Apemantus, a key character from Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens, is a philosopher and a cynic. He dislikes Athenians (branding them all ‘knaves’, with no exceptions), and seems to be consumed by hate. But is this a fair assessment of Apemantus’ character, and his role in the play? Or is there […]
Is Timon a sympathetic character or not? Is he, in Harold Bloom’s words in Shakespeare: The Invention Of The Human, a ‘defrauded idealist’ or a ‘gullible fool’? Is he a kind man whose generosity is taken advantage of, who then slides into understandable misanthropy when he finds that others will […]
For the influential Shakespeare critic G. Wilson Knight, Timon of Athens was the most remarkable of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Yet for most readers and critics of William Shakespeare’s work, there’s no getting away from the fact that the general view is that Timon of Athens is one of the least satisfying, […]
Of all Shakespeare’s plays, Timon of Athens is perhaps the most easy to summarise in terms of its plot; certainly it’s up there in the top five of his plays with the simplest plot which can be summarised in just a few sentences. So we’ll keep the following plot summary […]