The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - July 25, 2026


PREVIEW： Chronicles #56 ｜ Timon Of Athens： Part II


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Length

19 minutes

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139.74

Word count

2,737

Sentence count

101

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1

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1

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Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome back to Chronicles where today we're going to be continuing to talk about
00:00:18.000 Timing of Athens by William Shakespeare. I spoke in the beginning of part one all about the
00:00:24.000 historical context and the social context of the play, and something about the historicity of how
00:00:31.160 it was actually written as well, which is a great amount of conjecture. This is a play that has been
00:00:36.520 quite in the dark in terms of who it was written for, whether or not it was ever actually performed
00:00:43.240 in Shakespeare's time, and whether or not there were other hands at work on it, possibly Thomas
00:00:48.380 Middleton's. And so speculated all on that on part one. I've gone through the best part of
00:00:54.960 the synopsis with you and obviously read you some extracts from it. And then I began to talk about
00:01:01.840 act one and we'll just revisit some of the key points of act one as well. And it should lead
00:01:08.160 hopefully quite organically into the rest of this episode where we analyze the rest of the play as
00:01:14.520 well. So important things to remember. Everyone in Athens knows what Tymon is about. Everyone in
00:01:22.020 Athens knows that Tymon is a naive old fool who can be taken advantage of at a mere whim. This is 1.00
00:01:31.220 all laid out for us in Act 1, Scene 1, where you have the poet and the jeweler and the merchant and
00:01:36.580 the painter. And they're all coming with their little trinkets, their little gifts that they've
00:01:42.560 come to make, because they know that whatever they produce, timing will come to them with good
00:01:48.880 words. He will tell them that it is great work, worthy of praise, worthy of reward. But there is
00:01:55.480 actually some truth in it. So the poet here comes up with an allegory in which upon a great hill
00:02:01.900 stands Lady Fortune herself. And of course, Lady Fortune is in charge of exactly as she appears on
00:02:11.000 the tin. She is in charge of the rise and fall of man, his highs and lows, his triumphs and his
00:02:16.680 defeats, and so on and so forth. Because all of these will come to us, whether they feel mighty
00:02:22.540 or whether they feel minute, we have good days and bad days, right, as the saying goes. Much as
00:02:28.400 we are able to climb very, very high, so too will always come the fall. And I suppose one of Tymon's
00:02:35.660 other great failings as well, is that he never actually feels like there is going to be a fall.
00:02:41.220 This is a man who feels like he has, in his own idealistic way, he has society and human nature
00:02:49.280 and social interaction and bonds of trust. He has all of these things figured out and he has his
00:02:57.720 fuel for how to keep the engine of society going. And the engine of society is funded on patrimony
00:03:06.780 and gifts and bounty. And that by giving generously at all times to people, you engender in them a
00:03:15.800 goodwill towards you. And in so doing, as you have been there to help them or to reward them
00:03:22.460 in moments where they needed it, they will come to your aid as well.
00:03:27.400 The miscalculation in all of this is the fact that Timon of Athens is a man who gives
00:03:34.900 across the board, right? He is a total egalitarian when it comes to this. He will give just as
00:03:43.960 generously to a senator that he may have had a long political history with or Alcibiades who
00:03:51.980 is a military man. And we learn much later on in the play that Tymon himself was once a military
00:03:58.660 man as well, though his backstory in the play is quite sparse. And so Tymon just gives across the
00:04:06.380 board. And in the poet's poem, as Lady Fortune is atop of the hill, she plucks out Tymon from
00:04:15.160 amongst a crowd of people and invites Tymon to climb higher and higher up the hill of fortune.
00:04:21.980 and everyone else seeing that Tymon is being chosen
00:04:27.260 and is stepping into his own for a good lot in life
00:04:31.000 they are now following him up
00:04:33.180 and they are helping elevate him as they go
00:04:37.260 but once fortune in her flippancy
00:04:40.880 and in her ever-changing ways casts Tymon down
00:04:44.000 no one is there to stop his fall
00:04:46.720 and the poet sees this
00:04:48.720 This is the inspiration for the poet's poem that he is going to present to Tymon.
00:04:54.560 And so everyone about can see the real nature of what is going on here.
00:05:00.720 And Appamantus, who is the cynical philosopher, can see this chiefest amongst them.
00:05:06.880 Even though he is rankled by the corruption and the two-facedness of society, he still engages with it.
00:05:17.680 Appamantus still is an Athenian who lives in Athens, who still comes to the open house
00:05:24.400 that Tymon gives generously at, time and time again, so that people can come banqueting.
00:05:31.120 And even if Appamantus is someone who rails against society and all of its imperfections
00:05:41.200 and its contradictions and the more vulgar figures in it, he is still very much a product of it and
00:05:48.800 he is still someone who chooses of his own free will to live in it. And so we find in Act One,
00:05:58.160 Scene Two, after so many people have come to Timon already and they've said to him,
00:06:03.860 oh, will you settle this dispute? And oh, will you give me money so that my master Ventidius
00:06:09.360 may be freed from his debtor's jail, which is obviously foreshadowing of the exact problem
00:06:15.620 that Tymon is going to find himself in later, Tymon just gives all of these things so easily,
00:06:23.040 to the point where Flavius, his servant, is basically pleading with him to just look
00:06:29.340 at the economic reality of what's going on here. Because this is the other question as well,
00:06:35.280 how is Tymon capable of doing this? How is it possible that someone might come to Tymon and
00:06:43.920 give him two wonderful hunting dogs as a present and Tymon in return is able to give just endless
00:06:53.140 amounts of gems and talents of gold and material wealth in exchange for these things? How does he
00:07:02.240 do it? Well, not without a considerable amount of debt, so it turns out. But before we get into
00:07:09.780 the debtors who come in at the beginning of Act 2, let's just address once more the entire scene
00:07:15.680 that we see before us here at the banquet. What we are dealing here with is a society that Timon
00:07:23.740 has engendered, that he has tried to create, in which one of the things that is most preserved in
00:07:30.680 is the security of language itself. To speak to one another in social relations in society
00:07:37.680 should be built first and foremost upon truth and trust. Because society cannot function without
00:07:45.220 trust, people must know that they are being fairly dealt with when they are in relations with one
00:07:52.300 another. This is true of how you deal with the painter, and it's how you deal with when you're
00:07:58.660 speaking about art. The artist should be truthful in what he represents in his painting, in his
00:08:04.840 theatre. This is also the same for the jeweller, that when you're dealing with him and you're 0.94
00:08:10.020 haggling over a price, that you're supposed to come to some sort of price that is agreed upon
00:08:17.040 between both mutual parties, and that they feel does justice to both of them. One for the jeweller
00:08:23.200 who can make a profit, but also for the man who's buying it, that he isn't being unnecessarily
00:08:28.640 hard done by, by the expertise of the jeweler who is going to exploit that primary knowledge of his
00:08:36.400 field that he has, and to basically get one over and exploit the person who might not truly
00:08:43.620 understand the actual price of the jewel that he's been dealt with here. And so all of these
00:08:50.560 interactions in society rely on a degree of trust. And I suppose what's most telling of
00:08:57.740 Taiman throughout all of this as well is the fact that this is a man who seems to have no family.
00:09:05.620 He has no wife that we know of. He never speaks of them. He has very, very few interactions with
00:09:11.120 women throughout the entire play. So he's not even spending it on one night stands or whoring or
00:09:18.360 just anachronistic girlfriend or anything of the sort. He also has no children, and so he's not
00:09:27.100 a man who's very much thinking about investing his own wealth in the future of his own family line.
00:09:35.440 And he's also someone as well who never speaks of memories of a father or a brother
00:09:42.480 or anything of the sort. So the only family he has are his friends, who he believes is being
00:09:49.860 chosen for him by the fact that these are people that he sees consistently in his daily life.
00:09:58.980 And he's someone that he's built up a rapport with, and he will go hunting with them
00:10:04.580 every week and they'll come to his mansion and they'll indulge in his feasts and his banquets
00:10:13.200 and of course the gifts that he will endlessly give. And to Tymon this seems like a life well
00:10:21.560 lived. This seems like a man who's got it made and he's also someone as well who shies away from
00:10:29.660 economic truths that Flavius is trying to explain to him. He's saying, look,
00:10:35.040 you are spending outside of your means. This is not limitless. This is actually you about to come
00:10:43.380 towards the cliff edge. But Tymon doesn't want to see it. And part of the reason why Tymon doesn't
00:10:49.960 want to see it is perhaps because of a fragility within Tymon's character that he cannot conceive
00:10:57.620 of the sort of man who could have support this lifestyle did he not have this wealth in the first
00:11:05.780 place. He is obviously a man from what we can construe of very very limited background information
00:11:13.220 that is littered throughout the play. He is a man who has served the realm in its state and its army
00:11:20.900 at some point in his career. And these heroic deeds have obviously put him in a positive light
00:11:28.580 within Athenian society. But for as long as he has been going now, and we have no real knowing
00:11:35.100 of how long Timon has been giving all of this wealth away, basically a system has started to
00:11:43.220 come, where, as the debtor points out at the beginning of Act 2, scene one, that you can give
00:11:50.340 little to Timon, and he will give away far more than is really proportionate for himself. And so
00:11:59.540 actually what you have here is a debtor's worst nightmare. And there is no more liberal debtor
00:12:08.820 than Tymon of Athens. Unfortunately for Tymon, this is going to bring him into conflict with
00:12:16.420 a particular type of person, in this case the creditor's servants themselves, who cannot be
00:12:25.720 reasoned with. They cannot be bought with past gratitude and the memory of the fact that,
00:12:34.380 oh well what about this time when you came to this feast and didn't we have a jolly good time
00:12:39.720 and wasn't the music grand? No no no, Taiman, you owe us this, this is what we are missing
00:12:46.060 and we're all users so you actually owe us interest on this as well. So everything about it is just
00:12:52.880 going to maximize the anguish that Taiman feels and the irony of all of this is that actually
00:13:01.080 makes the debtors of society the most plain-speaking people in the play. What they say
00:13:10.360 to Tymon, i.e. we want our money back, is exactly as they feel on the inside. Whereas Tymon has
00:13:18.040 spent his entire adult life seemingly surrounded by pretenders, surrounded by people who were giving
00:13:25.080 him a performance. And Tymon, in his naivete, believed that that which was a performance
00:13:31.500 was that which was felt genuinely on the inside as well. And so everything about that trust
00:13:38.980 is defiled. But one of the crucial reasons why Tymon, for all of his largesse, actually breeds
00:13:47.120 such ingratitude in the people who he constantly surrounds himself with is the fact that
00:13:54.660 to just constantly give to everyone else in such an egalitarian way. And not only that,
00:14:01.760 to give them all, irrespective of their actual deed or quality, or that which is actually worthy
00:14:08.200 of being rewarded, is also combined with the fact that at the same time, because Tymon always
00:14:18.080 insists on giving more, he's always upstaging everyone around him. He never gives anyone
00:14:26.740 else the opportunity to actually demonstrate their own charity, their own gratitude for
00:14:34.320 these things, because they know that even if they were to buy something incredibly expensive,
00:14:42.520 for example, to show a token of appreciation to Tymon and give him something that was worth
00:14:50.980 immeasurable wealth and was something truly special, Tymon wouldn't just take that and say,
00:14:58.640 wow, thank you for this. This is the kindest thing. He would then have to constantly one-up
00:15:03.280 them. And it's this constant one-upping ship, this constant, for want of a better way to put it,
00:15:08.680 just mogging of them, of their own wealth, of their own status, to always show himself
00:15:14.160 to be the superior, to be unassailable in how generously he can give, is part of the
00:15:24.980 reason why they've all fallen to this fatigue around him, and a part of the reason why the
00:15:30.140 incentive structure that he has put up leads to the conclusion that it does.
00:15:36.920 And the other thing as well is that this has a remarkable cautionary tale to it
00:15:41.540 for not just the lords of ancient Athens,
00:15:45.000 but also for the Elizabeth and the Jacobean court as well.
00:15:49.800 Because a man who was sat in the Jacobean theatre watching time in the Athens,
00:15:55.700 if he did, as I say, the historical account that we have,
00:15:59.900 the earliest performance comes from 1674.
00:16:03.060 But if all of this comes about, and the man from the early 17th century finds himself
00:16:09.760 watching Timon of Athens, he will immediately recognise the sort of man that Timon was.
00:16:16.640 And the gulf of time between that man who was an ancient Greek Athenian and that man
00:16:22.960 who is now a Jacobean in Stuart, England, will recognise many of the same virtues of
00:16:29.740 his nobility.
00:16:30.440 In fact, the word generous in its older sense of the word before the one that we have now, which just means to give very liberally, was to mean someone of high birth.
00:16:43.800 To be generous was to be of high birth.
00:16:46.400 To be an aristocrat is to give generously, lavishly to other people, to show grand displays of your wealth to others.
00:16:57.040 And as to many of the economic reasons for why this got out of hand with the discovery of the new world, as I pointed out in the last episode, will eventually lead to a huge amount of debt where it's actually the creditors and those who lend money having the power in society over the nobility themselves.
00:17:20.020 And that whole ancient aristocratic tradition of giving, of bounty, of fellowship, of camaraderie, of feasting, of sharing in kind with your fellow man, of being a charitable man, of being someone who is seen to be living a prestigious life,
00:17:41.800 cannot brook the economic reality that the creditors and the money lenders now have over
00:17:49.940 society. This is something that actually recently in Islander, Michael Hudson pointed out in his
00:17:56.760 interview with Rory for the magazine. And this is a time old struggle. And it's something that
00:18:03.020 Carl has been also talking about on his Sagan of the CAG channel. But we see that really very
00:18:10.000 much playing out here in Tymon of Athens. This is what happens when a system of moneylenders and
00:18:18.060 usurers basically manage to come up against someone like Tymon, who represents that old
00:18:26.360 moral system as well. Because even though Tymon gives far more than he should, the actual, on a
00:18:35.220 smaller scale what he stands for does actually have a noble ideal at the center of it which is
00:18:42.780 that I am someone who is currently living with tremendous fortune and I want to give therefore
00:18:50.700 off the back of that to other people around me. If you enjoyed this piece of premium content
00:18:55.800 from the Lotus Eaters head to our website where you can find more.
00:19:05.220 Thank you.