SOURCE: Walker, Lewis. “Fortune and Friendship in Timon of Athens.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 18, no. 4 (winter 1977): 577-600.

[In the following essay, Walker contends that the moral allegory of Fortune featured in the first scene of Timon of Athens highlights the central theme of the play: the undesirability of owing one's success to fickle Fortune.]

It is curious that critics, in dealing with the difficulties of Timon of Athens, have failed to consider thoroughly the allegory of Fortune in the opening scene. This extended performance by the Poet has obvious significance for Timon's career, and it is placed in such a prominent position that it invites detailed examination. Most commentators, however, have ignored it altogether, and one has dismissed it as “trite.”¹ A few have remarked on its general relevance to the action of the play, Una Ellis-Fermor commenting that it provides “an ironic forewarning of Timon's fall,”² and Geoffrey Bullough noting that it presents “a major theme of the play, and the explicit enunciation suggests that this is to be a moral piece, simpler than usual in Shakespeare, not so much the subtle portrait of a complex character as an exemplum of ethical truths.”³ But no one has attempted to apply the allegory in any detail to the play, seeking to understand the character of Timon in terms of the ideas of Fortune it evokes.⁴ Such an exercise is warranted not only by the allegory itself, but by the heavy emphasis on various forms of the word fortune throughout Timon.⁵

This article will study the ways in which Timon is influenced by certain concepts of Fortune familiar to Shakespeare and his contemporaries. It will be argued that many of the play's peculiarities result from Shakespeare's attempt to demonstrate the operations of the goddess through dramatic action, a procedure necessitating a mingling of allegorical and naturalistic elements which is disconcerting for the modern reader. In focusing on these matters, the following discussion will attempt to remove some of the obstacles to an understanding of Timon.

The details of the allegory of Fortune are significant not only for what they say about Timon, but for what they say about his associates. The Poet describes how Fortune, enthroned “upon a high and pleasant hill” (I.i.65), shows her favor to one “of Lord Timon's frame” (l. 71) by beckoning him to climb to her. But Timon is not alone:

                                                                                                    The base o' th' mount
Is rank'd with all deserts, all kind of natures
That labour on the bosom of this sphere
To propagate their states.

(ll. 66-69)

The allegory presents both the individual story of Timon and an anatomy of Athenian society. Emphasis is placed on the inclusiveness of the Poet's vision: all deserts, all kind of natures that seek to increase their “states,” or possessions⁶ (in other words, everyone). The relationship between Timon and his compatriots is tellingly defined: Timon is from the first described in terms that deny him the power to act. Even before launching into his allegory, the Poet ascribes Timon's following to something external to Timon:

                                                                                                                                                      See,
Magic of bounty, all these spirits thy power
Hath conjur'd to attend!

(ll. 5-7)

Timon is granted no effective power himself. It is the apostrophized “magic of bounty” that has brought together his “friends.” This kind of magic in itself has sinister implications, since, as Muriel Bradbrook has commented, “Good spirits were not conjur'd into a circle.”⁷ As the Poet begins the allegory, he continues to depict Timon's drawing power as extrinsic to his character:

                                                            his [Timon's] large fortune,
Upon his good and gracious nature hanging,
Subdues and properties to his love and tendance
All sorts of hearts.

(ll. 56-59)

It is first of all the “large fortune,” not the “good and gracious nature,” which attracts his followers. They are held, moreover, by being subdued and propertied. Throughout the allegory, there are suggestions that Timon's prosperity is a form of domination or ownership of those who used to be his equals. And yet Timon himself is not primarily responsible for his friends' state of servitude. He is described as one whose “present grace” with Fortune “to present slaves and servants / Translates his rivals” (ll. 73-74). In this case, as in the two other instances cited to show Timon's influence over those who wait on him, the action of the verb is performed by some gift of Fortune. The emphasis is not on what Timon does or has done, but rather on what Fortune does to him and what she causes to be done by others in reaction to his prosperity.

The influence of Fortune on the society described in the allegory is clearly malignant. When all men seek the rewards of Fortune (as they do in the Poet's scenario), they are not friends or equals, but rivals (l. 74). If one is chosen to receive Fortune's favor, the others regard him as momentarily ahead in the competition. Timon is described as having been elevated not only above his peers but also above some who were formerly his betters:

All those who were his fellows but of late,
Some better than his value, on the moment
Follow his strides, his lobbies fill with tendance.

(ll. 80-82)

As soon as Timon's prosperity is generally recognized, all of the other competitors in the race for Fortune's favor alter their behavior to take advantage of this new circumstance. The extremes to which they go to pursue their self-interest are indicated by the imagery of the next few lines, in which they

Rain sacrificial whisperings in his ear,
Make sacred even his stirrup, and through him
Drink the free air.

(ll. 83-85)

In the Poet's words, their attendance on Timon raises him to the level of a god: they sacrifice to him, sanctify his every movement, and act as if he is responsible for their very existence. When Timon falls from Fortune's favor, they again consult their own interest:

When Fortune in her shift and change of mood
Spurns down her late beloved, all his dependants
Which labour'd after him to the mountain's top
Even on their knees and hands, let him slip down,
Not one accompanying his declining foot.

(ll. 86-90)

This passage is the climax of the allegory, confirming the spirit of self-interest and the total lack of community in a society dominated by Fortune or by a desire for her gifts. In such a context, no true brotherhood is possible, since no equality can exist. Anyone who has more possessions than everyone else is a rival to be overtaken, and anyone who has fewer, especially one in need of aid, is ignored.

Timon is also subject to the control of Fortune, and the significance of the allegory is particularly important for him. It has been pointed out that, although there is a great deal of action around him, he does not act himself. The Poet's description, in its insistence on the enslaving effects of Timon's wealth on his followers, does not make Timon the enslaving force. Instead, Fortune and her gifts are the agents responsible for the trouble. Thus Timon is not seen participating in the unscrupulous competition that surrounds him, although it is implied that he has done so in the past. The point is not simply that Timon is morally better than his fellows; Shakespeare sets him off from the others because he wants to demonstrate certain truths about the operation of Fortune on an individual at the same time that he is demonstrating other truths about a society controlled by Fortune.

Timon's career, as presented in the allegory, shows that Fortune's favor is granted to a man without any consideration of his merit or effort to achieve it. Repeated references to time indicate that this favor is something that a man acquires unexpectedly and which is of short duration: Timon's grace with Fortune and his advantage over his friends are both described as present (l. 73), as if they had not existed for long and will not last much longer; the rapidity with which one rises above his fellows and the abrupt change this causes in their behavior are indicated by “of late” (l. 80) and “on the moment” (l. 81). The inevitability of Timon's fall, as well as its precipitousness, is emphasized by Fortune's fickleness. At first, she “wafts” him to her “with her ivory hand” (l. 72); then “in her shift and change of mood,” she “spurns down her late beloved” (ll. 86-87). She is clearly seen as a capricious female discarding a lover. And she always behaves in this way: it is not if Fortune in her shift and change of mood, but when. The allegory introduces Timon, then, as a study in what it means to be loved by Fortune and to trust in her favors. Obviously, to be in such a situation is ultimately undesirable; the rest of the play will reveal just how undesirable it is.

This discussion of Fortune has thus far confined itself to what the Poet actually says, but in order to understand the full force of the allegory, and the importance of Fortune throughout the play, we need to recover certain ideas and images that would have occurred automatically to Shakespeare's audience. The most important general notion of Fortune, inherited from classical antiquity, was that she is a goddess who controls whatever is irrational and fortuitous in human affairs.⁸ The Elizabethans were also familiar with the attempt to reconcile the actions of Fortune with Divine Providence made by Boethius in the sixth century and developed and refined by Christian writers for the next thousand years.⁹ Boethius concludes that things which seem to be caused by Fortune are in reality caused by Providence, even though men often cannot perceive this fact.¹⁰ But during the course of The Consolation of Philosophy, he gives a great deal of attention to Fortune in her pagan form, even if only to undercut her. Lady Philosophy explains to the imprisoned Boethius that in complaining about his desertion by Fortune, he is deluding himself. If he believes that his fall represents a change in Fortune's “manner of proceeding” toward him, he does not understand her true nature: “She hath kept that constancy in thy affairs which is proper to her, in being mutable.” Boethius should revise his expectations:

If thou likest her, frame thyself to her conditions, and make no complaint. If thou detestest her treachery, despise and cast her off, with her pernicious flattery. For that which caused thee so much sorrow should have brought thee to great tranquility. For she hath forsaken thee, of whom no man can be secure. Dost thou esteem that happiness precious which thou art to lose? And is the present fortune dear unto thee, of whose stay thou art not sure, and whose departure will breed thy grief? And if she can neither be kept at our will, and maketh them miserable whom she at last leaveth, what else is fickle fortune but a token of future calamity? For it is not sufficient to behold that which we have before our eyes; wisdom pondereth the event of things, and this mutability on both sides maketh the threats of fortune not to be feared, nor her flatterings to be desired.¹¹

Following this, Philosophy impersonates Fortune and delivers a defense of her ways:

“For what cause, O man, chargest thou me with daily complaints? What injury have I done thee? What goods of thine have I taken from thee? Contend with me before any judge about the possession of riches and dignities; and if thou canst show that the propriety of any of these things belong to any mortal wight, I will forthwith willingly grant that those things which thou demandest were thine. When Nature produced thee out of thy mother's womb, I received thee naked and poor in all respects, cherished thee with my wealth, and (which maketh thee now to fall out with me) being forward to favour thee, I had most tender care for thy education, and adorned thee with the abundance and splendour of all things which are in my power. Now it pleaseth me to withdraw my hand, yield thanks, as one that hath had the use of that which was not his own. Thou hast no just cause to complain, as though thou hadst lost that which was fully thine own. Wherefore lamentest thou? I have offered thee no violence. Riches, honours, and the rest of that sort belong to me. They acknowledge me for their mistress, and themselves for my servants, they come with me, and when I go away they likewise depart.”¹²

It is immediately obvious that a knowledge of these commonplaces about Fortune (quoted here in a translation almost exactly contemporary with Timon) enriches one's response to the allegory and the play. The images of Fortune as fickle woman and as flatterer, found in the first passage, are of particular interest and will be considered first.

The quality of fickleness in Fortune led writers and artists of the Middle Ages and Renaissance to depict her as a harlot,¹³ and this image of her has a crucial role in several episodes of Timon. It has already been noticed how, in her “shift and change of mood,” she plays the wanton with Timon. In this role, she also seems to inform the puzzling incident involving the Page and the Fool in II.ii. The Fool, who is obviously a bawd serving the mistress of a brothel, has been bantering with Apemantus and others, when a Page belonging to the same establishment appears with letters for Timon and Alcibiades (ll. 81-88). Since there is never again any mention of the letters, what is in them, or indeed whether they are delivered, this passage has been thought to be a “loose end.”¹⁴ But if the traditional picture of Fortune as harlot is kept in mind, this scene can be read as an ingenious way of dramatizing the dependence of Timon and Alcibiades on her at a particular point in the play. Shakespeare is not concerned to show a logical progression from one point to another or to furnish motivation for the invitation to the brothel or for Timon's presumed interest in it. In fact, such specifics seem to be avoided on purpose, to give the scene a self-contained quality. The playwright has invented a bit of stage business that obliquely involves Timon with a whore. This is enough to suggest Timon's relationship with Fortune without on the one hand resorting to pure allegory and on the other having to justify the scene in entirely naturalistic terms.

Timon and Alcibiades are more directly involved with whores in IV.iii, a scene whose significance is made considerably clearer by the image of Fortune we have been discussing. In the iconography of the Renaissance, Fortune could be pictured specifically as a soldier's whore,¹⁵ and this is surely one of the main reasons why Phrynia and Timandra accompany Alcibiades on his visit to Timon in the woods. A stage direction makes plain that Alcibiades is to be seen here at his most martial, but it also specifies the presence of the two women: “Enter Alcibiades, with drum and fife, in warlike manner; and Phrynia and Timandra” (l. 48). Shakespeare seems to be making a statement about the fortunes of war: Alcibiades is a soldier on the offensive, and his present prosperity is compared with Timon's former prosperity:

ALCIBIADES.
I have heard in some sort of thy miseries.
TIMON.
Thou saw'st them when I had prosperity.
ALCIBIADES.
I see them now; then was a blessed time.
TIMON.
As thine is now, held with a brace of harlots.

(ll. 78-81)

Timon's point is that even though a man seems to be prosperous, he is in reality miserable if his prosperity is owed to Fortune. Timon then places his own “blessed time” in the same category with Alcibiades's current success: both are due to the strumpet Fortune, and both are therefore undesirable. In Alcibiades's case, the nature of Fortune's favor is confirmed by the presence of the “brace of harlots,” a symbolic representation of that favor particularly appropriate to soldiers.

If the above analysis is valid, then we can bring into sharper focus certain difficulties critics have had in trying to explain this scene. J. C. Maxwell has confessed to nagging doubts concerning the character of Alcibiades: “I should be reluctant to regard it [IV.iii] as intended to indicate that the claims of Alcibiades in the final scene to regenerate Athens are to be taken cynically.”¹⁶ Willard Farnham has tried to reconcile the contradictions in Alcibiades's character by describing him as a realist: “Alcibiades, the warrior-politician, is of much grosser grain than Timon and is much inferior to him in spiritual worth, but nevertheless he has ability to meet and overcome hostile forces in the world whereas Timon can only let himself be crushed by them.”¹⁷ Both of these comments seem to assume that Alcibiades has, or is intended to have, a coherent personality. The last scene, however, renders this assumption extremely dubious. When he first appears before the walls of Athens, Alcibiades accuses the city of the same type of excess he himself has indulged in:

Sound to this coward and lascivious town
Our terrible approach.                                        Sounds a parley.
                    The Senators appear upon the walls.
Till now you have gone on, and fill'd the time
With all licentious measure, making your wills
The scope of justice.

(V.iv.1-5)

Farnham's explanation will hardly suffice for such blatant tergiversation. For a man who was last seen marching off with two whores on his very next appearance to accuse his enemy of being coward, lascivious, and licentious is to betray a colossal hypocrisy that strains belief—if, of course, one insists on continuity between the Alcibiades of IV.iii and the Alcibiades of the final scene. If, on the other hand, one recognizes that the character of Alcibiades is modified at the end of the play to make a new allegorical point, then it becomes gratuitous to resort to Farnham's portrait of a flawed but effective man of action, or to suffer from Maxwell's doubts about the nature of the regeneration. Each of Alcibiades's appearances makes a serious point, but the different points are incompatible as expressions of the same persona. This is true on both the allegorical and the naturalistic levels: there is simply no dramatic justification for such a radical change. In this case, it would seem that Shakespeare has sacrificed continuity of characterization to allegorical demonstration. In the play's last scene, the triumphant general serves as the voice that calls the Athenians to account for their licentiousness while enjoying Fortune's favor; after they have submitted to him, he acts as the agent of forgiveness and reconciliation. These are very different roles from the one he plays in the earlier scene with Timon. There, his own licentiousness is part of an exhibit featuring the effects of Fortune on different types of individuals; it has nothing to do with his later rebuke of Athens.

To complicate the picture of Fortune's control in IV.iii, Shakespeare goes back to an unspecified time in the past, before the portion of Timon's life presented in the first half of the play, and makes Timon a soldier. Alcibiades refers to this earlier time:

                                                                                                    I have heard and griev'd
How cursed Athens, mindless of thy worth,
Forgetting thy great deeds, when neighbour states,
But for thy sword and fortune, trod upon them—

(ll. 93-96)

In a note on this passage, Oliver remarks that Timon's military services to Athens are mentioned twice more (V.i.145-46 and 158-62), but are “not linked with anything else in the play.”¹⁸ If we have noticed Shakespeare's method of embedding oblique, semiallegorical statements in the play, then we do not expect the kind of naturalistic plotting that would relate his detail of Timon's life to other things. The playwright simply wants to show another way in which Timon's and Alcibiades's situations are similar with respect to Fortune, and therefore he invents some past military exploits for Timon which are clearly associated with “fortune,” or the wealth and prosperity lent to men by the fickle goddess. Once he has made this connection, Shakespeare is through with Timon's military career.

Fortune as harlot is important in yet another way for the encounter between Timon and Alcibiades. Just prior to Alcibiades's entrance, Timon has discovered gold while digging for roots and has called it the “common whore of mankind” (IV.iii.43). It seems likely that this phrase refers not only to the gold itself, but also to the goddess who provides all such worldly riches. Then Timon's gifts to Alcibiades and his two companions would be particularly appropriate: the soldier, whose two harlots signify that he is high in Fortune's favor, receives a concrete token of that favor, which is at the same time another metaphor for Fortune.

Immediately following the departure of Alcibiades and his companions, Apemantus visits Timon in the woods, and this provides Timon with the opportunity to blame the strumpet Fortune for his present circumstances. The misanthrope and the cynic exchange insults, arguing over which has the better right to be a critic of society. Timon's case against Apemantus is a formidable one:

Thou art a slave, whom Fortune's tender arm
With favour never clasp'd, but bred a dog.
Hadst thou like us from our first swath proceeded
The sweet degrees that this brief world affords
To such as may the passive drugs of it
Freely command, thou wouldst have plung'd thyself
In general riot, melted down thy youth
In different beds of lust, and never learn'd
The icy precepts of respect, but followed
The sugar'd game before thee. 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:
That numberless upon me stuck, as leaves
Do on the oak, have with one winter's brush
Fell from their boughs and left me open, bare,
For every storm that blows—I, to bear this,
That never knew but better, is some burthen.
Thy nature did commence in sufferance, time
Hath made thee hard in't. Why shouldst thou hate men?
They never flatter'd thee. What hast thou given?

(IV.iii.252-72)

According to Timon, only the man who like himself has known Fortune's favors, and has been discarded by her, has any warrant for railing against others. Apemantus has never been anything but a poor wretch, and thus his bitterness is simply an unthinking response to his condition. Timon supposes that if Apemantus had been born with his (Timon's) advantages, he would have been just as unthinking as he is now: instead of railing, he would have drowned himself in luxury. As Alvin Kernan has noted, “Apemantus is not a true satirist, only a freak of nature, the malcontent who rails and curses for the same reason that a dog barks or a snake bites.”¹⁹ Timon, it is fair to say, has the better of the argument with the cynic, and establishes himself as the only true satirist in the play. In doing so, however, he reveals Fortune's hand in creating this role for him and thus its undesirability and futility. Very much the wanton, she has never “clasp'd” Apemantus with her “tender arm,” although it is clear she once embraced Timon. When Timon describes the course of “general riot” and lustfulness that Apemantus would have run if he had enjoyed Fortune's favor, the clear implication is that Timon ran such a course before his fall. The images of sweetness associated with such wanton activity (“sweet degrees” and “sugar'd game”) carry over into Timon's description of himself (“But myself—/ Who had the world as my confectionary”).²⁰ The point is that the satirist, who is educated by Fortune, is quite naturally led into sexual intemperance, not because of any personal predilection, but because this form of vice is appropriate for one who is under the tuition of a whore. As in the case of Alcibiades's relationship with his “brace of harlots,” Timon's implied lasciviousness is included in the play largely to dramatize a metaphor about Fortune, not to prompt speculation as to the motives that led him to this sin.

The image of Fortune as a whore has been shown to be of great importance in determining what happens in the play. It underlies much of what Timon says and does, especially his justification for assuming the posture of satirist. It explains why Timon's tirades during the second half of the play place such heavy emphasis on sexual excesses: Timon imagines that all of Athenian society behaves in the manner of its controlling goddess. Thus we must modify Muriel Bradbrook's statement that “Unlike earlier or later Prodigals, Timon courts no mistress; the World and not the Flesh is his undoing.”²¹ Timon courts no human mistress, it is true; but he has an intimate relationship with the supreme wanton of them all, who ultimately undoes him.

The discussion of Fortune as strumpet began with a passage from Boethius that also makes reference to Fortune as flatterer. Certainly this image has much to do with the profuse outpouring of flattery throughout the play. In the first scene, the Poet mentions “the glass-fac'd flatterer” (I.i.59) as one of the types attending on Timon; and the allegory describes the most exquisite acts of flattery (for example, Timon's followers “Make sacred even his stirrup” [l. 84]). At Timon's first banquet, the Lords of Athens vie with each other in extravagant compliments to their host. Apemantus, of course, tells Timon that all this is flattery, but Timon refuses to heed him—which prompts him to remark: “O that men's ears should be / To counsel deaf, but not to flattery” (I.ii.250-51). The outrageousness of the flattery and Timon's obtuse reaction to it are incomprehensible if we have totally naturalistic expectations. Una Ellis-Fermor, in arguing that the play is unfinished, points to its failure to provide, as Shakespeare usually does, “unobtrusive answers” for questions like the following: “If he is of mature age, why is he such a fool? And why again, in that case, does he bear no signs of the experience he must have met, above all, the acute knowledge of man that palace intrigues would have given to a strong intelligence?”²² These questions assume that Timon ought to respond to his flatterers as a hard-nosed realist would. But there is an alternative assumption that makes sense of the situation as it is presented. That is, Shakespeare is dramatizing the ease with which men are seduced by Fortune's flattery. Timon, the representative of mankind, is shown uncritically accepting flattery because he has put his whole faith in Fortune. The men who flatter him are acting as Fortune's surrogates. Although they are certainly not allegorical figures, they are more excessive in their flattery than one would expect in naturalistically depicted characters.

In addition to the two images of Fortune which have been discussed, there are, in the Boethian passages quoted above, several general ideas concerning her operation which are important for an understanding of Timon. After the conclusion of the Poet's allegory, the first reference to Fortune is made by Timon himself. He promises to “build” the “fortune” of his servant Lucilius so that he will be an acceptable husband for the daughter of the Old Athenian (I.i.146). Lucilius thanks Timon with this effusion:

                                                                                                                                  never may
That state or fortune fall into my keeping
Which is not owed to you.

(ll. 152-54)

The point can be made that Timon's action here is generous, an instance of what the Elizabethans would have called Liberality.²³ But certainly the audience of Timon, alerted by the allegory, would have understood it as ultimately futile. Because Timon does not own his fortune, he cannot give part of it to Lucilius; and Lucilius cannot “owe” his “state or fortune” to anyone because no one has the power to control the gifts of Fortune except the goddess herself. We are reminded of her sovereignty not only by the use of the word fortune to refer to her gifts, but by the word state (l. 153), which appears here as a doublet for fortune,²⁴ and which has been used in a prominent place in the allegory to denominate what all the people are trying to achieve by climbing Fortune's hill (“propogate their states”). Timon's generosity in itself is not being condemned here; he certainly believes he is being generous, and it is wrong to accuse him of “buying love” and of “complacency.”²⁵ The point of this episode is that any generosity, no matter how noble, which is based on the gifts of Fortune, can have no lasting effect. Timon is guilty of long-range blindness, what Boethius would call a lack of ability to ponder “the event of things.”

A similar kind of folly on Timon's part is obvious in his discussions with, and references to, his “friends.” To Timon, Fortune is inevitably involved in friendship, something he reveals when he welcomes his guests to dinner:

where there is true friendship, there needs none [ceremony]
Pray, sit; more welcome are ye to my fortunes
Than my fortunes to me.

(I.ii.18-20)

The antimetabole, besides emphasizing fortunes by placing two instances of the word close together, indicates that Timon's relationship with his friends is not direct; Fortune acts as intermediary. No matter how Timon expresses his idea of friendship, Fortune always plays a major role as a sort of broker between friends. This is made painfully obvious at a later point in the banquet, when one of the visiting Lords voices the wish that Timon might once “use” the “hearts” of his friends, “whereby we might express some part of our zeals” (I.ii.83-84). Timon replies with an ecstatic vision of friendship which deserves to be quoted at length:

O no doubt, my good friends, but the gods them-
selves have provided that I shall have much help
from you: how had you been my friends else? Why
have you that charitable title from thousands,
did you not chiefly belong to my heart? …
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
should we ne'er have use for 'em, and would
most resemble sweet instruments hung up in cases,
that keeps their sounds to themselves. Why, I
have often wish'd myself poorer that I might
come nearer to you. We are born to do bene-
fits; and what better or 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.

(ll. 86-90, 92-103)

The final word of this enraptured account, which Timon intends to anchor the whole, actually releases it to the winds of fantasy. Not that Timon's ideal of friendship is unworthy: he gives moving expression to some of the noblest sentiments on the subject of which the Renaissance was aware, many of them deriving ultimately from Cicero's De Amicitia. This work, well known throughout the Middle Ages, had been translated for Tudor Englishmen by John Harington in 1550. It recognizes the role that need plays in inculcating friendship: “And I know not, whether it be a meete thyng, that freendes shoulde never neade anie thyng: for where should our good will have appeared, yf Scipio had never neaded, never favour, never counsail, never our assistaunce, neither in peace nor in warre.”²⁶ Certainly Timon is right in believing that the need of one friend gives another the opportunity to show his love. But this presupposes “lykenesse of condicions,”²⁷ something that Timon wishes for but that is manifestly impossible in this society controlled by Fortune. The conception of brothers sharing one another's fortunes is a noble one, but Cicero attaches an important condition to it: “These endes in freendeship therefore I thynke bee to bee used, that whan freendes maners be honest, all their goodes, counsaill, and good will, should be as common among them without excepcion.”²⁸ The manners of Timon's “friends” are clearly not honest, and therefore Timon's vision can be recognized as an illusion.

Just how far wrong Timon is about his followers can be understood if we compare the banquet scene with a later one in which Timon's servants and Steward meet to lament his fall. The First Servant moans, “Are we undone, cast off, nothing remaining?” (IV.ii.2). The Steward replies, “Let me be recorded by the righteous gods, / I am as poor as you” (ll. 4-5). Here is need all around, and likeness of conditions. The Steward fulfills the duty of a true friend by sharing what he has: “Good fellows all, / The latest of my wealth I'll share amongst you” (ll. 23-24). We notice that, in contrast to Timon's illusion, this is in fact a band of brothers commanding one another's fortunes.

Up until his transformation into a misanthrope in act 3, Timon continues to believe that the gifts of Fortune are the key to friendship. As his guests leave the banquet, there is this exchange:

FIRST Lord.
The best of happiness, honour, and fortunes,
Keep with you, Lord Timon!
TIMON.
Ready for his friends.

(I.ii.230-32)

When he has been apprised by the Steward of the seriousness of his financial plight, he relies on what he believes is his power to command the fortunes of his friends:

TIMON.
                                                                                Canst thou the conscience lack
To think I shall lack friends? Secure thy heart.
If I would broach the vessels of my love,
And try the arguments of hearts by borrowing,
Men and men's fortunes could I frankly use
As I can bid thee speak.
STEWARD.
                                                                                Assurance bless your thoughts.
TIMON.
And in some sort these wants of mine are crown'd,
That I account them blessings; for by these
Shall I try my friends. You shall perceive how you
Mistake my fortunes; I am wealthy in my friends.

(II.ii.179-88)

Not only does Timon refer to “men's fortunes” as a commonly held savings account of prosperity; he goes so far as to equate friends with fortunes. When he states that he is “wealthy” in his friends, he is putting friends in the same category as the gifts of Fortune, which the Poet's allegory and Boethius should tell us is a grievous mistake. To try to possess friends as one tries to possess the gifts of Fortune is to acknowledge them subject to the same unpredictable behavior characteristic of everything in Fortune's realm. There is a relevant passage in Cicero, which criticizes those who seek Fortune instead of friends:

But what more foolishe thing can be, than to studie, thei may be hable with great heapes and plentie, to gette other thynges that be soughte for, as moneie, horses, servauntes, gaye cloathing, and costly plate, and yet not to seeke for freendes, being the best and goodlyest riches of this lyfe. For they knowe not for whom they get other thynges, when they are gotten, nor to whose use thei travaile. For every one of these be his, whiche will win them with stronge hande. But freendship once gotten, abydeth with everie man stedfast and surely.²⁹

The point here is that there is a distinction between the gifts of Fortune—“horses, servauntes, gaye cloathing, and costly plate”—and friends. The former are transitory, the latter “stedfast.” Timon cannot be accused of failing to seek friends, but a corollary of Cicero's judgment applies to him: he seeks friends as if they were gifts of Fortune, thereby making it inevitable that they will not be “stedfast.”

Cicero is particularly interested in the effect Fortune has on the rich man's ability to judge his friends. In discussing the tyrant Tarquinius, whose friends deserted him after he fell from power, he notes: “And as this mannes maners, of whom we have spoken, could not pourchase any true frendes, so many mens riches, that be in high authoritie, do cleane shut out, as it were true freendship. For Fortune her selfe is not onely blynde, but maketh these also often tymes blynde, whom she most embraceth.”³⁰ In addition to dramatizing the image of Fortune as flatterer of mankind, Timon's continuing inability to perceive the true nature of his flattering friends probably has something to do with this idea of Fortune's shutting out the truth from a rich man. Although Timon is nowhere described as blind, he behaves as if his perception of reality has been obstructed, and as we have noted, he is “To counsel deaf” (I.ii.251).

Another source of the kinds of commonplaces about the relationship between Fortune and friendship which Shakespeare presents in Timon is The Romance of the Rose. Jean de Meun, elaborating on material from the De Amicitia, puts the following words into the mouth of Reason:

“I want to tell you now of another love, which in its turn is contrary to the good love and is also to be strongly condemned: it is the simulated desire of loving in hearts sick with the disease of coveting gain. This love vacillates in the following way: as soon as it loses hope of the profit that it wants to get, it inevitably flickers and dies away, for the heart which does not love people for themselves can never be a loving one. Instead, it pretends and goes about flattering for the gain it hopes to have.”³¹

A few lines later, Reason remarks, “‘This is the love which comes from Fortune,’” and shortly thereafter, “‘Nearly all rich men are loved with this love that I have just described.’”³² All of this reads like a blueprint for the behavior of Timon's followers. In pursuit of Fortune's gifts, they offer Timon extravagant praise and, at the first sign of his ruin, desert him. As parties to a truly human transaction, they are somewhat exaggerated; but they make perfect sense as part of an effort to give dramatic life to a lesson on false friendship. Jean even has a passage that sheds light on the reasons given by some of Timon's friends for turning against him:

“for those friends whom good Fortune gives are so shocked by evil fortune that they all become enemies. Not one of them remains, not even a half one; instead, they run away from and renounce their friends as soon as they see they are poor. They no longer have anything to do with them, but everywhere they go around blaming, defaming, and proclaiming them wretched fools. Even those to whom they gave more, when they saw themselves in their high estate, go around testifying in gleeful voice that their loss arrived through their folly.”³³

The Senator who appears at the beginning of act 2 is portrayed in this way. He expresses shock that Timon is “Still in motion / Of raging waste” (II.i.3-4) and describes Timon's prodigality in extreme terms:

If I want gold, steal but a beggar's dog
And give it Timon—why, the dog coins gold;
If I would sell my horse and buy twenty moe
Better than he—why, give my horse to Timon;
Ask nothing, give it him, it foals me straight
And able horses.

(ll. 5-10)

Then he sends his servant to collect what Timon owes him. Here is blatant hypocrisy: the Senator uses Timon's generosity to him as evidence that Timon is riotous and wasteful. In the same breath, he criticizes Timon's bounty as foolish and indicates his own willingness to accept that bounty. Later, in act 3, Lucullus is guilty of the same kind of inconsistency when presented with Timon's request for a loan:

Alas, good lord; a noble gentleman 'tis, if he
would not keep so good a house. Many a time
and often I ha' din'd with him, and told him
on 't, and come again to supper to him of pur-
pose to have him spend less; and yet he would
embrace no counsel, take no warning by my com-
ing. Every man has his fault, and honesty is
his. I ha' told him on 't, but I could ne'er
get him from 't.

(III.i.21-29)

Lucullus claims that his repeated visits to Timon's house for dinner have all been made to dissuade his host from entertaining so lavishly. Indeed, so strong is his desire to curb Timon's wastefulness that he has often returned to chide him again at supper on days when he has earlier had dinner with him. The more Lucullus protests against Timon's “honesty,” or liberality,³⁴ the more he acknowledges his dependence on it. That Shakespeare has the Senator and Lucullus undercut their own criticism of Timon in such a manner is evidence that he is using these two characters to embody the truisms about “friends whom good Fortune gives” we have seen expressed in The Romance of the Rose.

Fortune's control of Timon's friends makes his eagerness to “try” them (II.ii.187) heavily ironic, based as it is on false expectations. His requests for various sums of money from different quarters, moreover, put his friends in the position of ostentatiously failing one of the specific tests by which, Cicero maintains, friendship can be tried. The most outrageous flaunting of the precept that one should delight in returning favors done by his friend³⁵ is, of course, Ventidius's refusal to repay the five talents he owes Timon for redeeming him from prison. The audience has observed the original generosity of Timon in this case (I.i.97-112) and Ventidius's subsequent offer to return the five talents, “Doubled with thanks and service” (I.ii.7). If he is sincere in this offer, his later denial of Timon's request for repayment, reported in II.iii., seems inconsistent. H. J. Oliver has argued, however, that here need be no problem here, since “All Timon's alleged friends are prepared to give, when they know they will receive more in return.”³⁶ This assumes that Ventidius's offer to repay is hypocritical, an attempt to milk Timon for further benefits. But Ventidius has an air of sincerity not found in the other “friends”: he explains that his father has died and left him rich (I.ii.3-4), thus enabling him to discharge his debt. His free acknowledgment of wealth leaves him with no excuses for denying Timon later, and Shakespeare skillfully avoids presenting his denial on stage. What is being argued here is that Ventidius's reversal lacks sufficient motivation in naturalistic terms, but that it makes perfect sense as a demonstration of how dependence on Fortune causes violation of the most binding obligations of friendship.

As act 2 ends, Timon once again reminds the audience of the relationship between his friends and Fortune. His parting words to the Steward are “Ne'er speak or think / That Timon's fortunes 'mong his friends can sink” (II.ii.234-35). This is the last time he speaks before he loses faith in his grand illusion. For the audience, the irony is particularly telling, since the allegory has made clear reference to Timon's slipping down (I.i.89),³⁷ sliding backwards down Fortune's hill, and being allowed to do so by his friends, not one of whom accompanies “his declining foot” (I.i.90). The play never permits us to forget that Timon's fall and the failure of his attempts at friendship are closely connected with the operation of Fortune. In act 4, commenting on his master's fate, the Steward uses these terms:

My dearest lord, bless'd to be most accurs'd,
Rich only to be wretched—thy great fortunes
Are made thy chief afflictions. Alas, kind lord,
He's flung in rage from this ingrateful seat
Of monstrous friends.

(IV.ii.42-46)

A fundamental knowledge of Fortune allows one to resolve the paradoxes easily: to be favored by Fortune is never to be really blessed or rich; it is always, in the long run, to be accursed and wretched. Fortune's favor is especially treacherous in the matter of friendship. She inevitably betrays the man who puts his trust in her; and his friends, whose loyalty depends entirely on his prosperity, will just as surely desert him. A few lines before the Steward's speech, one of Timon's servants makes a similar comment about his master:

                                                                                                    As we do turn our backs
From our companion thrown into his grave,
So his familiars to his buried fortunes
Slink all away.

(IV.ii.8-11)

This continues the imagery of descent associated with Timon's loss of Fortune's gifts since the beginning. The idea that Timon's “familiars” steal away from him as if he were dead, irreversibly undone, may owe something to an iconographical feature often found in descriptions of Fortune's wheel: under the wheel there is a grave or coffin to catch those who are thrown off, to signify the finality of the loss of the goddess's favor.³⁸

Having been induced by Fortune to have too much faith in men, Timon, as misanthrope, has too little; instead of indiscriminate love for all, he now feels indiscriminate hatred. And Shakespeare makes clear that this hatred is to be connected with the workings of Fortune. In the tirade that begins IV.iii, Timon projects a vision of society in which all relationships among men are perverted by the goddess's gifts. “Twinn'd brothers of one womb” (l. 3) should be as intimate as two men can be, but “touch them with several fortunes, / The greater scorns the lesser” (ll. 5-6). If a beggar is favored by Fortune, and a lord denied, then the beggar is elevated to the lord's place and the lord is cast down (ll. 9-11). In the face of such inversion of the proper order of things, Timon makes a resolution:

                                                                                                    Therefore be abhorr'd
All feasts, societies, and throngs of men!
His semblable, yea himself, Timon disdains.

(ll. 20-22)

His self-imposed isolation is thus a direct reaction to a society which, as he perceives it, is controlled by Fortune. He has become a sort of antifriend, something that is clearly wrong. From Cicero's point of view, such a posture is so unnatural that it is virtually impossible to maintain. Friendship, he insists, is universal; it

creapeth through al kind of lives, and wil suffer no part of a mans life that is ledde to want hir. So if there be any, of that sowernes and grimnes of nature, that he flieth and hateth the compaignie of felowship of men, of the whiche sort we have heard saie, one of the Tymons of Athenes was, but whiche of them I knowe not, yet he culd not abide, but must nedes seke after one, to whom he mighte vomitte up even the bitternesse of his gaule.³⁹

Even though he strains to discover in Timon a need for friendship, Cicero obviously considers him an extreme example of perversity in his relationships with other men.

There is an added dimension to Timon's perversity when it is considered in a Christian context. In The Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton has this to say about misanthropes (of whom he cites Timon as a prominent example): “they do even loathe themselves, and hate the company of men.” He continues, quoting the expostulation of Mercurialis to a melancholy patient, which, Burton says, “may be justly applied to every solitary and idle person in particular”:

“Nature may justly complain of thee, that whereas she gave thee a good wholesome temperature, a sound body, and good parts and profitable gifts, thou hast not only contemned and rejected, but hast corrupted them, polluted them, overthrown their temperature, and perverted those gifts with riot, idleness, solitariness, and many other ways; thou art a traitor to God and nature, an enemy to thyself and to the world … thou hast lost thyself wilfully, cast away thyself, thou thyself art the efficient cause of thine own misery, by not resisting such vain cogitations.”⁴⁰

This is surely the kind of judgment Shakespeare means for us to apply to Timon: he has passed through a phase of riot into solitariness, and now hates all “feasts, societies, and throngs of men.” He disdains anything like himself (“his semblable”) and finally himself as well. It is clear that Timon is willfully alienating himself from everything that makes him human; in so doing, he is also demonstrating his ignorance of the divine origin of man's existence. Instead of acknowledging God's gifts to man through nature, and using those gifts in himself for general and personal good, Timon isolates himself from men, in effect perverting his natural gifts. The reason for his attitude, of course, is that in Timon's mind everything flows from Fortune, a goddess who permits no appeal to any metaphysical reality. The terms in which Timon describes his misanthropy thus indicate that he cannot escape from the pagan view of Fortune which he has embraced from the beginning. He does not have the capacity or the knowledge to see beyond the things of the world, the counters with which Fortune operates.

The ultimate development of Timon's misanthropy is metaphysical isolation: if one hates all men, even himself, there is no chance that he can understand the love of God for man, especially for himself. That Timon dies in such despair is strongly suggested by one of his last statements to the Steward and the Senators:

                                                                                                    My long sickness
Of health and living now begins to mend,
And nothing brings me all things.

(V.i.185-87)

As Miss Bradbrook has remarked,⁴¹ this passage seems to be an echo of the Epistle for the First Sunday in Lent (2 Cor. 6:1-10). The faithful are exhorted to show that they have not received the grace of God in vain. In behaving ourselves as “ministers of God,” St. Paul says, we should bear patiently all manner of hardships. The Epistle ends with a series of paradoxes describing the condition of those who are saved: “as dying, and beholde we lyve; as chastened and not killed; as sorowyng and yet alway mery; as poore and yet make many riche: as having nothyng, and yet possessyng all thynges.”⁴² As Timon's epitaph makes clear, he dies in bitter hatred, conspicuously lacking in grace. Therefore his use of the phrase “nothing brings me all things” means that the ultimate reality for him is nothing, that is, oblivion, nonentity. This obviously contradicts the Epistle's message, which is that for those who are in a state of grace, “nothing” (that is, lack of worldly prosperity) is the gateway to salvation. In giving Timon these words as he prepares for death, Shakespeare emphasizes once again that the misanthrope's world view is pagan, lacking the hope offered by Christianity. It should be noted, in the light of these remarks, that the argument over whether or not Timon commits suicide becomes largely irrelevant.⁴³ Although it would not be inconsistent with Timon's philosophy for him to destroy himself, the important thing is that he dies in despair. Suicide, of course, is the most desperate act of all, but Timon, as we have seen, has already established his claim to despair without having to give that final evidence of it.

The best critique, finally, of Timon's career is provided by Hamlet's moving declaration of his affection for Horatio:

                                                                                                    Nay, do not think I flatter.
For what advancement may I hope from thee,
That no revenue hast but thy good spirits
To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flattered?
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
And could of men distinguish her election,
S'hath sealed thee for herself, for thou hast been
As one in suff'ring all that suffers nothing,
A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast ta'en with equal thanks; and blest are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commedled
That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger
To sound what stop she pleases. Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.(44)

In the first part of this passage, Hamlet is emphasizing the sincerity of his own feeling. He is confident that his friendship is not flattery, since Horatio is “poor” (that is, Horatio does not enjoy Fortune's favor, the cause of flattery in friendship). Timon's friends, on the other hand, obviously attend on him for “advancement.” The last part of Hamlet's speech explains the great value of the friendship offered by Horatio. He is a temperate man, not ruled by his passions. He does not overreact to either Fortune's favor or her disfavor. One is reminded of the words of Philosophy to Boethius: “wisdom pondereth the event of things, and this mutability on both sides maketh the threats of fortune not to be feared, nor her flatterings to be desired.” Horatio possesses wisdom in this sense, and thus Hamlet can relate directly to him and wear him in his “heart's core.” As a friend, Timon fails on all these counts. He trusts too much in the benefits of Fortune and, in the second half of the play, falls into extreme despair when she deserts him. Ruled by his passions, he loves and hates as Fortune dictates. In his vision of “so many like brothers” (I.ii.86-105), he tries to maintain that his friends “belong to my heart” (l. 90). But as we have seen, Fortune obstructs the direct passage between Timon's heart and the hearts of his flatterers. There can be little doubt that in Timon of Athens Shakespeare is showing how Fortune affects relationships between human beings by presenting a thorough perversion of the ideal of true friendship.

It is clear, then, that any reading of Timon should place great emphasis on the play's allegorical tendencies. This is particularly true with respect to the role of Fortune, of which the audience is made unequivocally aware in the opening scene. As this discussion has shown, such as approach, although it does not resolve all of the problems with which the modern reader is confronted by Timon, nevertheless in certain crucial respects it makes possible a better understanding of the play on its own terms.

Notes

1. Robert C. Elliott, The Power of Satire (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1960), p. 150.

2. Una Ellis-Fermor, “Timon of Athens: An Unfinished Play,” Review of English Studies, 18 (1942), 271.

3. Geoffrey Bullough, ed., Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), VI, 243.

4. A. S. Collins, in arguing that Timon is Shakespeare's “true morality play” (“Timon of Athens: A Reconsideration,” Review of English Studies, 22 [1946], 98), stresses its abstract qualities and comes close to an allegorical interpretation. But Collins has very little to say about the role of Fortune in the play.

5. In Timon, the word appears in three forms: fortune, fortune's, and fortunes. The total number of occurrences for all three is twenty-nine, more than in any other Shakespearean play except Antony and Cleopatra (forty-four occurrences). See Marvin Spevack, The Harvard Concordance to Shakespeare (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1973), pp. 438-40.

6. H. J. Oliver, ed., Timon of Athens (London: Methuen, 1959), p. 8n. All references are to this edition.

7. Muriel Bradbrook, The Tragic Pageant of Timon of Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1966), p. 7.

8. Howard R. Patch, The Goddess Fortuna in Mediaeval Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1927), pp. 10-14.

9. Ibid., pp. 17-18. Some idea of the continuing influence Boethius had on the English imagination may be gained by noting that he was translated by King Alfred, Chaucer, John Walton (early fifteenth century), George Colville (1556), and Elizabeth I.

10. The Consolation of Philosophy, with the English translation of “I. T.” (1609) revised by H. F. Stewart, in Boethius (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1962), pp. 365-69.

11. Ibid., pp. 175-77.

12. Ibid., p. 179.

13. Patch, pp. 49-57.

14. Oliver (pp. xxvi-xxvii) adduces it as evidence that Shakespeare never finished Timon.

15. F. P. Pickering, Literature and Art in the Middle Ages (Coral Gables, Fla.: Univ. of Miami Press, 1970), p. 221.

16. J. C. Maxwell, ed., Timon of Athens: The New Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1957), p. xl.

17. Willard Farnham, Shakespeare's Tragic Frontier (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1950), p. 74.

18. Ibid., p. 95.

19. Alvin Kernan, The Cankered Muse (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1959), p. 203.

20. These images of sugar and sweetness may suggest, in addition to sexual excess, the flattery of Timon by both friend and Fortune. See Caroline F. E. Spurgeon, Shakespeare's Imagery and What It Tells Us (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1935), pp. 195-99.

21. Bradbrook, p. 4.

22. Ellis-Fermor, p. 281.

23. Bradbrook, p. 6.

24. Oliver, p. 13n.

25. Elliott, p. 149.

26. The Booke of Freendeship of Marcus Tullie Cicero, in Ruth Hughey, John Harington of Stepney: Tudor Gentleman: His Life and Works (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1971), p. 162.

27. Ibid., p. 161.

28. Ibid., p. 165.

29. Ibid., p. 163.

30. Ibid.

31. Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, The Romance of the Rose, trans. Charles Dahlberg (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1971), pp. 101-02. In his notes (p. 376), Dahlberg describes the indebtedness of this passage to the De Amicitia.

32. Ibid., p. 102.

33. Ibid., pp. 103-04.

34. Oliver, p. 54n.

35. Hughey, p. 161.

36. Oliver, p. xliii.

37. Along with most editors of Timon, I accept Rowe's emendation “slip” for the Folio's “sit” in the phrase “let him slip down” (l. 89). There are several reasons for this. The next line makes reference to Timon's “declining foot,” which seems to require a verb like “slip,” indicating backward motion, rather than the abrupt stop signaled by “sit.” “Slip” is more consistent than “sit” with the imagery of sinking and descent found throughout the play. Finally, in many accounts of Fortune, both the hill on which she lives and her wheel were described as slippery of footing for those who try to climb them (Patch, pp. 132-36). Oliver, however, retains the Folio reading of “sit.” See his note, pp. 9-10.

38. Patch, p. 162.

39. Hughey, p. 174.

40. Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, Introduction by Holbrook Jackson (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1932), I, 249.

41. Bradbrook, p. 24.

42. The First and Second Prayer Books of Edward VI, Introduction by Douglas Harrison (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1968), p. 71.

43. Miss Bradbrook, arguing that Timon has completed a natural cycle and has “outstretch'd his span” (V.iii.3), sees his death as “natural and not a suicide” (p. 25). Richard D. Fly, on the other hand, insists on Timon's suicide because it is “the ontological analogue to his former repudiation of society” (“The Ending of Timon of Athens: A Reconsideration,” Criticism, 15 [1973], 251).

44. Hamlet, ed. Willard Farnham (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1957), III.ii.53-71.