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Shakespere's Purpose in Timon of Athens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2021

Dixon Wecter*
Affiliation:
Yale University

Extract

Two conflicting theories regarding the composition of Timon of Athens have been expounded for many years. The first, argued notably by Professor Delius, asserts that the Folio text represents Shakespere's partial revision of an uninspired old play; the second, espoused by Mr. Fleay and elaborated in recent years by Dr. E. H. Wright, assumes that the play is an unfinished draft by Shakespere filled out by later literary hack-work. The latter theory at present receives more general favour; nevertheless in 1923 Mr. Dugdale Sykes in Notes and Queries, after calling attention to certain internal relationships in the play, has attempted to revive the earlier explanation.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , September 1928 , pp. 701 - 721
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1928

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References

page 701 note 1 “Uber Shakespeare's Timon of Athens,” in Skaks. Jakrbuck, II, 175 ff.

page 701 note 2 “On the Authorship of Timon of Athens,” in Transactions of New Skaks. Soc., 1874, pp. 130 ff.

page 701 note 3 The Authorship of Timon of Athens, Columbia diss., 1910.

page 701 note 4 13th Ser., vol I, Aug. 4-Sept. 15, 1923.

page 701 note 5 Cf. Wright, op. cit., pp. 55-56. Thus the first banquet-scene is clearly the work of an inferior; whereas Timon's lengthy maledictions in Act IV bear a decisive resemblance to Lear. Upon the distribution of several important scenes, e.g., the first two scenes of Act III, Fleay and Wright disagree—the latter always seeking to give Shakespeare enough to make an integral, though brief, play. In such cases Mr. Sykes takes sides invariably with the former.

page 702 note 6 Op. cit., pp. 85-86. He eventually discovers an analogue, p. 149, in the phrase “the bounty of your love, as ever poor gentleman tasted,” in a Middletonian passage of The Roatinf Girl, II, i.

page 702 note 7 N. E Q., 12th Ser., VI (1920), 266 ff. The evidence which Wells and Sykes adduce for Middleton's case is quite formidable, both in quantity and quality. Versification and spirit of treatment in Middleton's earlier period confirm the evidence of verbal similarity. On the other hand, Sykes' attempt to establish the collaboration of John Day with Middleton seems much less successful, and for our present purpose may be ignored.

page 702 note 8 Pp. 147-48.

page 702 note 9 Op. cit., pp. 39-41 and Chap, rv, ii, passim.

page 703 note 10 Ibid., pp. 78-9.

page 703 note 11 Ibid., pp. 73-8.

page 703 note 12 Thus the name “Flavius” is substituted for “Steward,” and Sempronius is introduced, as we shall see presently, in the dramatic niche of Ventidius. Wright notes the blunders in servants' names, pp. 61 ff. Fleay, op. cil., p. 150, tabulates the names introduced by Shakespeare and the second writer respectively.

page 704 note 13 Skakespearcan Trapdy, pp. 477-480.

page 704 note 14 The Problem of Timon, cf Aiken, (London, 1923), p. 24.

page 704 note 15 Op. cit., Note S (pp. 443 ff.).

page 704 note 16 Op.cit.,p.269.

page 704 note 17 Op cit.,pp.73-5.

page 705 note 18 To be sure, in the dialogue of Lucian, the orator Demeas, in hit fulsome flattery, hails the wealthy misanthrope as winner of the Olympic games though Timon has never competed in them, and says that he “cut to pieces two divisions of Spartans,” though Timon retorts that he was never even mustered out. It is of course doubtful whether Shakespeare ever read this Dialogue, but'granted that he did we can hardly find a nexus between this jocular flattery and the illustrious services which Shakespeare's Timon has performed for Athens.

page 705 note 19 Op.cit.,p.59.

page 705 note 20 Ibid., pp. 67 f.

page 706 note 21 Cf.ibid.,pp.99f.

page 706 note 22 Thus I, i, in which Timon appears surrounded by his suitors, is but partiy; Shakespearean, as Fleay and Sykes observe; the lengthy banquet-scene (I, ii) is: agreed by all our critics to be prevailingly, probably wholly, by an inferior; the three important “dunning*‘ scenes with Timon's false friends (III, i, ii, and iii) are pronounced essentially non-Shakesperean by Fleay and Sykes; in, iv, in whichthe creditors’ men discuss Timon's parlous state and the desertion of his friends and in which Timon issues invitations to the mock-banquet, is in substance given by all critics to the Inferior; the prose of the mock-banquet, in which the sycophants are talking with Timon, is called spurious by Fleay, following Furnivall, and by Sykes. On the other hand, the last two sets are prevailingly Shakesperean, as all agree.

There are at least two interpolations superfluous to the plot, which may be dropped without any loss whatever: the colloquy of Apemantus, the Fool, and the Page in II, ii, 46-132. and the soldier's discovery of Timon's grave, V, iii. I suggest that they were inserted after excisions elsewhere had greatly reduced the length and stage-business of Shakespere's original.

In regard to the sub-plot, Fleay, Wright, and Sykes regard the banishment of Alcibiades (III, v) as spurious. Plutarch, while recording Alcibiades' banishment assigns no such circumstances as these. Perhaps the pleading for a soldier who has offended under the influence of drink (11. 69-70) was suggested to the interpolator by Otkello. Just what were Shakespere's intentions here we can never know-though it appears, as Wright suggests, pp. 75 ff., that in some way he would create a stronger dramatic tie between Timon and Us future avenger. If so, the reviser may have found it inextricable from the scenes of Timon and his circle, which, as we have seen, were sweepingly expunged.

page 707 note 23 Three recent efforts to connect Shakespeare and Essex should be noted: Miss Lilian Winstanley's “Hamlet” and the Essex Conspiracy, Aberystwyth Studies VI and VII, Univ. of Wales, 1924-25; Professor E. P. Kuhl's study, “As You Like It' and the Earl of Essex, read before the Modern Language Association, December, 1926; and Miss E. M. Albright, Shakespeare's ”Richard II“ and the Essex Conspiracy, PMLA, September, 1927, pp. 686 ff.

page 707 note 24 Cf. C. C. Slopes, The Third Earl of Southampton, p. 242.

page 707 note 25 En route to London James had pronounced the late Earl “the most noble knight England had ever produced.” Venetian Papers, May 15, 1603, quoted Slopes, 266.

page 708 note 26 Cf. Ballads from USS (Baited Society, 1873), II, 195-259.

page 708 note 27 That even the Unking of one's name with the doings of Essex was yet regarded as politically inauspicious, is shown by Lord Mountjoy's rebuke of Daniel for bringing in that nobleman's name, innocently enough, in the affair over Pkilotas. Cf. Dict. Nat. Biog-, “Samuel Danie.”

page 708 note 28 Work,, ed. Grossat, III, p. 104.

page 708 note 29 Cf. “Samuel Daniel” in Dict. Nat. Biog., and the Apology printed in Groserti edition.

page 709 note 30 Miss Albright makes the highly plausible suggestion that the omission of the abdication scene in the early quartos is to be explained by Shakespere's adumbration of current politics. I had not read Miss Albright's study until after the practical completion of the present paper; so that to such matters ss Hayward's history and its influence on Shakespere, there should be given whatever weight is due to similar conclusions independently reached. Miss Winstanley, VI, 47 ff., refers to the older conjectures about Shakespere's dramatic allusions to Essex. Essex himself seems gloomily to have anticipated his own dramatisation, writing in May, 1600 from Ireland, to the Queen: “Already they print me, and make me speak to the world; and shortly they wul play me in what forms they list upon the stage” (T. Birch, Memoir, of Ik, Reign of Q. Bisabetk, n, 445).

page 709 note 31 W. B. Devereaux, Liter and Letters of Ike Detereaux, I,379

page 709 note 32 Ibid., I, 465 and Rdianiae Wottonianae (1651), 40,

page 710 note 23 Birch, op. cit., II, 15.

page 710 note 24 Cal. State Papers Dam., 1601-1603, p. 35. Bacon, “Of Friendahlp,” in the entirely-rewritten version of that Essay in the 1625 ed., quotes from Plutarch's Pessary: “Pompey turned vpon him [Syllal againe, and in effect bad him be quiet; Far that mere Hem adored tke Sunne Rising, then Ike Sunne setting” (cf. North's Plutarch, Tudor Translations, IV, 219).

page 710 note 25 Lives., 1,178.

page 710 note 26 E. A. Abbott, Bacon end Essex (London, 1877), Appendix, p. 4. Italics mine.

page 710 note 27 P. 3, printed in Appendix, Abbott, op. cit.

page 711 note 28 Op. cit., p. 18. On p. 36 he describes him as “delighting in the press and affluence of Dependants and Suiters, which are alwayes the Bums, and sometimes the Briers of Fevourits.”

page 711 note 39 Abbott, 193.

page 711 note 40 In 1591 Essex was mildly reproved by the Privy Council because he did “adventurew to go a hawking” and expose hiself to caputer, while he was commender in France (Lives, I, 245-46).

page 711 note 41 Note a banquet at Essex House costing at least a thousand marks (Lives, I, 388), and Wotton's comment on the Earl's epicurism, p. 18. On pp. 21 f. he speaks of him as “inclyning to popular ways; for we know the people are apter to applaud hous-keepers, then hous-raisers.”

page 711 note 42 The dining and hawking are alluded to in authentic Shakesperean passages, e.g., I, i, 254 and II, ii, 8, respectively.

page 711 note 43 Cal. State Papers Dom., 1598-1601, p. 468. He is pleading for the renewal of his patent on sweet wines. He continues: “If my creditors would take for payment many ounces of my blood .... you should never hear of this suit.” One may compare a bit of dialogue between Timon and bis creditors in III, iv, 94. though the scene as a whole shows marks of revision:

Timon. Cut my heart in sums.

Titus. Mine, fifty talents.

Tim. Tell out my blood.

Luc. Sen. Five thousand crowns, my lord.

Tim. Five thousand drops pays that. What yours? and yours?

page 711 note 44 I, 474.

page 712 note 45 Cf. Abbott, 118, and Diet. Nat. Biot., “Robert Devereaux.” Mist Albright, op. cit., 699 ff., presents the matter at tome length, and offers the theory that Shakespere used Hayward's history, in MS, in the composition of Richard II.

page 713 note 46 Lives.II, 120 f., printed from Bodl. Libr. Tanner MSS 79. Grosart,M iscellanies of Fuller Worthies' Library, Poems of Lord Vaux, Earl of Oxford, Earl of Essex, etc. (1872), pp. 94-95, prints it from Ashm. MS, 781, p. 83 and collates Chetham MS, 8012, p. 86. In his verses “The Buzzeuige Bee's Complaynt,” Grosart, ibid., 85 ff., he images himself as deserting the hive:

To sucke on hen bane, hemlocke, netteles, rewe. Professor Carleton Brown, in his edition of Poems by Sir John Salusbury and Robert Chester (EETS, Ext. Ser. CXIII, p. 13) notes the numerous MS copies of this poem. It is sometimes ascribed to Henry Cuffe, Essex's secretary.

page 713 note 47 Grosart, op. cit., p. 99.

page 714 note 48 Lives, II, 68. Of course Essex was always somewhat theatrical.

page 714 note 49 Cf. Lives, I, 307 ff.

page 714 note 50 Nugae Ant., 179, quoted Lives, II, 130.

page 714 note 51 E.g., Wotton remarks, p. 8, that “towards his latter time .... his humours grew Tart,” and regarding his inability to dissemble quotes the words of his servant Cuffe about him, p. 14, Amorem o* odium semper infronte gessil, nee cdarc novit. Lord Cobham he always called “the Sycophant,” “even to the Queen her selfe,” p. 22.

page 714 note 52 Cf. Lives, II, 131. Note Timon's emphasis on the age of the Senate, “Their blood is cak'd, 'tis cold, it seldom flows,” etc (II, ii, 225). And he declares that they “have their ingratitude in them hereditary,” which may remind us of Elizabeth's father and Wolsey. Note also that Timon's signet has been presented to the senate with the request for herp.II, ii, 211, and compare the famous story of Essex's sending a ring to Elizabeth from his prison, Lives, II, 178.

page 714 note 53 lbid., II, 134.

page 714 note 54 Cf. Stupes, 204-5. For an instance of his lenity to Ralegh, Wotton, 30-31.

page 715 note 55 Probably Gabriel Montgomery. Cf. Lives, II, 136 f.

page 715 note 56 Salisbury Papers, XI, 48, 93, quoted Stopes, 199.

page 715 note 57 Pp. 25-26, Abbott reprint.

page 715 note 58 Lives, II, 145.

page 715 note 59 Ibid., II, 157 ff.

page 715 note 60 Cecil, writing to Win wood, says of Essex after the trial: “Before he went out of the hall, when he saw himself condemned, and found that Sir John Da vers, Sir Ferdinando Gorge, Sir Christopher Blount and Sir Charles Davers, had confessed all the conferences that were held at Drury House by his direction for surprising the Queen and the Tower of London, he then broke out to divers gentlemen that attended him in the Hall that his confederates who had now accused him had been principal inciters of him and not he of them, ever since August last, to work his access to the Queen with force.” Spedding, Life and Times of P. Bacon (1878), I, 343. And cf. Abbott, 222.

page 716 note 61 Bacon and Essex (London, 1877), passim.

page 716 note 62 Abbott, 55 and Bacon's Apology 4. A similar instance of Essex's generosity is recorded when after failing to obtain a suit for Sir Francis Allen, he wrote to him: “And if I be so unfortunate that the Queen will break her word with me for you, I will divide one house with you if you will live with me, or settle you in one, if I had but two in the world. For while I have any fortune. Sir Francis Allen shall have part of it” Add. MSS 4112 (72), quoted Abbott, 27 f.

page 716 note 63 Abbott, 80 ff.

page 716 note 64 Ibid., 83-4.

page 716 note 65 His two letters on Bacon's behalf in Birch, Memoirs, II, 347-48.

page 716 note 66 Spedding, Life and Times, I, 231 ff. Letters to Cecil and Egerton are preserved

page 716 note 67 Abbott, 36.

page 716 note 68 Lives, II, 119.

page 717 note 69 Cf. Abbott, 88.

page 717 note 70 That is, personal aspersions Essex had let fall. Cf. Abbott, 170. He had been commissioned merely to investigate Haywsrd's book.

page 717 note 71 Only I humbly pray you to believe that I aspire to the conscience and commendation of bonus civis and bonus vir, and that though I love some things better, I confess, than I love your Lordship, yet I love few persons better, both for gratitude's sake, and for virtues which cannot hurt but by accident.... for, as I was ever sorry your Lordship should fly with waxen wings, doubting Icarus' fortune; so for the growing up of your feathers, be they ostriches or other kind, no man shall be more glad.“ Lives, II, 118. His allegation that he had previously warned the Earl against rath courses is paralleled in the (revised) Lucullus scene, III, i, in which that lord tells the servant how he had often urged prudence to Timon.

page 717 note 72 Meyrick commented: “Mr. Bacon was very idle, and I trust shall have the reward of that sooner in the end.” Abbott, 174. Timon's steward in II, ii realises the falsity of the friends long before Timon suspects them.

page 717 note 73 Abbott, 226-27.

page 718 note 74 Ibid., 251.

page 718 note 75 One more link between the Bacon-Essex relation and our play may be cited. There is a certain figure of speech which Essex uses on at least two occasions regarding friendship. The first, a letter to Francis Bacon in April, 1593 (repr. from a Lambeth MS fragment by Spedding, of. cii., 1,100): “.... it is the best wisdom in any man in his own matters to rest in the wisdom of a friend (for who can so often looking in the flats discern and judge so well of his own favour, as another with whom he converseth?).” The second, addressed to Anthony Bacon in 1598 and published before Essex's death, in which he defends himself against current slander, Lives, I, 484: “The same curiosity moves me to show the true face and state of my mind la my true friend, that he, like a true glass, without injury or flattery, may tell me whether a matter or accident have set so foul a blemish in that, as my accusers pretend.” Cf. a striking phrase of I, i, 59, describing a false friend of Timon, “the glass-fac'd flatterer.”

page 718 note 76 He was even given an annual pension of £60 for “the good, faithful, and acceptable service” his brother Anthony had rendered Essex, Abbott, 252.

page 718 note 77 Lea lost his life pleading too importunately for his general, Stopes, 206. Merrick remained non-committal under questioning, “explaining that he had merely acted under his master's orders,” Diet. Nat. Biog, “Sir Gilly Meyrick.”

page 718 note 78 Cf. Spedding, I, 367.

page 718 note 79 Dict. Nat. Biog., “Anthony Bacon,” on evidence of a letter to him in May, 1601, from an anonymous writer.

page 719 note 80 II, 243.

page 719 note 81 Declaration of Treasons, 15. Birch, II, 82 speaks more highly of his extraction.

page 719 note 82 Tanner MS 76, fol. 98, printed in Ballads from USS (Ballad Soc), II, 240.

page 720 note 83 E.g.,

Wining misery

Outlives incertain pomp, is crown'd before:

The one is filling still, never complete;

The other, st high wish: best state, contentless,

Hath a distracted and most wretched being,

Worse than the worst, content (TV, iii, 243).

page 720 note 84 The letter complete may be found in Birch, II, 484 ff.

page 720 note 85 In IV, i, and in his speeches to Phrynia and Timandra, IV, iii.

page 720 note 86 Cf. his confession: “I haue bestowed my youth in wan tonnes, histe, and vncleannes,” Ballads from MSS, II, 208 and its reflection in ballad literature in his reputed Last Voyage, stanza iii (Grosart, op. tit., 99) and R. Williams' Life and Deaf* of Essex, xxrvi (Ballads from MSS, 31).

page 720 note 87 Skakesperean Tragedy, p. 443