The Complete Timon of Athens: An Annotated Edition of the Shakespeare Play

Timon of Athens might be regarded as the ancestor of Moliere’s Les Misanthrope—in that Alceste seems to embody all the negativity of Timon. Timon also illustrates the error of equating friendship with finances. “He finds that his idealization of friendship has been an illusion” (Mowat, xiv). “He is, thus, a man ‘nobly but unwisely generous’” (Hinman, 17). “The play, itself, is one ‘which its author never quite finished’” (Hinman, 27).