SOURCE: Wilcher, Robert. “Timon of Athens: A Shakespearean Experiment.” Cahiers Élisabéthains, 34 (October 1988): 61-78.

In the following essay, Wilcher assesses Timon of Athens as an experimental work of art, and studies the issues of genre and artistic vision through an exploration of the play's structure.

I

The centre of critical debate has shifted considerably since T. M. Parrott published his monograph on Timon of Athens in 1923,¹ but the problematic nature of the work continues to exercise the ingenuity of Shakespearian scholars. Victorian and early twentieth-century arguments about its authorship and the state and status of the text printed in the 1623 Folio, though not conclusively settled, have been pushed to one side by arguments about the play's purpose or meaning.² It has been found to embody, among other things, “the stark contrast of the partial and imperfect nature of humanity and the world of the senses with the strong...