SOURCE: Tambling, Jeremy. “Hating Man in Timon of Athens.” Essays in Criticism 50, no. 2 (April 2000): 145-68.

In the following essay, Tambling investigates Timon's anger and melancholy, finding that these feelings generate both his philanthropy and misanthropy.

Timon of Athens begins with two artists, a Poet and a Painter, who seem to stand aloof from the crowds of people visiting Timon for their own ends; however, they are just as financially interested, for they want to sell Timon their art-works. While the scene shows implicitly how art exists in a commodified form, their dialogue hints that the play will be self-reflexive, turning on the possibilities offered by its own art and language. The Poet asks the question, ‘how goes the world?’:

PAINTER:

It wears, sir, as it grows. 

POET:

Ay, that's well known. 

But what particular rarity, what strange, 

Which manifold record not matches? 

(I. i. 3-5)¹

When the Poet...