“Timon” marks the extremity of Shakespeare's suffering. It is not to be
called a work of art, it is hardly even a tragedy; it is the causeless
ruin of a soul, a ruin insufficiently motived by complete trust in men
and spendthrift generosity. If there was ever a man who gave so lavishly
as Timon, if there was ever one so senseless blind in trusting, then he
deserved his fate. There is no gradation in his giving, and none in his
fall; no artistic crescendo. The whole drama is, as I have said, a
scream of suffering, or rather, a long curse upon all the ordinary
conditions of life. The highest qualities of Shakespeare are not to be
found in the play. There are none of the magnificent phrases which
bejewel “Lear”; little of high wisdom, even in the pages which are
indubitably Shakespeare's, and no characterization worth mentioning. The
honest steward, Flavius, is the honest Kent again of “Lear,” honest and
loyal beyond nature; Apemantus is another Thersites. Words which throw a
high light on Shakespeare's character are given to this or that
personage of the play without discrimination. One phrase of Apemantus is
as true of Shakespeare as of Timon and is worth noting:
“The middle of humanity thou never knewest, but the
extremity of both ends.”
The tragic sonnet-note is given to Flavius:
“What viler thing upon the earth than friends
Who can bring noblest minds to basest ends!”
In so far as Timon is a character at all he is manifestly Shakespeare,
Shakespeare who raves against the world, because he finds no honesty in
men, no virtue in women, evil everywhere--“boundless thefts in limited
professions.” This Shakespeare-Timon swings round characteristically as
soon as he finds that Flavius is honest:
“Had I a steward
So true, so just, and now so comfortable?
It almost turns my dangerous nature mild.
Let me behold thy face. Surely this man
Was born of woman.
_Forgive my general and exceptless rashness,
You perpetual-sober gods_! I do proclaim
One honest man--mistake me not--but one ...”
I cannot help putting the great and self-revealing line [Footnote: This
passage is among those rejected by the commentators as un-Shakespearean:
“it does not stand the test,” says the egregious Gollancz.] in italics;
a line Tolstoi would, no doubt, think stupid-pompous. Timon ought to
have known his steward, one might say in Tolstoi's spirit, as Lear
should have known his daughters; but this is still the tragedy, which
Shakespeare wishes to emphasize that his hero was blind in trusting.
Towards the end Shakespeare speaks through Timon quite unfeignedly:
Richard II. said characteristically:
“Nor I nor any man that but man is
With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased
With being nothing:”
And Timon says to Flavius:
“My long sickness
Of health and living now begins to mend
And nothing brings me all things.”
Then the end:
“Timon hath made his everlasting mansion
Upon the beachèd verge of the salt flood....”
We must not leave this play before noticing the overpowering erotic
strain in Shakespeare which suits Timon as little as it suited Lear. The
long discussion with Phrynia and Timandra is simply dragged in: neither
woman is characterized: Shakespeare-Timon eases himself in pages of
erotic raving:
“... Strike me the counterfeit matron;
It is her habit only that is honest,
Herself's a bawd:...”
And then:
“Consumptions sow
In hollow bones of man...........
...............Down with the nose,
Down with it flat; take the bridge quite away ...”
The “damned earth” even is “the common whore of mankind.”
“Timon” is the true sequel to “The Merchant of Venice.” Antonio gives
lavishly, but is saved at the crisis by his friends. Timon gives with
both hands, but when he appeals to his friends, is treated as a bore.
Shakespeare had travelled far in the dozen years which separate the two
plays.
All Shakespeare's tragedies are phases of his own various weaknesses,
and each one brings the hero to defeat and ruin. Hamlet cannot carry
revenge to murder and fails through his own irresolution. Othello comes
to grief through mad jealousy. Antony fails and falls through excess of
lust; Lear through trust in men, and Timon through heedless generosity.
All these are separate studies of Shakespeare's own weaknesses; but the
ruin is irretrievable, and reaches its ultimate in Timon. Trust and
generosity, Shakespeare would like to tell us, were his supremest
faults. In this he deceived himself. Neither “Lear” nor “Timon” is his
greatest tragedy; but “Antony and Cleopatra,” for lust was his chief
weakness, and the tragedy of lust his greatest play.
Much of “Timon” is not Shakespeare's, the critics tell us, and some of
it is manifestly not his, though many of the passages rejected with the
best reason have, I think, been touched up by him. The second scene of
the first act is as bad as bad can be; but I hear his voice in the line:
“Methinks, I could deal kingdoms to my friends,
And ne'er be weary.”
At any rate, this is the keynote of the tragedy, which is struck again
and again. Shakespeare probably exaggerated his generosity out of
aristocratic pose; but that he was careless of money and freehanded to a
fault, is, I think, certain from his writings, and can be proved from
the facts known to us of his life.