SOURCE: “A Dramatic History of Misanthropes,”Comparative Drama, Vol. 17, No. 2, Summer, 1983, pp. 97-123.

In the following essay, Konstan explores concepts of misanthropy by comparing Timon of Athens to Menander's Dyscolus and Moliére's Le Misanthrope.

The misanthrope is not merely different from other men; he judges them, and does so on what he takes to be their own terms. He perceives himself as the representative of a social ideal which others have betrayed, and condemns his fellows for their perversity and hypocrisy. And yet society abides, and it is the misanthrope who cannot fit. He is rigid and surly, a natural target for comic deflation. Were he asocial, like the cyclops or the anchorite, the codes of communal life would not be an issue for him. But he is antisocial, and bears within him the image of the thing he opposes. This tension demands dialogue, as Cicero perhaps...