SOURCE: Newman, Karen. “Rereading Shakespeare's Timon of Athens at the Fin de Siècle.” In Shakespeare and the Twentieth Century: The Selected Proceedings of the International Shakespeare Association World Congress, Los Angeles, 1996, edited by Jonathan Bate, Jill L. Levenson, and Dieter Mehl, pp. 378-89. Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 1996.

In the following essay, Newman examines Timon's use of language in the play, and contends that he is a “visionary poet engaged in a dialogue with the universe.”

Timon of Athens has been largely ignored by Shakespeareans until quite recently. The play began to be staged and reread in the 1980s, presumably, it is sometimes said, because of “its emphasis on an affluent and decadent society.”¹ Since Bradley, Timon has been characterized as unfinished, weak, ill constructed, and confused, and has been linked to King Lear either as a failed first sketch, or alternatively, as an after-vibration, with...