labels for Timon's withdrawal are interpretive only. Physicians appear as metaphors (friends who give a patient over, a doctor whose antidotes kill), drink as the flatterers' medium, and Timon's death is left unexplained; his talk of a long sickness of living now mending and his offer of a hanging-tree to Athens give the ending a strongly self-destructive cast without showing a suicide.

Syphilis Venereal Physicians Doctors Melancholia Depression Alcohol Death Dying Suicide

Act 1, Scene 2
Apemantus drinks water at the banquet and warns that the guests' toasts will make Timon and his estate look ill, setting the cynic's sober regimen against the feast.
Act 3, Scene 3
Sempronius, refusing a loan, compares Timon's friends to physicians who have given up a patient as incurable.
Act 4, Scene 3
Timon pays Phrynia and Timandra to spread disease, then lists the symptoms of the pox and the sweating-tub cure in detail.
Act 4, Scene 3
Apemantus calls Timon's new way of life an unmanly melancholy sprung from change of fortune, a period diagnosis of his misanthropy.
Act 4, Scene 3
Timon tells the bandits to drink until fever boils their blood, and not to trust physicians, whose antidotes are poison and who kill more than thieves rob.
Act 5, Scene 2 (Gutenberg #1536 numbering; Act 5, Scene 1 in most modern editions)
Timon calls his life a long sickness now mending, offers the senators his tree to hang themselves from, and describes his grave by the sea.

Timon of Athens

Summary

Top Lessons

Liberality is not the same as love

The extremity of both ends

Flavius and the friend who stays

Gold that makes black white

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Medical Lens