Items related to Timon of Athens (The New Folger Library Shakespeare)
Synopsis
Background information, detailed explanatory notes, scene-by-scene plot summaries, helpful essays, and annotated reading lists accompany the dramatization of the tragic fall of a disillusioned and misanthropic Athenian ruler. Reprint.
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Review
A messy, uneven and disillusioned play, Timon of Athens is rarely studied or performed because of scepticism regarding both its authorship and completion. Like Pericles there seems little doubt that Shakespeare wrote the majority, but quite what he was trying to do is another matter.
Timon of Athens is rich and generous, happy to provide his friends, servants and acquaintances with money whenever they require it. Only the cynical Apemantus questions the soundness of Timon's actions, and the motives of his supposed friends, wondering at "what a number of men eats Timon, and he sees 'em not. It grieves me to see so many dip their meat in one man's blood." When Timon's creditors ask for payment of their loans, Timon goes to his friends, but they all refuse to help him. Even worse, Timon's one loyal friend Alcibiades is exiled from Athens. After renouncing all his friends at one last banquet, Timon retires to a misanthropic life as a hermit in a cave. As he rails against "yellow, glittering precious gold", he completely renounces mankind, to die alone in his cave, his epitaph claiming that "Here lie I, Timon, who alive / All living men did hate". One of Shakespeare's more puzzling plays, Timon of Athens is unusually bleak and unforgiving, with Timon behaving like an unsympathetic version of Lear (they were both written within a couple of years of each other). --Jerry Brotton
Review
"The Shakespeare Newsletter"It's hard to see how the New Folger Library's section on Shakespeare's language could be much better. An exceptionally good choice for an introductory text. "The Shakespeare NewsletterIt's hard to see how the New Folger Library's section on Shakespeare's language could be much better. An exceptionally good choice for an introductory text.
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Timon of Athens
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Unknown. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 0.37. Seller Inventory # G0671722913I4N00
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