Character Analysis
Timon is loaded, and he loves giving gifts to his friends. Um, where do we sign up to be his friend? Well, that's exactly what everyone else in Athens is thinking. Word on the street is that Timon hands out money and gifts like candy on Halloween, and everybody wants in on the moolah.
Never an Empty Wallet
Timon's wallet is always open and ready for all takers, as long as they say they're Timon's friends. By the end of the first act, we've already seen Timon give away "four milk-white horses, trapp'd in silver" to Lucius (1.2.182), present a "jewel" to some random lord (1.2.168), pay a woman's dowry to an Old Athenian (1.1.146-150), and settle Ventidius's debts (1.1.103-107). Plus we've heard that "no gift to him, but breeds the giver a return exceeding all use of quittance" (1.1.283-285).
Wow. That's generous, all right. Basically, Timon overpays money back when someone lends it to him; he goes out of his way to buy stuff from merchants that he has no use for; he covers people's dowries and pays off their debts; and he's feeding, housing, and entertaining over twenty guests. No wonder people like hanging out at Timon's house.
Now, Timon's a pretty extreme guy. As Apemantus tells him: "The middle of humanity thou never knewest, / but the extremity of both ends" (4.3.342-343). Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is an open question, but if there's one thing that separates Timon from his friends, it's that he's like Johnny Knoxville to their Homer Simpson. He's all on, all the time. When his friends fail him, it's not just their hypocrisy that gets him; it's also the fact that they're kind of mediocre in the end.
Anyway, we think Shakespeare goes out of his way to make sure we know that Timon is exceedingly generous with everyone he meets. But why is he so generous? We're never really given a reason why Timon feels the need to be so darn giving, or any insight into what's in that big old head of his. He tells us that he loves his friends and that they are just about the most important thing in the world to him, but we're left wondering what the deal is.
Friend or Foe?
So what's up with all this so-called friendship? Well, at the beginning of the play, Timon loves chillin' with his friends. Here's how he opens his banquet:
Ceremony was but devised at first
To set a gloss on faint deeds, hollow welcomes,
Recanting goodness, sorry ere 'tis shown;
But where there is true friendship, there needs none.
Pray, sit; more welcome are ye to my fortunes
Than my fortunes to me. (1.2.14-19)
Did you notice how Timon just wants to share his wealth with his buddies? He doesn't care how much money he has; he just wants to be with them (or so he says). Too bad they don't feel the same way: they care how much money he has, all right. Even Timon's servants see right through them. What we want to know is this: why is Timon so invested in these friendships?
It seems like his friends are all he talks about in the opening scenes. He's always saving someone or helping someone just to show what a great friend he is. Hmm… maybe he's just the slightest bit insecure about his friendships? Usually when people flaunt their friends, they're trying to convince themselves as well as others. Apemantus points out that Timon's friends are phonies; maybe all that grumbling gets to Timon.
After all, is anyone really that over the top with gifts and shows of affection, day in and day out? Are we supposed to understand Timon not as a regular old guy, but more as an archetype for kindness and giving? Or is he really that kind? Does he really care about his friends, or is he so generous simply because he likes to be liked? This dude sure does like to make a splash, and even though he complains later that his friends were after money instead of real friendship, it seems like Timon himself is confused about friendship.
If Timon had Facebook, he might just be the kind of person who'd have 2,500 friends and who'd post fake modest selfies and fake modest status updates every day. No matter how many times he says he loves his friends, he sometimes seems to love his own image as a friendly, generous guy even more than he loves them. Maybe that's why he's attracted to shallow people and completely overlooks the decent people who care about him, like his servant Flavius.
That would also explain why Timon turns so nastily against his former friends. He's right, of course: they're just as nasty as he says they are. But when they turn against him, it's not just his friends he's lost—it's also his own image of himself as the big man around town.
That doesn't make Timon bad; it just makes him complicated.
Fortune's Fool
It's pretty easy to criticize Timon. After all, he lets everyone take him for all he's worth… and then some. He's completely ignorant to his money troubles, and he doesn't seem to want to know the reality of his situation. Why was he so trusting with his finances, so free with his money?
Timon's foolish spending habits go hand-in-hand with his sometimes shallow attitude toward friendship, and both of these problems contribute to his demise. Flavius tries to warn Timon about his spending habits, but he doesn't listen.
Could it be that Timon is Shakespeare's wink-wink, nudge-nudge to English society regarding the behavior of their king? Rumor has it that King James I knew how to overspend, and this may have been Shakespeare's dig at him from afar. He couldn't publicly criticize the king, so he wrote Timon of Athens instead. There are certainly a lot of scholars who think so, anyway.
Unsolved Mystery
Even though Timon starts out as a generous, friendly guy, he ends up miserable. He admits it himself: he's a misanthrope, or hater of all mankind. It seems a little extreme: he hates everyone and everything, plain and simple. You might think he'd just get annoyed at his former buddies, but he takes his anger out on everyone instead. It's clear he thinks the whole world is full of people just like his friends: fakes who just take for themselves.
This radical transformation upsets Timon's faithful servant Flavius, but aside from that, no one really seems to care. It's true that Timon has some visitors in the woods, but for the most part, it seems everyone is happy to move on with their lives without Timon. Even Timon's death is unceremonious: we're not even sure how or when it happens. A soldier stumbles across his grave and reports the news to Alcibiades. Doesn't seem like the fall of a Shakespearean hero to us.
Maybe that's because Timon isn't quite the hero he'd like to think he is. His fate is entirely avoidable: he's given chance after chance to return to Athens, but he just curses it and says he'd rather die. Timon's a guy who likes to go to extremes, and he's so self-centered that he completely fails to see that his real friends—poor servants like Flavius—have always stuck with him. How can you hate all of mankind when good, decent people are standing right in front of you?
Well, Timon probably doesn't notice Flavius for the sole reason that Flavius is just a servant, and Timon's mostly interested in blinged-out big-shot types. Timon's so stuck within his fake, status-conscious society that he can't see beyond it. When he finds out that this society is, in fact, totally fake, he just jumps to the conclusion that everyone and everything is fake—even though it's totally clear that this is not the case.
It's sad that Timon couldn't figure this out before he drove himself to his death, but if he seems less tragic than other Shakespearean heroes, it's probably because brought so much of his bad fortune on himself.
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