Hollow man

Shakespeare’s “Timon of Athens” discovers the emptiness of flattery and then of himself. Bonus: some epic cursing you can maybe put to good use.

I’m reading through Shakespeare’s plays in an attempt to make sense of the world. Today I’m writing about “Timon of Athens.” For a quick reference to posts on previous plays, click here. Next week, “King Lear.”

When I lived in Texas, hardly a day went by that didn’t call up the phrase “more money than sense.” Entire suburbs filled with outrageous ostentation. Death-wish drivers in cars worth more than most family homes¹. The tell-tale absence of self-awareness of a US Senator from the Lone Star state who departed for a sunny Cancún holiday during an historic winter storm.  Even the Senator had to admit, after he was caught, that it was ‘obviously’ a mistake that he regretted.

Oil-rich Texas has more than its fair share of stupidly rich people who can be counted on to do stupid things like clockwork, although Texas isn’t in a league of one. Having lots of money makes people think they’re more deserving than others—smarter, fitter, experts in areas in which they have no expertise (citations too numerous to name). The eyerolls and mockery are just too easy to pass up. Why waste compassion on those who have none for others?

As a thought experiment, consider someone who’s based his self-image on having money. What happens when the money goes away? Timon of Athens dramatizes it.

Summary

Timon, a seemingly wealthy man who is generous to a fault, surrounds himself with men eager to benefit from his largesse. When someone gives him a gift, he repays the benefactor with even greater value. His extravagance creates its own economy, sustaining poets, painters, and merchants. His guests crowd his feast-laden table nightly.

Timon’s  loyal steward, Flavius, tries to advise Timon of his diminishing estate, but Timon fails to listen while he’s in thrall to buying friendships with borrowed money. A misanthropic philosopher, Apemantus, is unable to spoil Timon’s optimism. Timon ignores every naysayer as he runs full tilt toward disaster.

Eventually, the bills come due. Timon liquidates what properties he has, but still cannot pay his debts. Initially, he doesn’t worry: after all, he has so many admiring and influential friends who daily praise him and profess undying loyalty. He sends servants to ask his friends to return the generosity he’s extended to them for years. One by one, they deny him.

Deciding to turn the tables, Timon invites his fair-weather friends to dinner. Although they know Timon’s bankrupt, their greed overrules logic. The erstwhile friends arrive at Timon’s, expecting him to provide them a feast. Covered dishes are brought to the table. Timon uncovers them to reveal the dishes contain only water and stones:

TIMON
    May you a better feast never behold,
    You knot of mouth-friends. Smoke and lukewarm water
    Is your perfection. This is Timon’s last,
    Who, stuck and spangled with your flattery,
    Washes it off, and sprinkles in your faces
    Your reeking villainy.
          (He throws water in their faces)
                                                Live loathed and long,
    Most smiling, smooth, detested parasites,
    Courteous destroyers, affable wolves, meek bears,
    You fools of fortune, trencher-friends, time’s flies,
    Cap-and-knee slaves, vapours, and minute-jacks!
    Of man and beast the infinite malady
    Crust you quite o’er.
-Act 3 Scene 7

Timon decides to break fully from society: he tears off his clothes and leaves to live in the wild.

After some time living in a cave, Timon finds a cache of gold as he digs for roots. He covers up the cache, keeping only a few coins. Alcibiades, an Athenian captain whom the Senate exiled for holding opposing views, arrives at the cave. Timon, now a misanthrope in his new-found wealth, curses Alcibiades and his companions, throwing coins at them in disgust. They’re happy to take his coins and depart. News travels that Timon again has money and is, as always, an easy touch. Timon rewards each new arrival with insults and gold coin.

Alcibiades has used Timon’s money to bring a revolt to Athens. Timon, hearing the news, makes his last and final break:

TIMON
    Come not to me again, but say to Athens, 
    Timon hath made his everlasting mansion
    Upon the beachèd verge of the salt flood,
    Who once a day with his embossèd froth
    The turbulent surge shall cover. Thither come,
    And let my gravestone be your oracle.
    Lips, let four words go by, and language end.
    What is amiss, plague and infection mend.
    Graves only be men’s work, and death their gain.
    Sun, hide thy beams. Timon hath done his reign.
                                                                                         Exit [into his cave]
-Act 5 Scene 2

Later, soldiers discover a gravestone near Timon’s cave and read its epitaph. They bring the news  of Timon’s death to Alcibiades, who is ready to enter Athens in victory. After paying homage to Timon, he enters the city promising peace.

Thoughts

The editors of The Oxford Shakespeare credit the play to a collaboration between Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton, a seventeenth century playwright. The difference in this play compared to other Shakespearean plays is obvious to even non-scholars like me: it’s little more than a re-staging of the plot from the source material.

For most if not all of his plays, Shakespeare started with well-known stories or dramas and made them novel by creating new characters and scenes while inviting the audience into the internal world of the main characters. Timon of Athens is marked by the absence of any of those techniques. The ending feels disjointed. Little wonder, it’s a play rarely staged for performance.

The most affecting character, the steward Flavius, provides an emotional entry to the play. After Timon has self-exiled to the woods, his servants find themselves unhoused and without a job. In stark contrast to the self-dealing rich men who populate the play, the servants commiserate with each other. Led by Flavius, they share amongst themselves what little they have. Flavius seeks out Timon, offering to help him even in his penury. Timon, misanthrope that he is, rebuffs him. I assume that Flavius is responsible for burying Timon and inscribing the grave’s headstone (otherwise the grave and its stone are incomprehensible since Timon died alone in his cave).

Morality tale

This is, unapologetically, a morality tale that’s been reworked tirelessly. Lacking self-worth, Timon tried to buy it from others. Once he realizes the emptiness of the flattery and praise recently heaped  on him, he rejects not only society but also himself. (APEMANTUS: “Thou hast cast away thyself being like thyself— / A madman so long, now a fool.” Act 4 Scene 3) Without money and friendship (and the value they convey), he has no love to give to himself or others. All value is gone from the world. When he discovers gold, he understands that it too has lost all meaning.

We can extend that morality tale in many directions: social media’s virtual ‘friends’ and ‘followers’; cancel culture; the heart emoji that co-opts actual emotion. Sycophants swarm fame only to abandon it when the winds of publicity surround someone new. That’s the way morality tales work. You can always find the moral mirroring something in ‘real life.’

Timon’s a sad character, but it’s hard for me to see him as tragic. He was gullible. He didn’t listen to the one person who truly cared for him. He realized too late that all social life is a man-made construct. We impose whatever value we perceive in commerce, politics, money. Intrinsic value can only be discovered and discovery depends upon being open to see. Sadly, Timon’s time in the natural world didn’t open his mind to natural beauty and kinship with others. Instead, he found only more of the same coin that had destroyed his life. What a pity.    

Thanks for reading,

1. When we moved to the Dallas metro area, I soon learned that its massive roadways were governed by a hierarchy based on vehicle value. Late-model luxury brands conferred rights of the road inaccessible to the rest of us driving budget-friendly brands. It was the inverse of the other places I’d lived, where drivers of beater cars drove with abandon while owners of more valuable cars drove cautiously. There was a lot I had to re-learn to live in Dallas.