SOURCE: "'Greeks' and 'Merrygreeks': A Background to Timon of Athens and Troilus and Cressida," in Essays on Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama in Honor of Hardin Craig, edited by Richard Hosley, University of Missouri Press, 1962, pp. 223-33.

In the essay below, Spencer shows how Renaissance attitudes towards ancient Greece, derived ultimately from unfavorable accounts in Latin sources, informed Shakespearean drama.

A few years ago, in a book which demonstrates the contribution of the classics to the literatures of modern Europe, an eminent classical scholar described Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida as a "distant, ignorant, and unconvincing caricature of Greece." Timon of Athens is still more outrageous as a representation of society in that city at the height of its civilization, when it was the "educator of Hellas." One can sympathize with the discomfort or indignation which has been felt by those whose ears and eyes are full of the glory...