SOURCE: "The Big Idea: Timon of Athens," in Shakespeare and Tragedy, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981, pp. 74-95.
In the following essay, Bayley asserts that Timon of Athens ultimately fails as a tragedy because the extreme nature of the movement from complete generosity to absolute misanthropy allows no room for the development of the "natural pressure of life" that arises in Shakespearean drama. The critic nevertheless notes that the play's poetry is characterized by "all the marks of late Shakespearean mastery—it is terse and elliptic, leaping between word and idea with arbitrary and yet persuasive power."'
