THE LIFE OF TIMON OF ATHENS
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As usual for his ancient-history plays, Shakespeare drew this one from Plutarch’s Lives. The classical world’s most famous misanthrope, Timon was an extravagant and narcissistic spendthrift who after dispersing his bounty among his so-called friends received nothing from the parasites but ingratitude. Poor and extremely bitter, the ex-prodigal leaves Athens to live in a cave like a beast. His only friend is the young Alcibiades, whom Timon characteristically befriends because “I know that one day he shall do great mischief unto the Athenians.” (The best story about Timon is that before he cut down a fig tree from which Athenians used to hang themselves, he considerately gave the townsfolk one last chance to use it, he was also famous for paying robbers to kill people.)
Shakespeare may not have put his heart into Timon, but you’ll find great chunks of his spleen. Here the subject of ingratitude, always a constant theme, turns obsessive: the play exists mainly to fulminate, Timon’s passionate curses sometimes suggesting Lear’s more powerful diatribes. Recognizing the resemblance, Coleridge called the play a “lingering vibration of Hamlet” and a “Lear of domestic or ordinary life.”
Since Timon is virtually a one-man show, the title void takes its toll. But comparative competence comes from Amy Frazier as Timon’s Cassandra-like steward, Noe Cuellar as the strangely noble Alcibiades (the real Alci was an ego-ridden traitor), and especially Roger Kerson as a foulmouthed rival misanthrope (a role that recalls the scathing Thersites in Troilus and Cressida).
