Timon Of Athens Research Articles

A Tale of Two Fools: Middleton, Shakespeare, and Co-Authorship in Timon of Athens and King Lear

A Tale of Two Fools: Middleton, Shakespeare, and Co-Authorship in Timon of Athens and King Lear

Female Masquers and Ambiguity in Timon of Athens

Female Masquers and Ambiguity in <i>Timon of Athens</i>

Managerial Shakespeare and TROILUS AND CRESSIDA

From the 1990s a new development has taken place within the framework of ‘Shakespeare in popular culture’, and more specifically of so-called ‘Self-help Shakespeare’, namely what Douglas Lanier has termed ‘the Shakespeare corporate-management manual’. What underlies them all is the notion that, if Shakespeare is famous for portraying universal human nature, he has a good deal to teach the world of business and management. To this effect, they provide quotations and discussions of a number of plays, particularly Henry V, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Julius Caesar and The Merchant of Venice. The value and usefulness of these manuals have been contested, but they could also be objected to as regards the scant attention paid to some other Shakespearean plays, such as Timon of Athens and Troilus and Cressida. It is our contention that, if we were to accept and follow the logic and aims of their authors, Troilus and Cressida could be at least as relevant to business and management as those other plays. This is so not only in its implications for managerial leadership and decision-making, but also on the grounds of more abstract but applicable notions of value and marketability, which are both defended —and opposed— in the play. This paper will seek to explain these notions both in an early-modern context and in their possible relevance to modern entrepreneurial activity.

An Aesthetic Research into the Contrastive Styles on the Translations of Shakespeare’s Works

There exist debates about “poetry” and “prose” styles in the translations of Shakespeare’s works continuously, and there are the circumstances of one sticking to its own style, partializing and belittling the other. The “verse” school of Shakespeare translation maintains that Shakespeare’s original plays are verse, unique to 16th and 17th-century English poetic dramas (blank verse), which does not rhyme but has a distinct rhythm different from that of prose, typically an iambic five steps per line, capable of both impounding and crooning. Even the prose part of Shakespeare’s plays is also rhythmless verse, which can go into the realm that prose cannot go into. But some point out that translating Shakespeare’s works should base on the principle that “there is no fixed style, but a general style” the “general style” can have different expression styles under the concession of a certain style and the subjects, contents and the different characters of the translators. Besides, the early Shakespearean works were written in blank verse, and in the middle and late periods, they were written in prose. There are also other styles and variants, for example, the “prose-verse-couplet” in Timon of Athens and “syneathetic rhyme” in Winter’s Tale. Consequently, the translations of Shakespeare’s works should be “there is the beauty of poetry and fluency of the prose; meanwhile, poetry and prose should be combined.” Poetry and prose should permeate and converge. “The translations should not hold shape and lose the true conditions, mud the skin and misplace the temperament.”

Shakespeare Faciebat: Non-Finito Aesthetics in Timon of Athens

Shakespeare Faciebat: Non-Finito Aesthetics in Timon of Athens

Agamben at the Gates: Timon of Athens and the Political-Aesthetic Foundations of the Polis

Agamben at the Gates: Timon of Athens and the Political-Aesthetic Foundations of the Polis

Timon of Athens, Food Transformations, and the World as Confectionary

Timon of Athens, Food Transformations, and the World as Confectionary

Foisonnement imaginaire et délire paraphrénique dans La Tempête de Shakespeare

ObjectivesTo show, through the figure of Prospero (the “magician” of the Shakespeare's Tempest) the clinical specificity of fantastic paraphrenia: overflowing imaginary, luxuriance of delusion with fantastic and cosmic themes, “diplopia” between the imaginary world and the real world (H. Ey), megalomaniac dimension, etc. MethodA review of the literature will give us the essential elements to understand the singularity and personality of Prospero. These elements will logically lead us to say a few words about paraphrenia–and especially in its fantastic form–by taking our references both in the field of psychiatry (H. Ey) at the same time in the field of psychoanalysis (J. Lacan). Finally, we will conclude by emphasizing two fundamental aspects of paraphrenia that appear quite clearly in Prospero: the “exceptional” identity, and the imaginary proliferation. ResultsIf the character of Prospero, of course, cannot be considered a “clinical” case, the complexity of the character, the intelligence of Shakespeare, his sense of “clinical” observation, invite us to read The Tempest as the paraphrenic delusion of a dethroned Duke, driven by vengeance, persuaded to command Spirits and Nature. In addition, the “power” of paraphrenic delusion will also be grasped, in that it allows do distance, and to control an Other persecutor. DiscussionThe discussion concerns what is signing the stucture of “fantastic paraphrenia” from the psychiatric's and psychoanalytic's point of view, among other things the formation of an “exceptional” identity with megalomaniac colors, omnipotence, “diplopia” between the real world and the imaginary world, the imaginary proliferation, the luxuriance of the delusion, the “consent to the enjoyment of the Other” (Maleval). ConclusionShakespeare has given us, in his immense work, an important view of “psychopatic characters on stage” – to use a Freud's title – with an almost unmatched “clinical” fineness. This is the case for King Lear, for Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, Richard III, Timon of Athens, Titus Andronicus, and many others. Prospero, in our opinion, can be part of this lineage. The “hypertrophy of the Self”, the imaginary proliferation, the grandiose themes unfolded, the demiurge and theurge incarnated give the feeling – with our current landmarks – to assist in a certain sense to the development of a fantastic paraphrenia.

Evil is the Root of All Money: Performing Usury and Homosocial Credit in Elizabethan/Jacobean England

Performing Usury and Homosocial Credit in Elizabethan/Jacobean England. Elizabethan and Jacobean usury plays bear witness to an evolving sensibility regarding usury, money and social relations surrounding the turn of the 16th Century. A survey of plays reveals a tendency to vilify the usurer in an increasingly comic way until he becomes a trope or stock character-type void of any deep critical characterization. However, framing the cycle of plays are The Merchant of Venice circa 1597 and A New Way to Pay Old Debts in 1625. These two plays present a higher level of tension or anxiety in the characterization and plight of the usurer in less comic terms than many of the plays with which they were contemporary. The monetary commerce of the usurer is polarized against a network of homosocial credit which the usurer is barred from entering in a binary opposition. There seems to be an anxiety that monetary increase poses a threat to the aristocratic birthright. It only makes sense then, that the all-male playing companies would portray any threat to the necessary social trade-trust in a negative light. Of particular interest is the larger number of asides in the so called usury plays, both marked and apparent, which are clearly aimed at the audience and act to gain complicity with a largely plebian audience for an aristocratic homosocial sensibility that requires all levels of society to participate in order to defend itself. If the exchange of money and social credit are closely followed in The Merchant of Venice, Timon of Athens, and A New Way to Pay Old Debts, homosocial credit is aligned with virtue while monetary credit is depicted as a rising threat worthy of risibility or punishment.

Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton

Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton

Amicitia and Beneficia in Timon of Athens

Amicitia and Beneficia in Timon of Athens

Timon of Athens

Timon of Athens

“Be as a Planetary Plague”: Pestilence and Cure in Timon of Athens

“Be as a Planetary Plague”: Pestilence and Cure in Timon of Athens

Play review: Athens by Night [Timon of Athens and A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Play review: Athens by Night [Timon of Athens and A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Play review: Timon of Athens

Play review: Timon of Athens

Timon of Athens, Food Transformations, and the World as Confectionary

In the transformation of early modern English food sources from the local to the international are a wide range of questions about the global-sourcing/local-demand conflict that was developing in Shakespeare’s time and continues today. Shakespeare’s food reveals the complexities of a network of global and local actors and transformations. As a performance, Timon of Athens potentially arouses sometimes intense visceral responses (ones that are peculiarly resonant with contemporary audiences) to Timon’s dream that the world is his confectionary. One of the results of performing the transformation of food from the local to the global (the play’s explicit representation of the world as Timon’s unsustainable confectionary) is that we are better able to see and understand ecological collapse: while anthropogenic ecological collapses in early modern times were relatively isolated, today’s collapses are more properly understood as global. We witness the transformative and deterritorializing potentials of food, even while such transformations are in the service of a deeply nationalist agenda that is troubling and unsustainable in its rejection of global connectedness. Performance is vital for excavating the layers and implications of food transformations and potentials in Timon of Athens, a play deeply relevant to food transformation debates current in the 21st century.

Marx, Shakespeare e o nexo do dinheiro

Este artigo se volta ao caderno intitulado “Dinheiro” dos Manuscritos econômico-filosóficos de 1844, de Marx, em que se abordam as consequências perniciosas do nexo do dinheiro para a formação da sensibilidade. A fim de concretizar esses efeitos e elucidar esse nexo, Marx cita uma longa passagem do Tímon de Atenas, de Shakespeare. A apropriação de Marx dessa peça evidencia seu interesse no modo como conformações sociais afetam a subjetividade, a personalidade humana e as relações interpessoais; e como a retomada da sensibilidade paranós constitui uma finalidade revolucionária para Marx, talvez o fim último da emancipação.

Francis Bacon’s Contribution to Shakespeare: A New Attribution Method by Barry R. Clarke

Reviewed by: Francis Bacon’s Contribution to Shakespeare: A New Attribution Method by Barry R. Clarke MacDonald P. Jackson (bio) Barry R. Clarke. Francis Bacon’s Contribution to Shakespeare: A New Attribution Method. New York and Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2019, xxix + 310, pp. $271.00; $58.99. isbn: 978-0-367-13782-3 (HB); isbn: 978-0-367-22544-5 (PB). To quote the summary inside the front cover, this book advocates a “paradigm shift . . . away from a single-author theory of the Shake-speare work towards a many-hands theory.” There must, however, be few “orthodox scholars” who nowadays believe that every play in the First Folio of 1623 is by Shakespeare alone. It is widely accepted that playwrights besides Shakespeare contributed to 1 Henry VI (Thomas Nashe and at least one other), Titus Andronicus (George Peele), Timon of Athens (Thomas Middleton), and Henry VIII or All Is True (John Fletcher), and also to Pericles (George Wilkins) and The Two Noble Kinsmen (Fletcher), both excluded from the Folio. The New Oxford Shakespeare more controversially detects Marlowe’s hand in all three Parts of Henry VI and argues for minor adaptation by Middleton of Macbeth, Measure for Measure, and All’s Well That Ends Well. It names Shakespeare as part- author of Edward III and (most contentiously of all) Arden of Faversham, each published in anonymous quartos. Clarke knows most of this (47–48), but his “many hands” include more contributors to more plays, and he rejects current attributions to “single authors” even of scenes and sequences believed to make up their shares in a play-script. Before elaborating, I should explain that Clarke calls “the man from Stratford” “Shakspere,” reserving “Shakespeare” for the published works (xviii), while, to no obvious purpose, the hyphenated “Shake-speare” also appears sporadically. Hence the variant spellings in my quotations from Clarke’s book. Within wording of my own the traditional “Shakespeare” is used. [End Page 364] Regarding the famous “upstart crow” allusion in Greene’s Groats-Worth of Wit as indicating that Shakespeare “was a play broker” who claimed as “all his own work” other men’s plays to which he had merely “added lines,” Clarke finds the writing of Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe, Christopher Marlowe, and Anthony Munday in 3 Henry VI (91) and states that its “O tiger’s heart wrapp’d in a woman’s hide!” (Riverside, 1.4.137) “might be the only line that we can be sure Shakspere ever wrote” (88). He sees signs of Nashe and, as reviser, Thomas Heywood in The Comedy of Errors; of Nashe and, as possible revisers, Heywood and Thomas Dekker, in Love’s Labor’s Lost; and of Francis Bacon in both those comedies plus Twelfth Night and The Tempest (126, 141, 163, 187). Clarke discloses that some years ago he held the view that the Shakespeare canon was created by “Francis Bacon . . . alone under the pseudonym Shakespeare” (8 n.5), and a large part of the present book is occupied with rehearsing the standard anti-Stratfordian arguments. We are told, for instance, that “The extant documents for the actor William Shakspere reveal him to be an entrepreneur in the London theatre world, as well as a money-lender, a dealer in malt, and a property speculator. However, there is no evidence that he had access to the books that are known to have provided background material for some of the Shakespeare plays” (13); further, apart from “six surviving William Shakspere signatures, which are inconsistent, there is no record of his handwriting. No original Shakespeare manuscript for a sonnet or play has ever been found” (22). Clarke concedes that no autograph manuscripts exist of plays or poems by several other writers of the time, but, oddly, includes in his list two playwrights for whom they do: Heywood (The Captives and The Escapes of Jupiter) and Middleton (A Game at Chess). Like most anti-Stratfordians, he makes no attempt to rebut the case, which in my view is overwhelming, that “Hand D’s” insurrection scene added to the British Library manuscript play Sir Thomas More was both conceived and penned by Shakespeare. Clarke tortures the sense of passages in the Parnassus plays...

Dependent Contractors: Timon of Athens, Collaborative Writing, and Theatrical Capitalism

Dependent Contractors: Timon of Athens, Collaborative Writing, and Theatrical Capitalism

Timon of Athens by the Royal Shakespeare Company

Timon of Athens by the Royal Shakespeare Company