INTRODUCTION

IN the folio of 1623 we have the first known edition of our play. There it is called The Life of Tymon of Athens, with the running titles, Timon of Athens; and the circumstances, presently to be noted, in which it was inserted in its particular place are supposed to have a bearing upon the question of its authorship. Though the date of composition can only be inferred, the style, habit of thought, and metrical indications alike point to some date between 1606 and 1610. The story of Timon was well known in Shakespeare's day, and he himself in Love's Labour's Lost refers to "critic Timon." For details he appears to have drawn from three sources-Painter's Palace of Pleasure, Plutarch's Life of Marcus Antonius, and, directly or indirectly, from Lucian's Dialogue entitled Timon or the Misanthrope. There was also an old play of Timon, circiter 1600, which contains many of the incidents used by Shakespeare, though none, I think, which he could not have derived elsewhere, unless it be the return of the faithful steward to join his master in his self-imposed exile. In the preface to his edition of this drama, published by the Shakespeare Society in 1842, Dyce says, "I leave to others a minute discussion of the question whether or not Shakespeare was indebted to the present piece. I shall merely

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observe, that I entertain considerable doubts of his having been acquainted with a drama, which was certainly never performed in the metropolis, and which was likely to have been read only by a few of the author's particular friends to whom transcripts of it had been presented."

From an early period suspicions have been expressed as to the genuineness of Timon as we now have it. The older commentators accounted for its condition by supposing the folio version to be printed from a manuscript largely mangled and interpolated by the actors. Of this supposition I shall speak later on. Modern criticism is mainly represented by two schools, one of which holds that Shakespeare worked upon an earlier play, part whereof he retained; the other, that his portion, left incomplete, was supplemented by some contemporary dramatist. The latter of these theories I take first as more adequately satisfying the requirements of the case, though I am far from believing that the adulteration is anything like as extensive as its extreme advocates would make out. To Verplanck, I believe, we owe the first suggestion of an escape from the difficulties by which we are met. In the Introduction 1 to his edition of Shakespeare, published in 1842, this scholar writes as follows:-"The hypothesis which I should offercertainly with no triumphant confidence of its being the truth, but as more probable than any other-is this: Shakepeare, at some time during that period, when his temper, state of health, or inclination of mind, from whatever cause, strongly prompted him to a severe judgment of human nature and acrimonious moral censure, adopted the canvas of Timon's story as a fit vehicle of poetic satire, in the 1 Quoted by Rolfe, pp. 38, 39 of his Introduction to Timon of Athens.

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