O find Shakespeare in "Timon of Athens" is an ingenious exercise, and a not unprofitable expenditure of time. Mr. Lee, than whom there could be no higher authority, assigns to him the first two acts and the fourth, crediting George Wilkins with the third and the fifth. If, as Mr. Lee hints, Wilkins had something to do with that magnificent play "The Yorkshire Tragedy," his dramatic power must have been considerable; for there is no English playwright except Shakespeare whose fame would not be raised if it were proved that he had written "The Yorkshire Tragedy." As much cannot be said for "Timon of Athens," in which we may feel sure that Shakespeare took very little interest himself. Yet diligent search reveals some faint

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trace of him, and the dust of his writings is gold. The
story of the play, which may have been taken from Plu-
tarch, from Lucian, from Painter, or from Boiardo, is
singularly crude and displeasing. Timon was a wealthy
Athenian citizen of the great days, the generation after
Pericles, when the martyrdom of Socrates was still
recent and Plato was yet alive. It is perhaps needless
to say
that local colour will be sought in vain. Just as
Shakespeare's Verona contains an alehouse, but no amphi-
theatre, no market-place, and no tombs of the Scaligers;
so in the Athens of Timon there are drums and fifes and
other appliances of modern civilisation, but no Acropolis
and no Parthenon. The play opens in the true Shake-
spearean manner, with an easy and natural scene which
introduces the subject without the formality of an ex-
planation. Perhaps the best example of Shakespeare's
method in this respect is the dialogue between Sampson
and Gregory at the beginning of "Romeo and Juliet."
Here we have artists and tradesmen waiting for an
audience in the hall of Timon's house. Their conversa-
tion discloses his manner of life. He is rich, open-handed,
liberal, indiscriminate in his generosity, ostentatious
though kindly in his patronage. He "passes,” that is,
he exceeds the common run of men. The painter has

made a portrait of him. The poet has written verses in
his honour. All men speak well of him, and find their
account in flattering him. But even on the threshold of
the drama an admonitory note is struck. The poet has
feigned Fortune to be throned on a high and pleasant
hill, beckoning Timon to her, and multitudes follow

Timon's steps. Then he goes on in lines which we may well accept as Shakespeare's to foreshadow the μûlos, the plot and moral, of the tragedy :

"When Fortune in her shift and change of mood
Spurns down her late beloved, all his dependants
Which labour'd after him to the mountain's top,
Even on their knees and hands, let him slip down,
Not one accompanying his declining foot."

These words are uttered significantly enough before
Timon appears upon the stage.

He comes on talking to the servant of his old friend Ventidius, imprisoned for debt. The debt will at once be paid, and Timon's kindness will not end there. With a construction, terse and pregnant, which Shakespeare did not know to be Thucydidean, he adds:

""Tis not enough to help the feeble up,

But to support him after."

A further promise on Timon's part to provide a dowry for his servant Lucilius elicits the cynical proverb, appropriate to the story, that honesty is its own reward. Amid a chorus of gross and rather sickening flattery there enters Apemantus, by far the best and most vivid person of the drama. Timon, as will be seen, changes from one extreme to another, from universal confidence to equally universal distrust. Apemantus never changes at all. He is a cynic from the first, and with him cynicism means the natural shamelessness of the dog, not the acquired indifference of the philosopher.

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There is no dignity in him as there is in Diogenes. He represents the merely brute element in human nature, what Zola, whose mind it haunted, called la bête humaine. The genius of Shakespeare alone could have made such a character endurable, and yet Shakespeare bestowed, if we may judge by appearances, very little thought or labour upon Apemantus. If we compare the exquisite and inimitable humour which the prodigal master has lavished upon the fool in "Lear," upon the nurse in "Romeo and Juliet," upon Launce in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," upon Master Shallow, upon Mrs. Quickly, or upon Falstaff's ragged retainers, with Apemantus's celebrated and not altogether ignoble grace, it will help us to realise how little Shakespeare cared for his reputation, and how completely he could surrender himself to the whim of the moment. Apemantus, however, has his allotted place in the development of the drama. He gives Timon, who had not heard the speech of the poet, his first warning. The poet's words are meant for the audience; Apemantus addresses Timon himself. He is not heeded because he oversteps the mark. To Apemantus all Athenians are knaves, and that not because they are Athenians, but because they are men. He is wrong in the general, and yet in this particular instance he is right. If Timon can be blamed for ignoring his unrestrained vituperation, it is not because Apemantus was justified in his estimate of mankind, but because the false friends made with the Mammon of unrighteousness, to adapt the scathing irony of the parable, last so long as the means of corruption last, and no longer.

Timon's friends belonged to the cream of Athenian society. Cream is like scum, it rises to the top. In this very first scene of the play we are introduced to Alcibiades, the most brilliant personage among the public men of that time, the Cæsar of Athens, without moral principle, but equally distinguished in culture and in action, and immortalised by Plato in the most poetical of all philosophic dialogues. But as Dr. Caius most pertinently asked, when he found that "honest man" Master Simple, what the honest man did in his closet, so we may ask what the dazzling disciple of Socrates does in this play. Here he only comes to dine with Timon. How they are afterwards associated we shall see. At the end of the stage-directions for the second scene of the first act is the graphic sentence, "Then comes, dropping after all, Apemantus, discontentedly, like himself." Alcibiades in "Timon of Athens " is emphatically not like himself. He is a rough, frank soldier, a sort of inferior Coriolanus, with no more philosophy than Timon, though he possesses the accomplishment, not unusual at Athens in those days, of being able to read. In this scene, the scene of a very different banquet from that with which the name of Alcibiades will always be connected, he speaks like a Hotspur without his humour. The central figure is neither he nor Timon, but Apemantus, whose railings may be called the second warning of Timon; and yet with the warning there is encouragement, the offer of Ventidius, who has inherited his father's fortune, to repay Timon's loan, "doubled with thanks and service," "doubled" being a