SOURCE: Draper, R. P. “Timon of Athens.” Shakespeare Quarterly 8, no. 2 (spring 1957): 195-200.

In the following essay, Draper examines Timon's belief in the corrupting influence of wealth.

In the first part of Timon of Athens Timon appears as a man full of warmth, geniality and overflowing humanity. He is the incarnation of charity and hospitality, and believes in the supreme virtue of friendship, which his generosity is intended to foster. Gold plays an immensely important part throughout the play, but for Timon, before his fall, it is completely the servant of “honour” (another key-word) and of brotherly love. In the great feast of I. ii. he comes very near to enunciating an ideal of benevolent communism in which money merely provides the opportunity for men to express charity towards one another:

We are born to do benefits; and what better or properer can we call our own than the...