The idea may be a mere fancy, but it has seemed to me that this pre-occupation, and sometimes this oppression, are traceable in other plays of the period from about 1602 to 1605 (Hamlet, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, All’s Well, Othello); while in earlier plays the subject is handled less, and without disgust, and in later plays (e.g. Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter’s Tale, Cymbeline) it is also handled, however freely, without this air of repulsion (I omit Pericles because the authorship of the brothel-scenes is doubtful).

(2) For references to the lower animals, similar to those in King Lear, see especially Timon, I. i. 259; II. ii. 180; III. vi. 103 f.; IV. i. 2, 36; IV. iii. 49 f., 177 ff., 325 ff. (surely a passage written or, at the least, rewritten by Shakespeare), 392, 426 f.  I ignore the constant abuse of the dog in the conversations where Apemantus appears.

(3) Further points of resemblance are noted in the text at pp. 246, 247, 310, 326, 327, and many likenesses in word, phrase and idea might be added, of the type of the parallel ‘Thine Do comfort and not burn,’ Lear, II. iv. 176, and ‘Thou sun, that comfort’st, burn!’ Timon, V. i. 134.

(4) The likeness in style and versification (so far as the purely Shakespearean parts of Timon are concerned) is surely unmistakable, but some readers may like to see an example.  Lear speaks here (IV. vi. 164 ff.): 

     Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand! 
     Why dost thou lash that whore?  Strip thine own back;
     Thou hotly lust’st to use her in that kind
     For which thou whipp’st her.  The usurer hangs the cozener. 
     Through tatter’d clothes small vices do appear;
     Robes and furr’d gowns hide all.  Plate sin with gold,
     And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;
     Arm it in rags, a pigmy’s straw does pierce it. 
     None does offend, none, I say, none; I’ll able ’em: 
     Take that of me, my friend, who have the power
     To seal the accuser’s lips.  Get thee glass eyes;
     And, like a scurvy politician, seem
     To see the things thou dost not.

And Timon speaks here (IV. iii. 1 ff.): 

     O blessed breeding sun, draw from the earth
     Rotten humidity; below thy sister’s orb
     Infect the air!  Twinn’d brothers of one womb,
     Whose procreation, residence, and birth,
     Scarce is dividant, touch them with several fortunes,
     The greater scorns the lesser:  not nature,
     To whom all sores lay siege, can bear great fortune,
     But by contempt of nature. 
     Raise me this beggar, and deny’t that lord: 
     The senator shall bear contempt hereditary,
     The beggar native honour. 
     It is the pasture lards the rother’s sides,
     The want that makes him lean.  Who dares, who dares.