[In the essay below, Reid considers the psychology of Timon's behavior to define the meaning of misanthropes in the play.]

Timon of Athens has received little attention from the psychoanalytic critics, and what comment exists cannot be said to be satisfactory.† The play is generally considered¹ to be incomplete or unrevised. But this does not account for its neglect, for the play in its present form is generally considered² to represent Shakespeare's intentions. It is unquestionably the singular nature of the subject that accounts for its neglect.

The plot is the simplest Shakespeare utilized for the tragedies. It falls into two abruptly different parts. In the first part, Timon is presented as the most beneficent of men. He gives—feasts and gifts—continually, and he is deliriously happy in doing so. Throughout this part, he is warned by his steward that he is bankrupting himself, and by a friend, Apemantus, that his beneficence is misguided—that he is scorned, not loved, by those he feeds. Timon ignores both warnings. Finally, he is bankrupt, but confident that those whom he benefited will now help him. They do not, and the creditors come forth. Moved to rage, he gives one final feast. As his guests sit to eat, Timon tells them to uncover the closed dishes, which contain only warm water. He screams at them: “Uncover, dogs, and lap!” and storms out to the nearby woods.

In the second part, having abandoned mankind and calling himself “misanthropos,” Timon is seen living in a cave and feeding on roots. Digging, he discovers a fortune in gold. He is then visited by different people—genuine friends and opportunists. To all, Timon behaves savagely, using the gold to corrupt. Each visitor provides a fresh object on which he can vent his hatred of mankind. Finally, we are told of Timon's death. (There is a badly coordinated subplot involving the soldier Alcibiades. Alcibiades is banished from Athens and he returns with an army to sack the city for its treatment of him. The Athenian senators point out to him that not all of them are responsible for the banishment and that he should discriminate in his revenge. Alcibiades agrees to punish only those responsible, and he enters the city peacefully.)

Unlike the other Shakespeare tragedies, Timon of Athens does not deal primarily with object relationships and therefore does not provide the psychoanalytic critic with his most accustomed concerns. Timon has no meaninful relationships with the other characters. His beneficence and his misanthropy—the subjects of the play—are impersonal. In 1785, William Richardson presented a brilliant (although incomplete) analysis of Timon's character—an analysis which, had it been better studied, would have prevented the sentimental attitude toward Timon that is still current.* Richardson³ writes:

Timon imposes upon himself, and while he is really actuated by a selfish passion, fancies himself entirely disinterested. Yet he has no select friends and no particular attachments. He receives equally the deserving and undeserving, the stranger and the familiar acquaintance. Of consequence, those persons with whom he seems intimate have no concern in his welfare; yet, vainly believing that he merits their affections, he solicits their assistance, and sustains disappointment. His resentment is aroused, and he suffers as much pain, though perhaps of a different kind, as, in a similar situation, a person of true affection would suffer. But its object is materially different. For against whom is his anger excited? Not against one individual, for he had no individual attachment, but against all those who occasioned his disappointment—that is, all those who were, or whom he desired should be, the objects of his beneficence: in other words, against all mankind.

Timon's suffering is indeed different from the suffering of those who experience genuine object relationships. Wolfgang Clemen,⁴ in his analysis of the imagery of Timon, notes that Timon's diatribes in the last half of the play “though set in dialogue, are scarcely addressed to the partner in the dialogue.” He notes⁵ that, in contrast to Lear, where “such general reflections were still closely connected with the action,” there is in Timon “a perceptible loosening of the firm guidance of the dramatic action.” Timon, then, is an unusual play, because Shakespeare is not dramatizing conflicts at the Oedipal level, but something different, something more archaic. There are Oedipal concerns in Timon, but they are of minor interest.

Timon's beneficence and misanthropy are rooted in what Melanie Klein calls the “paranoid-schizoid position.” Melanie Klein's theoretical contributions do not, even today, have general currency among the psychoanalytic critics. There is not a single reference to her work in the index of Norman M. Holland's comprehensive Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare. A brief summary of the “paranoid-schizoid position” by R. E. Money-Kyrle⁶ is in order:

The first of these “positions” in infant development results from the infant's unintegrated, and violently conflicting, attitudes toward the vital objects of his world, particularly his mother's breasts. Both because her breasts are sometimes gratifying and sometimes frustrating and because the child's own impulses are projected into, or felt to come from, these objects, they are themselves felt to be sometimes good and loving, sometimes bad and dangerous. And since he also “introjects” or incorporates them in phantasy, he feels himself to be possessed, as well as surrounded, by alternately protective and persecutory objects. The persecutory anxiety, which always arises in this period, retards, and often temporarily disrupts, the gradual integration of his ego. In short, the early stage is characterized by what Melanie Klein has appropriately named the paranoid-schizoid position.

The next stage results inevitably from the increasing integration of the infant's impulses, so that he begins to realize, at first only intermittently, that the gratifying objects he needs and loves are but other aspects of the frustrating ones he hates and in phantasy destroys. With this discovery he begins to feel concern for these objects and to experience depression. This “depressive position” is so painful that to escape it he tends to deny either that his destroyed good objects are good or that they have been injured. In other words, he tends either to regress to the older persecutory position or to adopt a “manic defence” in which concern and guilt are strenuously denied (italics added). But so far as he can tolerate depressive feelings, they give rise to reparative impulses and to a capacity for unselfish concern and protective love. The extent to which he achieves or fails to achieve this normal outcome determines the stability of his health, or his liability to illness.

On the basis of this formulation, Timon's “depressive position” was so painful to him, that “to escape it” he denied that the “good objects” had “been injured” and adopted a “‘manic defence’ in which concern and guilt” were “strenuously denied.” But this “manic defence” is a precarious one since it demands a great expense of energy to maintain. He therefore works toward a situation (bankruptcy) in order to be able to regress to the “older persecutory position,” to deny that “his destroyed good objects are good” and to eject these (newly discovered) “bad” objects.

In the first half of the play, Timon feeds the Athenians the good things within him. In the second half of the play, he vomits upon them, he regurgitates the “bad” breast he has suddenly discovered within him. Both the feeding and the vomiting are defenses. In both parts of the play, in both defenses, Timon seeks to minimize the pain of intolerable depression, first by denying “concern and guilt,” and second, by ejecting the “bad” breast within him. Understanding this leads me to a tentative formulation of the meaning of misanthropy. It is a final breaking down of the manic defense against the guilt occasioned by the felt presence within of a destroyed bad breast, a regression to the earlier persecutory position, and a consequent attempt once more to avoid depression occasioned by the emergence of guilt by spewing forth the destroyed bad breast—by projecting it on the whole outside world.

The ingestive imagery is marked throughout. Moreover, the food eaten by the flatterers at Timon's feasts becomes Timon himself. Thus, Apemantus says: “O you gods! What a number of men eat Timon, and he sees ’em not! It grieves me to see so many dip their meat in one man's blood …”⁷ Again, the First Stranger (to Timon's feasts) says: “For mine own part / I never tasted Timon in my life …”⁸ That Timon himself sees his own body (rather than simply his coffers) as the nourishment of others is to be seen in his angry answer to the creditors’ emissaries: “Cut my heart in sums.” “Tell out my blood.”⁹ Timon's manic defense is abundantly clear in the following lines:

I take all and your several visitations
So kind to heart, ’tis not enough to give.
Methinks I could deal kingdoms to my friends,
And ne’er be weary.(10)

And in these:

We are born to do benefits; and what properer can we call our own than the riches of our friends? O what a precious comfort ’tis to have so many like brothers commanding one another's fortunes. … Mine eyes cannot hold out water.¹¹

Timon weeps for joy as he feasts his “brothers.” Timon cannot perceive flattery. He will not listen to Apemantus, who in his function as chorus, speaks plainly to him:

Ap.
Methinks false hearts should never have sound legs. Thus honest fools
lays out their wealth on curtsies.
T.
Now, Apemantus, if thou wert not sullen, I would be good to thee.
Ap.
No, I’ll nothing; for if I should be bribed too, there would be
none left to rail upon thee, and then thou wouldst sin the faster. Thou giv’st
so long, Timon, I fear me thou wilt give away thyself in paper [i.e. in promissory
notes because all your funds will be used up] shortly. What needs these feasts,
pomps, and vainglories?
T.
Nay, and you begin to rail on society once, I am sworn not to give regard
to you. Farewell, and come with better music.(12)

Timon's manic defense against guilt and concern has been to deny that the good objects have been injured. This he does by becoming himself the mother—the possessor of the good breast—and by feeding others with it. Then, the ultimate proof that the good breast has indeed not been injured within him is the satisfaction and happiness that his guests demonstrate when they dine off his bounty. To Apemantus’ suggestion that his guests are merely flatterers—those who do not receive the good objects for what they must be—he turns abruptly away. To accept Apemantus’ insights would be actually to deny the goodness of what he gives.

On the other hand, this defense structure itself requires a very great expenditure of energy, and Timon himself, in his happy giving, creates the conditions which will enable him to regress to the older, persecutory position. As he will not listen to Apemantus on the falseness of the flatterers, he will not listen to his steward, the loyal Flavius, on the bankruptcy to which his bounty is clearly leading.

Fl.
I beseech your honor, vouchsafe me a word; it does concern you near.
T.
Near? Why then another time I’ll hear thee.(13)

And by the time Flavius is heard, Timon is indeed bankrupt. Timon believes the scene has now been set, when his friends will return the favors:

T.
Unwisely, not ignobly, have I given. Why dost thou weep? Canst thou
the conscience lack to think I shall lack friends? Secure thy heart.(14)

His friends’ refusal and the creditors’ suit bring about Timon's misanthropy instantaneously. There is not a second's hesitancy.

It is as if Timon had been waiting for this moment. And the torrent of abuse, once begun, never ceases. It is the absolute breakdown of one defense structure and the immediate adoption of another, more archaic defense structure. Now the destroyed bad breast is acknowledged, but it is acknowledged as being bad in itself, alone, something that had violated Timon's body and which he now rejects and returns to the world. To avoid depression now, Timon must locate the evil in the outer world. All men, save only he, are bad.

It is unnecessary to cite examples of the abuse that Timon levels at good and bad alike—at the loyal Flavius, at the right-minded Alcibiades, and at the essentially well-meaning Apemantus on the one hand, and at the bandits, the flattering poet and painter, the whores, and the Senators on the other hand. All alike fall under his curse—and even when he acknowledges the goodness of Flavius, he uses him to rail further at mankind. Several points, however, are worth attention. Apemantus chides him for adopting a churlish attitude merely because of a change in fortune and bids him be a flatterer now in his turn. This Timon rejects. To be a flatterer now would mean giving up his vituperations—which constitute his strongest defense against depression. Obviously we would not expect Apemantus to understand this. Apemantus then tells him that if he were wealthy once again, he would return to his former way of life. (Apemantus does not yet know of Timon's new fortune of gold.) But this suggestion, like the first, is not possible. Timon cannot recover his manic defense. The gold is now the means to harm others, just as it had been the means to feed them.

Timon betrays himself at one point. Apemantus asks Timon if he had ever heard of a bountiful man who was loved for his bounty:

Ap.
What man didst thou ever know unthrift [i.e., bountiful] that was loved
after his means?
T.
Who, without those means thou talk’st of, didst thou ever know
beloved?(15)

Timon's reply is extraordinary. He asks simply if love can be obtained wihout buying it. This is an essential declaration of unworthiness, and it is the genuine acknowledgment of his unconscious depression. It explains Timon's constant refusal (in the first half of the play) to receive anything from others. The source of his depression is the guilt at having destroyed the bad breast—that breast, which in its giving moments, had been the good breast. To receive anything could only be to risk the same process, to invite a new charge of guilt, since the aggressive feelings toward the breast remain. And the manic defense structure is, as we have seen, already about to crack. But perhaps the most interesting confrontation occurs in Act IV after the breakdown of the manic defense structure. After pointing out that Apemantus had never tasted the sweets to which he (Timon) had been born, Timon says:

But myself,
Who had the world as my confectionary,
The mouths, the tongues, the eyes, and hearts of men
At duty, more than I could frame employment …
I to bear this [change],
That never knew but better, is some burden.(16)

This is an extraordinary statement. The change is, of course, the loss of his wealth and what he had supposed to be the love of those he feasted. Timon sees himself as having been the sole recipient of the good breast (“the world as my confectionary”) and this as the immediate source of his bounty (“the mouths, the tongues, the eyes, and hearts of men”). He is here recounting his manic defense—that the introjected breast had not been injured and with it the illusion that men really loved him for his bounty. Finally (“I to bear this, / That never knew but better, is some burden.”), he makes clear his longing for the manic defense that can no longer work.

The most graphic picture of the source of Timon's misanthropy is his attitude toward the “mother” earth. At his cave, Timon digs for roots:

Earth, yield me roots. [Digs.]
Who seeks for better of thee, sauce his palate
With thy most operant poison.(17)

Timon no longer seeks the good breast. He prefers a bitter breast to a sweet one. He dares no longer risk the depression that comes from the destruction of the thing he loves. But, digging for roots, Timon finds gold. The gold quite clearly represents his deepest wish as well as his greatest fear.** His disclaimer betrays the wish:

What is here?
Gold? Yellow, glitterly, precious gold?
No, gods, I am no idle votarist. [I am sincere about roots.]
Roots, you clear heavens!(18)

And his decision to use the gold for evil and not for good betrays his fear:

Why this
Will lug your priests and servants from your sides;
Pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads.
This yellow slave
Will knit and break religions, bless th’accursed,
Make the hoar leprosy adored, place thieves …
I will make thee
Do thy right nature.(19)

Gold from mother earth is at first a beautiful gift (“yellow, glittering, precious”) but instantly becomes the source of all evil. And, as a result, “Earth” becomes “Damned earth / Thou common whore of mankind.”

Nevertheless, the sharply ambivalent interest in the breast is not resolved. Some 140 lines later, after the interview with Alcibiades and the whores, Timon is perplexed at his continuing hunger. He digs again for roots:

That nature, being sick of man's unkindness,
Should yet be hungry! Common mother, thou, [Digging.]
Whose womb unmeasurable and infinite breast
Teems and feeds all; whose selfsame mettle,
Whereof thy proud child, arrogant man, is puffed,
Engenders the black toad and adder blue,
The gilded newt and eyeless venomed worm,
With all th’abhorred births below crisp heaven
Whereon Hyperion's quick’ning fire doth shine;
Yield him, who all the human sons do hate,
From forth thy plenteous bosom, one poor root.
Ensear thy fertile and conceptious womb;
Let it no more bring out ingrateful man.
Go great with tigers, dragons, wolves, and bears …(20)

The persistent ambivalence toward the breast is nowhere in the play more forcefully presented than in these lines. The abiding contrast is between the good breast seen as “infinite”—a “plenteous bosom” which “feeds all”—and the product of that breast, “the black toad and adder blue, / The gilded newt and eyeless venomed worm,” as well as its “proud child, arrogant man.” Shakespeare confronts Timon with the essential problem: how does bad result from the flowing breast? Timon can give up neither his hunger nor his fear of depression. He can permit himself only a bitter root.

It is difficult to assess the presence of the whores and the chorus of ladies dressed as Amazons—the only women in the play. The whores are there, possibly, to demonstrate that women are not to be trusted—and they appropriately appear in the second half of the play. The chorus of ladies appearing as Amazons are there, possibly, to deny the existence of the bad breast—and they are appropriately in the first half of the play. The Amazons, we remind ourselves, have only one breast—having voluntarily cut one off as preparation for battle. Cupid, who introduces them, reassures Timon in his manic defense:

Hail to thee, worthy Timon, and to all
That of his bounties taste. The five best senses
Acknowledge thee their patron, and come freely
To gratulate thy plenteous bosom. Th’ear,
Taste, touch, all, pleased from thy table rise;
They only now come but to feast thine eyes.(21)

It is difficult to imagine a more extravagant statement as to the goodness of Timon's “plenteous bosom.” It is worth noting that the same phrase—“plenteous bosom”—is applied to Timon here, in the first half of the play, and by Timon, in the lines cited above, to mother earth. Timon's manic defense is very well illustrated in this juxtaposition: he has not destroyed the breast within him; his overflowing bounty is the proof of his innocence. Cupid's praise is not lost on Timon's guests. The first lord says: “You see, my lord, how ample y’are beloved.”²² And the meaning of the masque is very clear when Timon says that the ladies have “entertained me with mine own device.”²³ Timon had prearranged the appearance of the one-breasted ladies.

The presence of Alcibiades is difficult to assess. The point at the end of the play is Alcibiades’ change from vengeance to justice. The Senators, pleading for Athens, point out that not all the Senators are guilty for his banishment. Some are, some are not. Therefore, they say, discriminate. Alcibiades accepts their advice, and he enters Athens peacefully. What is the point of this for the central story of Timon's misanthropy? Apparently, it is intended as a comment on the intemperateness of Timon's invective and on his inability to discriminate between the good intentions of an Apemantus and the falseness of the poet and painter. If so, Shakespeare would want us to take the misanthropy of Timon as an object lesson rather than as a case history. But this the reader—psychoanalytic or not—finds difficult to do. The starkness of Shakespeare's presentation of Timon's uncontrollable hatred dominates the play. And this is perhaps one reason Shakespeare lost interest in it before he could bring it to a final form.

Notes

1. Charney, M. Introduction to Signet Classic Edition of Timon of Athens. New York: New American Library, 1965. p. xxi.

2. Ibid., p. xxii.

3. Richardson, W. On the Dramatic Character of Timon of Athens. Essays on Shakespeare's Dramatic Characters (1785). Reprinted in Signet Classic Edition of Timon of Athens. New York: New American Library, 1965. pp. 202-203.

4. Clemen, W. The Development of Shakespeare's Imagery. New York: Hill and Wang, n.d. p. 176.

5. Ibid., p. 176.

6. Money-Kyrle, R. E. Introduction to New Directions in Psychoanalysis. New York: Basic Books, 1957, p. xiii.

7. Shakespeare, W. Timon of Athens. Signet Classic Editions. New York: New American Library, 1965. I, ii, 38-41.

8. Ibid., III, ii, 81-82.

9. Ibid., III, iv, 92, 94.

10. Ibid., I, ii, 226-229.

11. Ibid., I, ii, 102-108.

12. Ibid., I, ii, 245-257.

13. Ibid., I, ii, 181-183.

14. Ibid., II, ii, 183-186.

15. Ibid., IV, iii, 311-315.

16. Ibid., IV, iii, 260-267.

17. Ibid., IV, iii, 23-25.

18. Ibid., IV, iii, 25-28.

19. Ibid., IV, iii, 31-36, 44-45.

20. Ibid., IV, iii, 177-190.

21. Ibid., I, ii, 124-129.

22. Ibid., I, ii, 132.

23. Ibid., I, ii, 152.

References

† There is less than one page devoted to Timon in Norman M. Holland's recent Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966). Holland cites an Adlerian, F. Plewa, who traces ostentatious benevolence to vanity, and A. H. Woods and W. I. D. Scott, who find that Timon is suffering from brain damage caused by syphilis.

* Timon is “a lofty if impracticable idealist who believes that the practice of virtue lies in giving, and who is innocent enough to suppose that other men share his feelings and his aims, who is blind to human self-interest because he has little or none of it himself.” H. S. Wilson, On the Design of Shakespearean Tragedy (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1957), p. 146.

** Throughout the play gold is essentially devoid of anal connotations.