INTRODUCTION TO TIMON OF ATHENS. MONG the tales and fragmentary fictions in Paynter's Palace AM of Pleasure, 1567, is one entitled, 'Of the strange and beastly nature of Timon of Athens, enemy to mankind, with his death, burial, and epitaph.' And in North's translation of Plutarch (Life of Antony) the story of the misanthrope is related. These works, we know, formed part of Shakespeare's library, and he may also have consulted some English version of Lucian, though no translation of Lucian's dialogue on that subject, of so early a date, has come down to us. The story was familiar. In an old play, Jack Drum's Entertainment, 1601, one of the characters says, 'I'll be as sociable as Timon of Athens;' and in a collection of epigrams, entitled Skialetheia, 1598, is the line, 'Like hate-man Timon, in his cell he sits.' An old play of Timon existed in manuscript, which appears to have been written or transcribed about 1600, though not printed till 1842, when it was given to the world by Mr Dyce. Timon's banquet scene, in which he beats away the parasites, the character of the faithful steward, the incident of Timon's discovery of hidden treasure by digging, &c., are given in this piece; but Mr Dyce doubts whether Shakespeare had seen the play, which is a miserable performance, never apparently acted in London, and intended solely for the amusement of some academic audience. It is highly probable, however, that the poet modelled his drama on an older play; parts of it are very inferior to others, and it can scarcely be said to possess any plot or variety of incident and character such as we find in his undoubted works. The magnificent misanthropy of Timon is its grand characteristic, and this is well contrasted with the sordid cynicism of Apemantus; but excepting a few splendid speeches and imprecations, and occasionally a comic scene as the parasites are passed in review before us, the drama has little to interest the reader, and could never be made popular on the stage. It is the only play of our author,' says Hazlitt, in which spleen is the predominant feeling of the mind,' and spleen is but harsh fruit to gather throughout five acts. The power of Shakespeare, however, is strikingly manifest in this satirical drama. There is no evidence as to the date when Timon was produced, but it is in the poet's later style and manner. It was first printed in the folio of 1623. Timon of Athens is cast, as it were, in the same mould as Lear; it is the same essential character, the same generosity more from wanton ostentation than love of others, the same fierce rage under the smart of ingratitude, the same rousing up, in that tempest of powers that had slumbered unsuspected in some deep recess of the soul; for had Timon or Lear known that philosophy of human nature in their calmer moments which fury brought forth, they would never have had such terrible occasion to display it. The thoughtless confidence of Lear in his children has something in it far more touching than the self-beggary of Timon; though both one and the other have prototypes enough in real life. And as we give the old king more of our pity, so a more intense abhorrence accompanies his daughters and the worse characters of that drama, than we spare for the miserable sycophants of the Athenian. Their thanklessness is anticipated, and springs from the very nature of their calling; it verges on the beaten road of comedy. In this play there is neither a female personage, except two courtezans, who hardly speak; nor is there any prominent character (the honest steward is not such) redeemed by virtue enough to be estimable; for the cynic Apemantus is but a cynic, and ill replaces the noble Kent of the other drama. The fable, if fable it can be called, is so extraordinarily deficient in action, a fault of which Shakespeare is not guilty in any other instance, that we may wonder a little how he should have seen in the single delineation of Timon a counterbalance for the manifold objections to the subject. But there seems to have been a period of Shakespeare's life when his heart was ill at ease, and ill content with the world or his own conscience; the memory of hours misspent, the pang of affection misplaced or unrequited, the experience of man's worser nature, which intercourse with unworthy associates, by choice or circumstance, peculiarly teaches ;-these, as they sank down into the depths of his great mind, seem not only to have inspired into it the conception of Lear and Timon, but that of one primary character, the censurer of mankind. This type is first seen in the philosophic melancholy of Jaques, gazing with an undiminished serenity and with a gaiety of fancy, though not of manners, on the follies of the world. It assumes a graver cast in the exiled Duke of the same play, and next one rather more severe in the Duke of Measure for Measure. In all these, however, it is merely contemplative philosophy. In Hamlet this is mingled with the impulses of a perturbed heart under the pressure of extraordinary circumstances; it shines no longer, as in the former characters, with a steady light, but plays in fitful coruscations amidst feigned gaiety and extravagance. In Lear it is the flash of sudden inspiration across the incongruous imagery of madness; in Timon it is obscured by the exaggerations of misanthropy. These plays all belong to nearly the same period: As You Like It, being usually referred to 1600; Hamlet, in its altered form, to about 1602; Timon, to the same year; Measure for Measure, to 1603; and Lear, to 1604. In the later plays of Shakespeare, especially in Macbeth and the Tempest, much of moral speculation will be found, but he has never returned to this type of character in the personages. Timon is less read and less pleasing than the great majority of Shakespeare's plays; but it abounds with signs of his genius. Schlegel observes, that of all his works it is that which has most satire; comic in representations of the parasites, indignant and Juvenalian in the bursts of Timon himself.'-HALLAM. H |