e ingratitude in the State, openly makes war upon it,
reduces it to his own terms, and rules it. He finds Timon dead.

_Timon of Athens_ is a play of mixed authorship. Shakespeare's share in
it is large and unmistakable; but much of it was written by an unknown
poet of whom we can decipher this, that he was a man of genius, a
skilled writer for the stage, and of a marked personality. It cannot
now be known how the collaboration was arranged. Either the unknown
collaborated with Shakespeare, or the unknown wrote the play and
Shakespeare revised it.

Ingratitude is one of the commonest forms of treachery. It is the form
that leads most quickly to the putting back of the world, because it
destroys generosity of mind. It creates in man the bitter and
destructive quality of misanthropy, or a destroying passion of revenge.
In this play the two authors show the different ways in which the human
mind may be turned to those bitter passions.

Apemantus is currish, because others are not. He has wit without
charity. Alcibiades makes war on his city because others have not the
rough-and-ready large practical justice of men used to knocks. He has a
large good humour without idealism. Timon, the great-natured, truly
generous man, whose mind is as beneficial as the sun, cannot be currish,
nor stoop to the baseness of revenge. Finding men base, he removes
himself from them, and ministers with bitter contempt to the baseness
that infects them. The flaming out of his anger against whatever is
parasitic in life makes the action of the last two acts. The exhibition
of the baseness of parasites and of the wrath of a noble mind
embittered, is contrived, varied and heightened with intense dramatic
energy. The character of Flavius, Timon's steward, his only friend,
shows again, as in so many of the plays, Shakespeare's deep sense of the
noble generosity in faithful service.

Some think the play gloomy, others that it is autobiography.
Shakespeare's completed work is never gloomy. A great mind working with
such a glory of energy cannot be gloomy. This generation is gloomy and
unimaginative in its conception of art. Shakespeare, reading the story
of Timon, saw in him an image of tragic destiny that would flood the
heart of even an ingrate with pity. Great poets have something more
difficult and more noble to do than to pin their hearts on their
sleeves for daws to peck at. Shakespeare wrought the figure of Timon
with as grave justice as