SOURCE: "Timon in Shakespeare's Athens," in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 1, Spring, 1980, pp. 21-30.

In the following essay, Miola discusses the Athenian society in Timon of Athens, claiming that Shakespeare uses the popular Renaissance conception of a corrupt and unstable Athens to comment on the political and moral nature of man.

Despite the prominence of Athens in the title, the dialogue, and the arrangement of scenes, Shakespeare's depiction of the ancient city in Timon of Athens has received inadequate attention. Early in this century Frederick S. Boas denied the importance of Timon's setting, declaring that Shakespeare showed little familiarity with Periclean Greece and little power to create a "Greek environment." Later, calling attention to the play's Roman anatopisms, Gilbert Highet [in his The Classical Tradition (1949)] concluded likewise: "The Greek plays are not like Greece." Subscribing to the same view, E. C. Pettet [in "Timon of Athens," RES (1947)] went on...