SOURCE: Cohen, Derek. “The Politics of Wealth: Timon of Athens.” Neophilologus 77, no. 1 (1993): 149-60.

In the following essay, Cohen examines the theme of wealth in Timon of Athens and contends that it is Timon's realization of its corrupting effect on society that leads to his misanthropy.

The obsessive concern of the chief characters of Timon of Athens is having and not having money. The question raised by the obsession is not merely what it means to be rich or poor but, more important, how identity is determined by external measureable phenomena like money. The play reveals the extent and the means by which the individual's social locus is fixed and unfixed in relation to such phenomena. Because money buys power and its concomitants like authority, it serves as a convenient signifier of a complex of social practices that has arisen out of the individualist economic framework. There is, as...