I went to see Timon at the National Theatre.
Timon of Athens is, according to the programme and the introduction in the RSC's big book of Shakespeare, a 'difficult' play and, in almost as many words, unpopular. It is easy to see why. There are no machiavellian women, no angst-ridden kings and no happy ending, which makes it different to all the other plays, and therefore, presumably, something of a challenge to directors who like their ogres gross and their star-crossed lovers swoony. It is also 'unfinished', according to the programme (or possibly not, according to the RSC), and authored by two people, of which Shakespeare did all the first bit, according to the programme (or most of the second, according to the RSC), and is therefore something of a challenge. .
What both programme and the RSC's book agree on is that it's all about money, and its corrupting influence. And that's where both of them are wrong. Timon of Athens may use money as a spark, as a means of raising a man up before dashing him to the ground, but it's as much about money as King Lear is about monarchy.
On a superficial level, money features. It is the quarry of the flatterers that bask in the philanthropy of Timon who, lacking friends or family, save a cynic he unwisely spurns, buys his company with lavish gifts, as if determined to hold them in his debt. And, in doing so, indebts himself to others who, unlike himself, pay attention to their accounts and, eventually, foreclose.
That foreclosure is the pivot of the play. That's the point at which he finds his creditors unsympathetic and his merchant friends unhelpful. But, again, that's a structural device, like the shipwreck in the Tempest or the murder in Macbeth. Timon is about money in the same way as the Tempest is about woodcraft or Macbeth is about anatomy.
We have all met Timon. We haven't, for the most part, met him corralled by minders, lurking in his sanctuary or paranoid about his privacy. Instead, we have met him in the park, nursing a tin of cider and imprecating the world and all that's in it. It's easy to blame the booze, as it saves us having to listen, but the booze isn't the point.
Timon is an everyman and his tale is one of disappointment, as it is for billions of us. Although he began with wealth and advantage, it didn't matter in the end. The only strategies that can forestall the inevitable are those of exploitation, and Timon's humanity is also his downfall. There's a lesson in that, and it's nothing to do with wealth or vanity or even money.
Although portrayed in Hytner's production as a modern philanthropist (against which the programme's liberal listing of donors to the theatre gains some piquancy), he behaves less as a banker and more of a lottery winner. Money itself has no value for him, except in terms of the apparent friendship it brings, and he uses the power it brings not only to please his flatterers but to improve the lot of his servants.
The second half of the play, the supposedly difficult half, is crushingly inevitable. Timon, given the chance to regain some wealth and power, turns from it in disgust. This is not a man hoping for reinstatement to his 'rightful' place, or angling for sympathy for his poor luck. This is a man who has seen the true nature of the society he lived in and wants nothing to do with it. His curses, though inventive, have none of the glib irreverance of the cynic. They are heartfelt and justified, and the conflation of his former enemies and former friends, seen by some as a glib resolution, is a shocking, and fitting, end. This is the point of the play, much as it is in Orwell's 'Animal Farm'.
Timon is not Shakespeare's only play about the futility of trust, but it's the least compromising.
