[In the following essay, Ruszkiewicz examines Timon's behavior and attitude toward friendship within the context of Renaissance views regarding liberality and friendship.]

I

The nature of Timon's character in William Shakespeare's Timon of Athens (1607-08?) has been variously appraised. For G. Wilson Knight, the prosperous Timon is the flower of human aspiration and by nature a universal lover. Other less generous critics like David Cooke and Andor Gomme cite Timon for his pride and wantonness, and Cooke along with G. K. Hunter finds Timon enjoying the self-image of a god. Defending Timon, Paul Siegel suggests that the raving Greek must be a Christ figure since his friends are called Judases. Irving Ribner finds the fault of Timon in the dependable Renaissance formula of the passions overcoming the reason. More moderate assessments of Timon's character are possible, as J. C. Maxwell demonstrates in an article which portrays the hero as erring in his prodigality but still very much the victim of an acquisitive and heartless society.¹ But even this view is complicated by the fact that Timon helps to create the villainy that destroys him.

An understanding of the tragedy of Timon would, it seems, require a continuing adjustment of sympathies toward the main character. One's views of Timon inevitably are colored by his own experiences with friendship, prodigality, and ingratitude. However, Shakespeare's portrait is sharp enough to force judgments upon us without reference to any values except those examined in the work. Deceit, ingratitude, and flattery do not need systematic analysis to be understood. Yet the play was written in a world more concerned with ethics, religion, and moral philosophy than our own, when behavior was codified with less reluctance. A rich storehouse of ethical wisdom, Christian and classical, was available for scrutiny. Virtues, vices, and proper modes of behavior were carefully analyzed, exampled, and categorized, the accumulated wisdom providing a shortcut to worldly experience. Two moral concepts concern us in assessing Timon's character, liberality and friendship. This paper will attempt to investigate the prevailing Renaissance views of liberality and friendship, to outline the basic qualities and principles of these virtues, and to weigh Timon's behavior according to the standards set by the moralists of Shakespeare's age and the ancients who inspired them. Hopefully, the study will result in a coherent reading of Timon's character and of the play as a whole, though by nature of the topic, most attention will be given to the first three acts of Timon of Athens.

The themes of liberality and friendship are of separate importance in a consideration of the play, but there is good reason for treating them together. Timon himself fuses the concepts: “We are born to do benefits; and what better or properer can we call our own than the riches of our friends?” (I.ii.101-02).² Since Timon makes this easy fusion of liberality and friendship, it is particularly critical to see the two virtues anatomized side by side to understand where they do indeed fuse naturally and where Timon distorts them into conjunctions hurtful to proper modes of behavior.

II

In giuing, these things must be considered,
What thing, to whom, where, and wherefore it should be:
First, the good and needy ought to be remembred,
And they, or else God, shall againe requite thee.
But see thou be mindfull of thine abilitie,
Then, if to give, thou shalt be disposed,
Giue not to receiue, lest thou be deceyued.(3)

Aristotle defines Liberality rather simply as “a disposition to observe the mean in dealing with material goods” (Ethics [The Ethics of Aristotle], IV.i).⁴ The middle course recommended is between prodigality, the over-lavish spending of wealth, and its opposite, meanness. Liberality in its classical sense is a virtue of the wealthy, and it remained a criterion of the worthy Renaissance gentleman, who must be, according to Nicholas Breton, “not niggardly, nor prodigal.”⁵ A more Christian definition of the virtue, that of Pierre de la Primaudaye in The French Academie, emphasizes the purposes of liberality and extends its practice to the less wealthy through proportional giving; for La Primaudaye, “Liberalitie … consisteth not in wasting much wealth, but in succouring the afflicted willingly, and in helping everie one according to abilitie.”⁶ Perhaps no textual demonstration is necessary to prove that Timon exceeds the mean and proper proportion in his generosity. The compliment of his flatterers suggests the irony of his excess: “he outgoes / The very heart of kindness” (I.i.274-75).

Timon does possess the personal qualities of a genuinely liberal man; he likes to give and, for a while at least, has the means to do it. As a result, the liberal man, according to Aristotle, is the most liked among good men (Ethics, I.i). The ethical qualification is taken up frequently by the Renaissance commentators who tie liberality tightly to virtue. The French Academie remarks: “Diligence is sufficient to make a man rich when means are offered, but nobilitie of mind is requisite in the bestowing of great riches upon commendable things.”⁷ In a masque-like morality play entitled A Pleasant Comedie Shewing the contention betweene Liberalitie and Prodigalitie (London: 1602), the “hero” proclaims: “Liberalitie am I, Vertues Steward heere” (II.i). As for Timon, we hear him lavishly praised by his flatterers as a worthy, incomparable fellow with the noblest mind that ever governed a man (I.i.280). These judgments, if excessive, are at least partially confirmed by Timon's steward, Flavius, who is generous in praising his master's virtue, nobility, and “unmatched mind” (IV.iii.516). But our assessment of Timon is likely to be less enthusiastic; we never see the noble lord in the practice of any virtue except generosity, and though a patron of the arts and capable of wit, Timon is no intellectual giant. We may take Flavius' word that Timon's heart is good, but the praise he earns from his friends for his nobility and worthiness we must attribute to his largess.

The practice of liberality required more than just a virtuous donor. His purposes for giving also had to be good, and the recipients deserving. Here Renaissance moralists differ mildly, depending on whether their principles are based primarily on a Christian or a classical foundation. Aristotle approved of large-scale private spending for the good of the state as long as it avoided shabbiness or vulgarity (Ethics, IV.ii). This “Magnificence” was a virtue peculiar to the rich and justified shows of wealth and splendor. Christian analogues to pagan magnificence can be found in the form of feudal arrangements in which displays of lavish—and mutual—generosity between a lord and a vassal were required as a sign and a benefit of the social compact.⁸ Timon's Liberality might thus be justified in a Christian sense by the requirements of his high station in life. (However, Timon's relationship with his friends lacks any formal notion of reciprocity. Timon is not a feudal lord.) But Christian commentators with tighter collars would find little to praise in Timon's splendor and, in fact, would probably consider his charity—which seems to benefit those who need it least—downright evil, a judgment we might be reluctant to make without qualification.⁹

Indeed, in the first scene of the play, Timon's bounty seems worthy of praise by any standards. He redeems a gentleman from prison, and then quiets the qualms of a venal old father by bankrolling an honest servant's proposed marriage. But thereafter, the quality and wisdom of Timon's beneficence steadily decline. Sir Thomas Elyot in The Gouernour (1531), following Cicero, virtually defines prodigality in terms of the things that are the object of Timon's bounty in I.ii.: “wherefore Tulli calleth them prodigall, that in inordinate feastes and bankettes, vayne playes, and huntinges, do spende al their substaunce.” While Timon engages in no orgy, the great banquet, introduced by loud music and interrupted by a frivolous masque, smacks of waste. A gift of a brace of greyhounds for hunting (I.ii.186) sends Timon into a riot of wanton giving that confirms the madness Apemantus notes earlier (I.ii.42). The lords exit with Timon almost hysterical in his generous passion, calling “Lights, more lights!” as if his wealth were not burning away fast enough. The corruption of this lavish world is reiterated late in the play by Apemantus when he visits the misanthrope and informs him:

Thy flatterers yet wear silk, drink wine, lie soft,
Hug their diseas'd perfumes, and have forgot
That ever Timon was.

(IV.iii.206-08)

Yet it is important to note that Shakespeare takes pains not to present Timon as personally lewd, lecherous, gluttonous, or subject to bouts of gaming or drinking, vices often associated with Prodigality as, for example, in Liberalitie and Prodigalitie. Timon is not so simply despicable.

If there is some dispute among the Renaissance moral philosophers on the proper aims of liberality, there is none on the character of the recipients. Liberality bestowed on the worthless is unanimously condemned. Aristotle, in an expression repeated in many Renaissance treatises, applies the character of a liberal man to one who would give to the wrong persons, at the wrong time, in the wrong way (Ethics, IV.i). La Primaudaye warns that liberality “be not abused in the delights or favor of the wicked but used with a prudent and ripe deliberation.”¹⁰ The rhetorician Thomas Wilson offers a commonplace on liberality with a practical turn: “nothing is more safe laied up, than is that whiche is bestowed upon goodfolke.”¹¹ Haward in The Line of Liberalitie talks of the need for judgment and discretion in bestowing favors¹² just as Elyot argues for “good election” in choosing beneficiaries lest the donor fall to “the mortal poisone of flaterie.”¹³ Flattery is a particularly serious problem for the liberal man, as we shall see in discussing friendship. More important here is Elyot's comment (borrowed from Aristotle) on the consequences of misspent generosity: “liberalitie, which is on suche flaterers imployed, is not onely perished but also spilled and devoured.”¹⁴ La Primaudaye likewise speaks of worthless beneficiaries who “sup up the blood, gnaw the bones, and suck the marrow of princes.”¹⁵ Shakespeare makes good use of these traditional images of waste in portraying the vultures who feed on Timon. For with few exceptions, the recipients of Timon's favor are men neither good nor deserving. Apemantus is right to call them knaves (I.i.179), and though Timon quibbles, by the third act he uses the term himself to characterize his former friends (III.iv.116-17). Worse, Timon's generosity knows no discrimination; even the fawning poet admits this much:

You see how all conditions, how all minds,
As well of glib and slipp'ry creatures as
Of grave and austere quality, tender down
Their services to Lord Timon.

(I.i.52-55)

Flavius perceives clearly his master's lack of insight into the characters he rewards: “Tis pity bounty had not eyes behind” (I.ii.160).

If Timon's choice of recipients or purposes in giving are neither of them too distinguished, we might yet be impressed by the sheer quantity of his dole. But no commentator on liberality would be. From Aristotle on, writers on the subject insist that expenditures must always be proportionate to a donor's means (Ethics, IV.i). Even Christian writers maintain the importance of securing one's estate. As Thomas Cooper, supported by a wealth of Biblical citations, asserts, giving should always be regulated “that others be eased, and we ourselves not grieved.”¹⁶ The liberal man by nature was apt to be excessive, but the virtue quickly became a vice if proportion was violated. Critics who praise Timon for acting like a god or king in his relationships with other men indirectly indict him for the foolish quantity of his giving. Noble, royal Timon acts in a role above his talents. Flavius remarks perceptively, “Bounty that makes gods mars men” (IV.ii.41). And private citizens with royal pretensions would discover a chorus of critics in the moral philosophers of the Renaissance who make a nice distinction between liberality and royal magnificence. Thomas Roger warns that a private man who tries Magnificence will find his goods speedily consumed.¹⁷ George Whetstone in The Enemie to Unthryftinesse (London: 1586) reasons: “If prodigalitie brings Kings to this exigent, who have manie supplies, it speedilye ruineth the richest subject: yea (which is worst) their recoverie is as vncertaine, as their vndooing is certaine.”¹⁸ The latter remark coincides with Shakespeare's use of planetary imagery in the play: “You must consider that a prodigal course / Is like the sun's, but not like his recoverable” (III.iv.12-13).¹⁹ So in the very characterization of Timon as godlike and royal, Shakespeare is suggesting a traditional caveat; a man might want to deal kingdoms to his friends (I.ii.220), but he had better not try unless he is a king.

Waste, of course, is wrong in itself. Haward goes so far as to associate too openhearted spending with civil wars, but the consequences of glut usually fall even closer to home.²⁰ We do not need to go outside the play to be aware of Timon's sin here. Apemantus condemns it repeatedly, the Senators remark on it (II.i.1-14), and Flavius waxes eloquent: “No care, no stop, so senseless of expense / That he will neither know how to maintain it, / Nor cease his flow of riot” (II.ii.1-3). As critics have noted, Timon is ruined financially when the play begins.

One more canon of liberality remains for us to discuss and for Timon to violate, the principle of recompense. Here the commentators disagree mildly. Strictest Christian charity requires giving without hope of reward, but Aristotle, consistent with his theory of proportionate means, insists that the liberal man must know how to take from the proper quarters as well as how to give (Ethics, IV.i.). The Line of Liberalitie finds a convenient mean: a man should expect good will in return for a generous act, but he should be prepared for ingratitude.²¹ Though reciprocity will be considered more fully when Friendship is discussed, it must be noted here that in financial terms, Timon unnecessarily refuses the recompense he is offered—by Ventidius, for example—and insists on ruining himself, thereby putting an end to all Liberality.

In short, the Timon portrayed in Shakespeare's play shows all the faults of the typical sinner against liberality. He is the prodigal and unthrift, a figure well known and studied in the Renaissance. Joseph Hall's character of “The Unthrift,” too long to quote in its entirety, is virtually a sketch of Timon, allowing for the exception noted earlier, that Timon is free of some of the vices normally attributed to the prodigal.²² Yet even in this regard we can find a Shakespearian correspondence to Hall's abstract characterization:

His senses are too much his guides, and his purueyors; and appetite is his steward.

(Hall, p. 162)

(Cupid to Timon) … The five best senses
Acknowledge thee their patron, and come freely
To gratulate thy plenteous bosom. There
Taste, touch. …

(I.ii.123-26)

Prodigality, like all vices, invites punishment. The peculiarity is that “Prodigalitie is so sharpe a vengeance, as there needeth no Lawe to chastise the Prodigall man, he doth so severely punish him-selfe.”²³ This proves true for Timon, and in a sense, he deserves what he gets. Our sympathy remains with him, however, since he errs not out of malice, but from foolishness. As Aristotle observes, the prodigal is apt to be “not a bad fellow” (Ethics, IV.i). Yet the character of Timon is far from explained by viewing him as a carefully constructed unthrift. If he were only that, the play would be much simpler and our reactions less mixed and troubled. We would also be at odds to explain and motivate the strange and powerful transformation Timon undergoes in the second half of the play. For the source of Timon's problem we must look into his notions of friendship. There we will discover why Timon's liberality is so cruelly misdirected.

III

Friendship, which is the agreement of mindes
In truth and loue, is the chiefest vertue
Of morrall vertues, that in the world man findes:
Wherefore in the world to liue who so mindes,
Ought Friendship to get, and to ensue
By Loue, not by lucre, that Friendship blinds. …(24)

Geoffrey Bullough in Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, Vol. VI, identifies Cicero as the chief influence on the concept of friendship in Timon of Athens.²⁵ While this identification is true, elements of Aristotle and Lucian in the portrait of Timon make it impossible to measure the Athenian's behavior against a single set of norms. Shakespeare investigates and tries all the traditional notions of friendship, and yet the result is very precise.

The ideal friendship for both Aristotle and Cicero is based on virtue and the good.²⁶ Cicero goes further than Aristotle by recognizing only friendship based on virtue, and eschewing other baser forms. But both agree—along with the Renaissance moralists—that friendship is a mainstay of a happy life. Aristotle speaks directly to the needs of wealthy men like Timon:

… what would they get out of their prosperity if they were deprived of the chance of performing those offices of kindness for which their friends supply them with the greatest and most laudable opportunities?

(Ethics, VIII.i)

Cicero refers explicitly to Timon in a similar passage; he believes that all men in all professions

… feel that without friendship life is nothing at least if they are inclined in any degree to live respectably; for somehow or other, friendship entwines itself with the life of all men, nor does it suffer any mode of spending our life to be independent of itself. Moreover, if there is any one of such ferocity and brutality of nature, such as we have heard that one Timon was at Athens; yet even he cannot possibly help looking out for someone on whom he may disgorge the venom of his ill-nature.

(p. 205)

In “Of Friendship,” Francis Bacon reiterates the classical theme that without friends, a man lives in miserable solitude like a beast in the wilderness, which is precisely what Timon becomes (IV.iii.50).²⁷

It has already been seen that Shakespeare uses planetary imagery to express certain concepts of liberality. Classical tradition also links the sun with friendship. The most influential passage is from Cicero: “they seem to take away the sun from the world who withdraw friendship from life” (p. 190). But the notion was also a Renaissance commonplace: “A good friend is as the sun in winter.”²⁸ Shakespeare's use of the image is complex, and perhaps not fully resolved. Timon is both the sun which gives light (III.ii.12-13) and the moon which borrows it (IV.iii.70); he suffers the “deepest winter” (III.iii.14); he concludes his life with the suggestive declaration, “Sun, hide thy beams, Timon hath done his reign” (V.i.223). With Timon, a great potential for friendship dies for lack of friends.

If friendship is the sun of life, a violation of it is, predictably, a serious eclipse, as we might suspect from Timon's transformation. Aristotle gives a man grounds for genuine complaint if true friendship is breached (Ethics, IX.iii). La Primaudaye sees in the violation of friendship the overthrow of all human society.²⁹ Here we are engaged in the subject of ingratitude, a vice condemned with unusual violence in the Renaissance.³⁰ Flavius' comment is perhaps sufficient for our purposes: “What vilder thing upon the earth than friends, / Who can bring noblest minds to basest ends!” (IV.iii.463-64).

The requirements of true friendship are several. First, a certain identification is required between individuals; in Cicero's terms: “… friendship is nothing else than a complete union of feelings on all subjects, divine and human, accompanied by kindly feeling and attachment” (p. 180). Or according to a Renaissance proverb, “A friend is one's second self.”³¹ What is plainly required for a workable friendship is a commonality of thought and feeling, a union between the parties involved. We see nothing of this in Timon's friendships. In fact, we are always aware of a deliberate separation between the lordly Timon and his fawning courtiers (I.ii.100). Affection is on the surface and displayed in gaudy modes; there is no heartfelt talk or deep understanding even between Timon and Alcibiades. And Flavius' love is not sufficiently reciprocated to term that lord-servant relationship a friendship. The only commonality or identification Timon talks about is, significantly, a monetary one. Timon is not concerned with shared feelings, ideas, pains, or joys, but with shared fortunes: “… more welcome are ye to my fortunes / Than my fortunes to me” (I.ii.19-20), and again, “O what a precious comfort ’tis to have so many like brothers commanding one another's fortunes!” (I.ii.103-05). The sentiment is not ignoble, only impoverished. Yet Aristotle at least would find something good in the self-love represented in Timon's dangerous generosity, since he admits a good man might very well “prefer one crowded hour of glorious life to a protracted period of quiet existence and mild enjoyment spent as an ordinary man would spend it.” And once again the qualification matches our judgment of Timon: we see him as this worthy, if misguided, friend.

A second quality of friendship is continuity: “Friendship is a communion of perpetuall will, the end whereof is fellowship of life, and it is framed by the perfecte habite of a long continued love.³² Only Flavius shows an unswerving devotion to Timon, though both Alcibiades and Apemantus remember him after the fall of his fortunes. Timon himself is a faithful friend. When he aids the imprisoned Ventidius he declares, “I am not of that feather to shake off / My friend when he must need me” (I.i.100). But once again, his faithfulness is monetary, and friendship must base its continuity on something more stable than a flow of cash.

Moral philosophy is also concerned with the proper number of friends, “A friend to all is a friend to none,” says the Renaissance proverb;³³ Aristotle speaks to the topic in a useful way:

But to have many friends in the way of perfect friendship is no more possible than to be in love with many at the same time. … On the other hand it is perfectly possible to have a liking for quite a number of people at the same time for the pleasure and profit one gets out of them.

(Ethics, VIII.ii)

The danger for Timon is in mistaking interested liking for perfect friendship. Shakespeare suggests the scarcity of true friends when he has a senator characterize Timon as a phoenix (I.ii.31-32), an image perhaps based on the saying, “A faithful friend is like a phoenix,” an extremely rare bird.³⁴ The goodness and openheartedness of Timon would have made him a friend indeed had his attentions been less widely distributed. The line quoted earlier, “so many like brothers” (I.ii.104), indicates Timon's lack of discrimination, as does Flavius' lament shortly thereafter: “How many prodigal bits have slaves and peasants / This night englutted” (II.ii.165-66). By all indications, Timon has entertained too many friends to know real friendship (though he sees himself as discriminating—see I.ii.91), and has largely ignored the good love of Flavius which held the potential of enduring human commerce.

The social position of Flavius raises the issue of whether friendship is possible between unequals, a matter of some disagreement among the commentators. Aristotle's observation that no possibility of friendship exists between men and gods reflects negatively on Timon's pretensions (Ethics, VIII.vii). But the Stagirite does assert that friendship between men of different stations is possible if the inequality is balanced by an equal amount of affection. Thus a true relationship with Flavius, as well as with some of the inferiors he entertained, would have been possible for Timon. However, Timon resists any real attempt at leveling. He desires to remain above his friends, contrary to the best advice of moral philosophy. Haward writes: “for that is the chefest point of frindship to make our frinde equall with our self, it foloweth that for his well doing and safeguard we prouyde as for our owne.”³⁵ Cicero stresses the necessity for mutual kindness and interchange of good offices (p. 194), and a proverb gives the warning “Friendship stands not on one side.”³⁶ Though his sentiment is good, Timon is precluding good friendship when he proudly says “there's none / Can truly say he gives if he receives” (I.ii.10-11). And while we might doubt the sincerity of the first Lord, he is right in at least asking for the chance for friendly reciprocity:

Might we but have that happiness my Lord, that you would once use our hearts, whereby we might express some part of our zeals, we should think ourselves for ever perfect.

(I.ii.84-87)

Timon does not consider—as Aristotle does (Ethics, IX.vii)—that the feelings of a benefactor are not the same as those of a creditor or recipient. He builds himself a storehouse of resentment by hoarding the pleasure of generosity for himself, and by underestimating the importance of mutual benevolence. When Timon is given a gift, he must always outdo it (II.i.5-10). And yet, almost paradoxically, Timon does expect recompense for his good deeds, though his friends are permitted no practice of the virtue before Timon's moment of need. Moreover, the moral philosophers usually speak of exchanges of kindness, while Timon understands exchanges only of fortune. And this notion of recompense turns friendship, in La Primaudaye's words, into “mere merchandise.”³⁷

A final requirement of true friendship is honesty. Cicero speaks most to the point here:

In friendship there is nothing false and nothing pretended; and whatever belongs to it is sincere and spontaneous.

(p. 183)

Now where a man's ears are shut against the truth, so that he cannot hear the truth from a friend, the welfare of such a one is to be despaired of.

(p. 208)

Both Apemantus and Flavius try to tell Timon the truth, but he turns deaf ears to them. When Timon questions Flavius' honesty, Shakespeare gives the honest steward the opportunity to point out how many times his master refused to hear the truth of his financial situation (II.ii.132-42). Timon also ignores the poet, who would present him with a work describing a fall from fortune and the ingratitude of friends. Instead, Timon favors the less helpful work of the painter (I.i.152-62). The first three scenes of Act III reveal how little honesty there is in Timon's more noble friends.

It is clear from this exposition that Timon does not enjoy true friendship. However, Aristotle defines another type of friendship, a relationship of use and pleasure which comes much closer to describing Timon's situation:

Thus friends who have been brought together by a feeling that they will profit by their association do not love one another for their personal qualities, but only so far as they are useful to one another. … This means that when a friendship is founded on the expectation of some advantage to be received, what the friends are thinking of is their own good … ; the friend is not loved for being what is in himself but as the source, perhaps of some advantage, perhaps of some pleasure. So parties are ready to dissolve their association when they themselves are changed. For if they are no longer agreeable or useful to one another, love dies a natural death.

(Ethics, VIII.iii)

The friendship of use violates almost all the canons of true friendship; Cicero considers it no friendship at all. But this is the relationship Timon shares with those he calls his friends. His error, and ultimately his tragedy, is mistaking the friendship of use for the real thing.

What leads Timon to his error is his inability to perceive flattery and his unwillingness to test his friends. Flattery is roundly condemned by almost all the writers on the subject, and in the harshest terms. Says Cicero, “There is no greater bane to friendship than adulation, fawning, and flattery” (p. 209). He continues, “He opens his ears widest to flatteries who is a flatterer of himself” (p. 211). Apemantus says much the same thing: “He that loves to be flatter'd is worthy of the flatterer” (I.i.226). Elyot warns that flattery slays “both the soule and good renoome” of a master, and, quoting Plutarch, further cautions that:

… surely as the worms do brede most gladly in softe wode and swete, so the most gentill and noble wittes … do sonest admitte flaterars, and be by them abused.³⁸

Cicero adds that all men except the most obtuse are able to recognize the person who employs open adulation. It would not be unfair to summarize Timon's attitude toward flatterers in terms of these commentators as proud, gentle, noble, and obtuse. Timon is eaten up by flatterers and “he cheers them up too” (I.i.42).

What Timon fails to do is test his friends. This notion may seem strange to us, but Aristotle, Cicero, and almost all the Renaissance moralists insist upon it. La Primaudaye puts it very practically:

Now to prove a friend we must not stay untill need and necessitie urge us, least such triall be not onely unprofitable and without fruite, but also very hurtfull and dangerous unto us, because at such a time as necessaralie requireth friends, we make triall of him, who in truth is no such man.³⁹

Sir William Cornwallis' essay, “Of Friendship & Factions,” is largely concerned with this problem, perhaps reflecting an insecurity in the age. In any case, the motif of the test appears throughout Timon of Athens. Timon first accounts his misfortunes blessings: “for by these / shall I try friends” (II.ii.182-83). The test is put in monetary terms by one of the prodigal's servants who discovers that all Timon's friends have been found “base metal” (III.iii.6). And on two occasions the flatterers themselves suspect that Timon's sudden poverty is feigned as a test of their faithfulness (III.vi.2-3; V.i.8). Thus there is nothing strange or ungracious in the idea of a trial; Timon's whole fault is in testing his friends too late, when his fortune is past recovery.

An excellent, well-balanced summary of all this matter of both Liberality and Friendship is provided by what has been posited as one of Shakespeare's sources for Timon of Athens, Lucian's The Dialogue of Timon. Mercury speaks, explaining Timon's misanthropy:

He was brought to this by his bounty, humanity, and compassion towards all in want; or rather, to speak more correctly, by his ignorance, foolish habits, and small judgment of men, not realizing that he was giving his property to ravens and wolves. Even while the poor wretch was having his liver eaten by so many vultures, he thought they were his friends and well-wishers, who took pleasure in consuming it because of the love they bore him. When they had finally eaten him down to the bone, and sucked the marrow, they left him dry and stripped from top to toe. …⁴⁰

IV

A number of conclusions need to be drawn. It is obvious that Timon misuses his bounty because he misunderstands friendship. In a manner wholly in keeping with the commercial and usurious Athenian atmosphere, Timon attempts to buy friends and succeeds in attracting those who will play at the role for as long as he is of use to them. He does not recognize his real friends or the truth about his flatterers, and consequently violates all the canons of liberality. He is victimized, eaten, and devoured by the very toadies he has created. When his bounty is gone, the friends of use disappear, for he has indeed enjoyed only “a dream of friendship” (IV.iii.34). As might be expected, when the Athenians once again need Timon, they approach him in the wilderness as friends bearing “heaps and sums of love and wealth” (V.i.152). The juxtaposition we can be sure is not accidental.

What makes the fall of Timon interesting is that it is based on a delusion. For if Timon's mistreatment had come at the hands of true friends, then his rages would have been justified. There could be little hope for mankind, and the fabric of society would be torn beyond hope of recovery if true friends could be so faithless. But Timon is foolish, knows little about human nature, and, as Shakespeare demonstrates with great particularity, knows nothing of liberality or friendship. Immediately after the passage often cited as Timon's recognition of his fault, “Unwisely, not ignobly, have I given,” the unthrift still asserts the faith he has in his friends: “Canst thou the conscience lack / To think I shall lack friends?” (II.ii.172-76). Moreover, Timon's conception of friendship is a form of prostitution, or at least he cannot conceive of a friendship not based on use: “O you gods, think I, what need we have any friends if we should ne'er have need of 'em? They were the most needless creatures living” (I.ii.95-97). We must pity Timon late in the play when he argues with Apemantus: he shows at one and the same time bitter disillusionment and pathetic naivete:

APEM.
… What man didst thou ever know unthrift that was beloved after his means?
TIM.
Who, without those means thou talk'st of didst thou ever know belov'd?

(IV.iii.310-14)

It is tempting to read this exchange as a confession by Timon of why he acted so prodigally in the first half of the play. He wanted to be beloved.

Not only does Timon learn nothing, but he becomes an active enemy of friendship and liberality in the advice he gives Flavius in the fourth act after endowing him with gold:

Hate all, curse all, show charity to none,
But let the famish'd flesh slide from the bone
Ere thou relieve the beggar. Give to dogs
What thou deniest to men. Let prisons swallow 'em,
Debts wither 'em to nothing. …

(IV.iii.527-31)

Here Timon condemns the very type of liberality he should have practiced, for relieving the hungry, the poor, and the sick would have wasted him less than feasts, masques and hunting, and gained him more merit. But Timon remains foolish to the end.

All this does not in any way mitigate the guilt of Timon's flatterers or the rapacious Athenian society as a whole. Timon, like Lear, is more sinned against than sinning. Consequently, we sympathize with Timon's ignorance at the same time that we condemn it. He is noble and foolish, proud and pitiful, brilliant and blind, and by any moral standards, a most complex man.

Notes

1. G. Wilson Knight, “The Pilgrimage of Hate: An Essay on Timon of Athens,” The Wheel of Fire (1930; rpt. London: Methuen, 1962), p. 211; David Cook, “Timon of Athens,” Shakespeare Survey, 16 (1963), 85-88; Andor Gomme, “Timon of Athens,” Essays in Criticism, 9 (1959), 108; G. K. Hunter, “The Last Tragic Heroes,” Later Shakespeare, Stratford-Upon-Avon Studies, 8 (London: Edward Arnold, 1966); Paul N. Siegel, Shakespeare in His Time and Ours (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1968), p. 52; Irving Ribner, “The Operation of Evil: Timon of Athens and Macbeth,” Patterns in Shakespearian Tragedy (London: Methuen, 1960); J. C. Maxwell, “Timon of Athens,” Scrutiny, 15 (1948), 197.

2. All references to Timon of Athens are from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974).

3. William Baldwin, A Treatise of Morall Philosophie (London, n.d.), p. 182.

4. All references to Aristotle are from The Ethics of Aristotle, trans. J. A. K. Thomson (London, 1953).

5. The Good and the Badde, or Descriptions of the Worthies, and Unworthies of this Age (London, 1616), p. 12.

6. Pierre de la Primaudaye, The French Academie, trans. Thomas Bowes, 4th ed. (London, 1602), p. 411.

7. Ibid.

8. E. Catherine Dunn, The Concept of Ingratitude in Renaissance Moral Philosophy (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1946), pp. 45-69.

9. See Thomas Cooper, The Art of Giving, Describing the True Nature, and Right Use of Liberality (London, 1615), for a sternly Christian attitude toward Liberality.

10. French Academie, p. 411.

11. Thomas Wilson, The Arte of Rhetorique (London, 1553), p. 411.

12. Nicholas Haward, The Line of Liberalitie (London, 1569).

13. Elyot, The Gouernour, pp. 118-19.

14. Ibid., p. 179.

15. French Academie, p. 145.

16. Art of Giving, p. 8.

17. The Anatomie of the Minde (London, 1576), fol. 149^v.

18. Fol. 13.

19. See also Tim. IV.iii.67-70.

20. Line of Liberalitie, fol. 23^r.

21. Ibid., sig. Aiiiiv.

22. In Characters of Vertues and Vices (London, 1608), pp. 161-65.

23. George Whetstone, The Enemie to Unthryftinesse (London, 1586), fol. 13.

24. Baldwin, Morall Philosophie, p. 179.

25. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), p. 248.

26. Aristotle, The Ethics, VIII.i. All references to Cicero are cited by page from Cicero's Three Books of Offices or Moral Duties, “Laelius, An Essay on Friendship,” trans. Cyrus R. Edwards (London, 1906).

27. Bacon's Essays, ed. W. Aldis Wright (London: Macmillan, 1920), p. 107.

28. Morris Palmer Tilley, A Dictionary of Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1950), F700.

29. French Academie, p. 137.

30. See Dunn, Concept of Ingratitude.

31. Tilley, F696. See also La Primaudaye, French Academie, p. 131.

32. La Primaudaye, p. 131.

33. Tilley, F698.

34. Ibid., F688.

35. Line of Liberalitie, fol. 55^r.

36. Tilley, F760.

37. French Academie, p. 131.

38. The Gouernour, pp. 180, 175.

39. French Academie, p. 133.

40. Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources, p. 265.