Timon of Athens
First published AD 1623, written in English
The Life of Tymon of Athens, often shortened to Timon of Athens, is a play written by William Shakespeare and likely also Thomas Middleton in about 1606. It was published in the First Folio in 1623. Timon lavishes his wealth on parasitic companions until he is poor and rejected by them. He then denounces all of mankind, and isolates himself in a cave in the wilderness.
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Where it is set
What it draws on
- Parallel Lives
Plutarch, AD 110
Timon the misanthrope appears in passing in Plutarch's Life of Antony, with the epitaph he wrote for himself; Shakespeare built his play from that and from Lucian's dialogue on Timon.
Source: Wikipedia, Timon of Athens
“He also drew upon Plutarch's Lives, and perhaps Lucian's Dialogues and a lost comedy on the subject of Timon, allusions to which survive from 1584.” Read it there
Its heirs
Later works that draw on Timon of Athens.
- Pale Fire
Vladimir Nabokov, AD 1962
The title comes from Timon's speech on the universal thief, 'the moon's an arrant thief, / And her pale fire she snatches from the sun'. Fitting for a novel in which a commentator steals a poet's work to tell his own story, and in which Timon itself turns up, mistranslated.
Source: Wikipedia, Pale Fire
“As Nabokov pointed out himself, the title of John Shade's poem is from Shakespeare's Timon of Athens: "The moon's an arrant thief, / And her pale fire she snatches from the sun" (Act IV, scene 3), a line often taken as a metaphor about creativity and inspiration.” Read it there
