SOURCE: "Confounding Contraries: The Unmediated World of Timon of Athens," in Shakespeare's Mediated World, Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1976, pp. 117-42.

In the following essay, Fly examines the experimental and metadramatic characteristics of Timon of Athens, concluding that the work "marks a climactic juncture in Shakespeare's restless exploration into his demanding medium."

Even in our troubled century Timon of Athens has not attracted many admirers. Still, we are less willing than we once were to take our critical departure from the admonishment carved on Timon's gravestone: "Pass by and curse thy fill; but pass, and stay not here thy gait" (V. iv. 73). Timon's harsh gesture of radical disengagement makes us wonder just what affinity Shakespeare could have glimpsed between the misanthrope's rhetorical stance and the expansive, though finally limited, capabilities of his medium. No contraries would appear to hold more antipathy, as Kent might say, than such...