Abstract
The famously paradoxical pronouncement attributed to Aristotle, “Oh my friends, there are no friends” has for millennia haunted Western philosophy. Plato’s Lysis ceases abruptly in Socrates’ frustration over his inability to articulate the essence of friendship. For Kant and Derrida friendship appears impossible. For Aristotle lower forms of friendship are common, true friendships rare. The tragedy Timon of Athens is Shakespeare’s most wide-ranging dramatization of the philosophical problematics of friendship. For Shakespeare, as for the philosophical tradition, the barrier to friendship is economic—friendship must be extricated from economic exchange. Timon of Athens explores such possibility. Or perhaps impossibility.
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Notes
- 1.
The attribution of the quote to Aristotle is problematic. It may be apocryphal; more likely it results from an early mistranslation. Nonetheless its impact on the philosophical history of the philosophical treatment of friendship is profound, as it is repeatedly cited over the centuries, notably by Montaigne and Kant. For a discussion of the textual history of the quote see Giorgio Agamben, “The Friend,” in What is an Apparatus? And Other Essays, trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), pp. 25–37. Also see Jacques Derrida, Politics of Friendship, trans. George Collins (London: Verso, 1997), pp. 174–77.
- 2.
Jacques Derrida, Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, trans. Peggy Kamuf (Chicago University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 7; hereafter abbreviated GT.
- 3.
“Friendship” appears eight times in Timon of Athens. It appears three times in Henry V and no more than once or twice in any other play. “Friend” and “friends” occur a combined total of forty-eight times. Compared to Timon the most frequent usage of these two words is in Julius Caesar (42) and Coriolanus (39). These data have been compiled using the online concordance of the Open Source Shakespeare website. In Shakespeare’s non-dramatic works the theme of friendship is central to the first 126 of the Sonnets, which are addressed to an unidentified young man.
- 4.
Geoffrey Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, vol. 6, Other “Classical” Plays (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), pp. 235–41.
- 5.
Plato, Lysis, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato: Including the Letters, trans. J. Wright, eds. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 149, 207c; hereafter abbreviated LY. References are to page number then to the numbered section of the Greek text.
- 6.
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin, 2d ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999), p. 122; 1156b; hereafter abbreviated NE. References are to page number then to the numbered section of the Greek text.
- 7.
Citations from Timon of Athens are from The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. David Bevington, 5th ed. (New York: Pearson Longman, 2003). References are to act, scene, and line. Evidence suggests that Timon was written in collaboration with Thomas Middleton. See Bevington, p. 1293.
- 8.
Cicero, De amicitia, in Cicero: De senectute, De amicitia, De divinatione, trans. William Armistead Falconer, Loeb Classical Library 154 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1923): 103–211 (p. 199; 25); hereafter abbreviated DA. References are to page number then to the numbered section of the Latin text.
- 9.
Nicholas Haward translated the first three books of De beneficiis under the title The Line of Liberalitie in 1569. Arthur Golding’s complete translation appeared in 1578.
- 10.
Seneca, On Benefits, in Moral Essays, vol. 3, trans. John W. Basore, Loeb Classical Library 310 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935), p. 19, 1.4; p. 155, 3.15; p. 23, 1.5; hereafter abbreviated OB. References are to page number then to the numbered section of the Latin text.
- 11.
Also see Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, trans. David Wills, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 101.
- 12.
Clifford Davidson, “Timon of Athens: The Iconography of False Friendship,” The Huntington Library Quarterly 43, no. 3 (1980): 181–200 (184). On Timon’s lack of prudence and failure to understand Seneca’s counsel on benefits see Felicity Heal, The Power of Gifts: Gift-Exchange in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 20. Andreas Höfele, “Man, Woman and Beast in Timon’s Athens,” Shakespeare Survey 56 (2003): 227–35 (234). John M. Wallace, “Timon of Athens and the Three Graces: Shakespeare’s Senecan Study,” Modern Philology 83, no. 4 (1986): 349–363 (362).
- 13.
Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. W. D. Halls (New York: Norton, 1990). Coppélia Kahn, “‘Magic of bounty’: Timon of Athens, Jacobean Patronage, and Maternal Power,” Shakespeare Quarterly 38, no. 1 (1987): 34–57 (35, 39). Michael Chorost, “Biological Finance in Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens,” English Literary Renaissance 21, no. 3 (1991): 349–70 (350–51).
- 14.
Ken Jackson, “‘One Wish’ or the Possibility of the Impossible: Derrida, the Gift, and God in Timon of Athens,” Shakespeare Quarterly 52, no. 1 (2001): 34–66 (50, 51, 48). On the tension between the didactic and ethical dimensions in Timon see Robert B. Pierce, “Tragedy and Timon of Athens,” Comparative Drama 36, nos. 1–2 (2002): 75–90 (81–82).
- 15.
Michel de Montaigne, “Of Friendship” in Essays, trans. John Florio, ed. Percival Chubb (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2005): 91–107 (101, 100–101); hereafter cited in text as OF.
- 16.
Tom MacFaul, Male Friendship in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 92. See also Laurie McKee, “Giving and Serving in Timon of Athens,” Early Modern Literary Studies 16, no. 3 (2013): 1–22 (1–3). David Schalkwyk, Shakespeare, Love and Service (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 142–63. G. Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire: Interpretations of Shakespearian Tragedy (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 247–49. First published in 1930 by Oxford University Press. For an extended discussion of the ethical role of Flavius see Ellorashree Maitra, “Toward an Ethical Polity: Service and Tragic Community in Timon of Athens,” Renaissance Drama 41 nos. 1–2 (2013): 173–98 (184–91).
- 17.
In this exchange Shakespeare drastically departs from the parallel scene in Lucian. In Lucian’s version Timon does not offer his gold to Laches, the Flavius character. Instead Laches urges Timon to use it as a means to be “reveng’d of thy false friends.” See Bullough, p. 333. Lucian’s Laches, like Flavius, epitomizes the loyal servant, but Laches’ vengefulness contrasts profoundly with Flavius’ goodwill.
- 18.
Immanuel Kant, “Friendship” in Lectures on Ethics, trans. Louis Infield (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1930), 206, 206–07.
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Mischo, J. (2021). “But in a Dream of Friendship”: Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens, the Gift, and the Moral Economy of Friendship. In: Hagberg, G.L. (eds) Fictional Worlds and the Moral Imagination. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55049-3_4
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