About the Play:

Timon, a wealthy, generous Athenian, is a man who never hesitates to help his friends in need. However, when he falls in dire straits and is forced to sell his property, he is deserted by all those who know him. Afflicted with a venomous hatred of mankind, he retreats into the forest, adopts a diet of roots and denounces his fellow humans in soliloquies of the most towering passion and most bitter invective. 

Timon of Athens should rank amongst Shakespeare's greatest and most renowned tragedies. It is a mature work, displaying much linguistic virtuosity, charm of expression and highly imaginative images and allegories. It is hard to imagine why so many critics are dead-set against acknowledging it for the masterpiece it is. It possibly contains the direst abuse of human fickleness and folly and the most nihilistic (and most moving) yearning for death and extinction on the part of the maligned Timon.

The real stealer of the play, however, is Timon's foil, the philosopher, Apemantus. Embodying the most systematic misanthrophy, he smilingly and scornfully looks on Timon's open-handedness during his days of prosperity. Their encounter later in the forest is one of the most gripping of confrontations in literary history, containing some of the most exciting exchanges and the most inflammatory put-downs. A sadly unrecognised masterpiece.

In this edition of Timon of Athens noted Shakespearean scholar H.J. Oliver provides: a clear and authoritative text; detailed notes and commentary on the same page as the text; a full introduction discussing the critical and historical background to the play; and appendices presenting sources and relevant extracts.

Offering a wealth of helpful and incisive commentary, The Arden Shakespeare has developed a reputation as the premier scholarly edition to which academics, students and actors most frequently refer.

About the Editor:

Henry James Oliver (1916-1982) was an Australian academic and world authority on the works of William Shakespeare. He was educated at the University of Sydney and University College, London, and was employed as an academic at the University of Sydney from 1936 until 1959. He was appointed foundation Professor of English at the University of New South Wales when its Arts Faculty opened in 1960.