VI - TIMON OF ATHENS

Summary

The story of Timon the Misanthrope was popular not only in his native land of Greece, but in the English literature of the Middle Ages. Classical readers, who are of course acquainted with the lively dialogue of Lucian, were once apt to look upon the philosopher of Samosata as affording the original of the play of Shakspeare; but I doubt if Lucian, though familiar to the learned, was popularly known even at the end of the sixteenth century in England. Shakspeare was indebted for the hint, and the principal incidents of his drama, to Plutarch, translated from the French of Amyot by Sir Thomas North, and to Painter's Palace of Pleasure. Dr. Farmer, in his very shallow and pretending Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare, announces this important fact among others equally important, with much flourish; and those who feel inclined for such inquiries, will find sufficient to satisfy their curiosity in the voluminous notes gathered by the industry of Malone, Steevens, and Boswell.

To use the phrase of Dr. Farmer, which immediately succeeds his notice of Timon, “were this a proper place for such a disquisition,” I should have something to say, not merely on the learning of Shakspeare,—a point on which I differ exceedingly with the Master of Emanuel,—but on the utility of learning to a dramatist.