Shakespeare found the material for Timon of Athens in the course of his reading for Antony and Cleopatra. There is, in Plutarch's "Life of Antony," a brief sketch of Timon and his misanthropy, his relations with Alcibiades and the Cynic Apemantus, the anecdote of the fig-tree, and the two epitaphs. The subject evidently attracted Shakespeare by its harmony with his own distraught and excited frame of mind at the time. He was soon absorbed in it, and in some form or another he made acquaintance with Lucian's hitherto untranslated dialogue Timon, which contained many incidents giving fulness to the story, and from which he appropriated the discovery of the treasure, the consequent return of the parasitic friends, and Timon's scornful treatment of them.
Shakespeare probably found these details in some old play on the same subject. Dyce published, in 1842, an old drama on Timon which had been found in manuscript, and was judged by Steevens to date from 1600, or thereabouts. It seems to have been written for some academic circle, and in it we find the faithful steward and the farewell banquet with which the third act closes. In the older drama, instead of warm water, Timon throws stones, painted to resemble artichokes, at his guests. Some trace of these stones may be found in these lines in Shakespeare's play:
"Second Lord. Lord Timon's mad.
Third Lord. I feel't upon my bones.
Fourth Lord. One day he gives us diamonds, next day stones."
In the old play, when Timon finds the gold, and his faithless mistress and friends flock around him once more, he repulses them, crying:
"Why vexe yee me, yee Furies? I protest,
and all the Gods to witnesse invocate,
I doe abhorre the titles of a friende,
of father, or companion. I curse
the aire yee breathe, I lothe to breathe that air."
He naïvely intimates a change of mind in the epilogue:
"I now am left alone: this rascall route
hath left my side. What's this? I feele through out
a sodeine change: my fury doth abate,
my hearte grows milde and lays aside its hate;"
and concludes with a still more ingenuous appeal for applause:
"Let loving hands, loude sounding in the ayre,
cause Timon to the citty to repaire."
We have no proof that Shakespeare was acquainted with this particular work. He probably used some other contemporary play, belonging to the theatre, which had proved a failure in its original form, and which both his company and his own inclinations urged him to thoroughly recast. It was not so entirely rewritten, however, that we can look upon the play as actually the work of Shakespeare—there are too many traces of another and a feebler hand; but the vital, lyrical, powerful pathos is his, and his alone.