SOURCE: Auden, W. H. “Timon of Athens.” In Lectures on Shakespeare, edited by Arthur Kirsch, pp. 255-69. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000.

In the following essay, constructed from lectures delivered in 1946 and 1947, Auden calls Timon a “pathological giver” whose giving is motivated by selfishness and a desire to feel superior to others. The critic contends that when Timon's power—his ability to give—is taken away, he falls into “a state of powerless hatred.”

Timon of Athens is an interim work between the great tragedies and the last batch of Shakespeare's plays, which are usually known as the romance comedies. It is rash to draw inferences from an author's works about his life. Timon is not a personal work, as Hamlet may be. The five masterpieces Shakespeare wrote in four years were succeeded by three plays—Timon, Cymbeline, and Pericles—that were only partly by him, followed...