(31) Timon of Athens

Timon of Athens is perhaps one of the easiest Shakespeare plays to summarize (Oh, and a quick side note here. Timon rhymes with Simon, not Seamen. I ran around like a dope for a week thinking the title character’s name rhymed with the latter. It doesn’t, so don’t make my mistake. It’s “Tie-mon,” got it?). Anyway, a summary: Timon, a generous man, gives away his entire fortune to his “friends,” eventually going into debt. To get out of debt, he calls these same guys back to ask for loans. They refuse and Timon goes nuts, transforming in extreme from an altruistic gadabout to a cantankerous misanthrope. Finally, he dies, miserable and alone. Happy times!

For me, the play was a cautionary tale heavily centered on the idea of choosing your friends wisely, or, more accurately, understanding and properly dealing with the people around you, especially when you have power (in this case, power in wealth). I saw a really great live production of this play first, and then read it, reversing my typical approach (see, then read as opposed to read, then see). I’m glad I did it this way, especially with this play. It saved it for me, enabling me to understand the merits of the play much better (and easier) than I would have if I had only read it, or even read it first. Because this play had such a singular message, more so than most of the other plays I’ve read, I may have gotten lost a bit in the repetitive nature of the theme. But, at the risk of stating the obvious, the live version, among many other things, served to expand the boundaries beyond the page, an important thing in this case, adding layers onto the seemingly simple and straightforward message so as to enliven it and make it more real. Plus, the costumes were cool.

The play is rather bleak (it is a tragedy after all). Although there was certainly more to it that just one theme (for example, the idea of a shared responsibility for dysfunctional friendships, or an examination of the madness of extremes), for the most part, I couldn’t get past the laser-like focus on false friendship’s ruin of a generous man. Because of this (and other) reasons, I agree with the general consensus that this is not one of the Bard’s strongest plays. Besides its single-mindedness, it appears that parts of it are unfinished and in need of editing, especially in the later acts. Strange, out of place references and unpolished language litters the final scenes, causing some awkward moments for sure (There also the co-authorship thing. Most experts think Tom Middleton pitched in a bit). But, the first folio guys included it back in 1623, so there it is, Official Shakespeare. For me, I’m glad they did because the text isn’t by any stretch worthless and the live performance I got to see was, by every stretch, excellent.