Timon of Athens: Is This The Worst Shakespeare Play, Like Ever !

Sorry for the clickbait style title, but I'm in a light-hearted mood. Also, it's kind of justified. This play is poor (as ever, in my opinion - caveat). It's incredibly stilted, and doesn't feel like Shakespeare, at all. It feels almost like someone trying to write a Shakespeare play one hundred years after the era of Shakespeare. Someone educated and wordy enough to be verbose and mimic the general style, but lacking the well-honed experience of needing to please an audience.

That said, that doesn't mean it isn't by Shakespeare. Good directors sometimes make bad movies. Plus, the current academic opinion is that the play was largely unfinished, and is, in part, the work of Thomas Middleton.

The writing style is very stilted and inexperienced though. That learning curve of cutting things you don't need and having a sense of what information an audience (or reader) does and doesn't need - and how to express that seamlessly so things feel natural and unforced. That's missing. Take this scene opening..

Flaminius waiting to speak with Lucullus from his master. Enter a Servant to him

Servant: I have told my lord of you. He is coming down to you.

Flaminius: I thank you, sir.

Enter Lucullus

Servant: Here's my lord.

Lucullus: (aside) One of Lord Timon's men? [...]

Those first three lines of speech just aren't needed. It's basically just someone answering the door. You can cut that and get straight into the action. An audience watching can see that someone is at the door (or understand that's the case from the brief stage direction if reading), you don't need to bore them with overly formal and needless dialogue, simply to set the scene. I'm probably being a tad unfair in picking a particularly bad example, but the whole play has this formal feel. It's a bit wooden from the get-go.

Interestingly, the history of the play is a little lacking too. The sole source of the text is the First Folio. There's no manuscript copy or earlier prints. On top of this, the play is placed in the First Folio in a slot originally intended for Troilus and Cressida.

(click to enlarge)

I've mentioned before, perhaps not on here, my theory that the so-called 'False Folio' was the true original first folio, and that the suspiciously plush First Folio is a later compiled forgery. (This is quite a bold, and some would say crazy, idea - but I'm just putting it out there.) It ties in with my view that some Shakespeare works (a handful of the apocrypha plays) have been de-Shakespeared by experts over the centuries. That is, stripped of their Shakespeare status. Owing (again, in my opinion) to their bawdiness, clumsy nature, or Englishness (see here: Shakespeare - Scene of the Scenes).

This particular play was, for the record, interesting to read. It wasn't truly terrible or lacking in appeal. I've used the word stilted twice already, but there really is no other word. It was stilted. I enjoyed it, but there was never the feeling that I was reading something special or insightful. And it didn't gel or hang together well. Apocrypha plays, such as The London Prodigal or The Birth of Merlin are much more fun and charm-filled.

To be fair, I could discuss the themes of the play, which were quite interesting. It was very moralistic in outlook, with a cynical vibe. My eyes are starting to run out of patience with the laptop screen though, so I'll leave it there.