SOURCE: An introduction to Timon of Athens, edited by H. J. Oliver, Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1959, pp. xiii-lii.

In the following excerpt, Oliver argues that Timon of Athens lacks dramatic conflict and that the title character lacks depth, but agrees with William Hazlitt's praise of the play's intensity and unity.

Dedicating to the Duke of Buckingham his revision of Timon of Athens, Shadwell wrote: "it has the inimitable hand of Shakespear in it, which never made more masterly strokes than in this. Yet I can truly say, I have made it into a Play" [quoted in The History of Timon of Athens the Man-Hater (1678)]. So extravagant a claim, one would have thought, was likely to be laughed at by twentieth-century readers: it has in fact often been quoted with approval. Although convinced that Timon is unfinished, I think that it is a far finer play than Shadwell imagined, and...