INTRODUCTION

LITERARY HISTORY

Tinion of Athens was first printed in the Folio of 1623, where it is entitled “The Life of Tyrnon of Athens,” and no scrap of evidence as to the existence of the play earlier than this is to be found. The text is frequently corrupt, and its history is remarkably obscure. No one now maintains that the whole play is the work of Shakespeare; that about half is his, and that the other half is the composition of an inferior writer, has been accepted as an established fact by all modern critics. Nor has there been any wide divergence of opinion as to what parts are Shakespeare's and what not; the question in dispute has been how the play came to assume the shape in which we find it in the Folio. Did Shakespeare revise an older play, or was his work left unfinished and filled out into a five-act play by someone else?

Before attempting to answer this question it will be well to glance at the sources from which the story is taken. These are three: a passage in Plutarch's Life of Marcus Antonius; Painter's Palace of Pleasure, novel 28; and Lucian's Dialogue, Timon. Timon is twice mentioned in Aristophanes; but the earliest account of him as a historical character occurs in Plutarch's Antonius, which Shakespeare was probably reading about 1606 for his Antony and Cleopatra. Here he would find a brief account of Timon's misanthropical ways, one or two of his smart sayings, and his epitaph.