Page:Timon of Athens (1919) Yale.djvu/135

Timon of Athens Athens in America occurred when an adaptation by N. H. Bannister was acted for the first time at the Franklin Theatre in New York City on April 8, 1839. We are told that Richard Mansfield considered the production of the tragedy, but no proof is available that the play has been recently acted on the American stage except in a series of performances by Mr. Frederick Warde when on tour in 1910.

The exact circumstances of the writing of Timon of Athens will probably remain conjectural, but that the play is not wholly Shakespeare's creation is certain. Double authorship is constantly proclaimed by singularities of workmanship and by technical problems involving inconsistencies in character and action. Regular and highly irregular verse, rhymed and unrhymed lines, dignified prose and prose that is absurdly flat follow each other in capricious fashion. Poetry as lofty as that of King Lear is linked to doggerel, and scenes unquestionably written by Shakespeare suddenly become inane under the influence of another hand. By means of internal evidence of this character scholars have tried to determine how much of the play was written by Shakespeare and how much by the unknown assistant.

The ascriptions differ in detail, but there is some agreement regarding the portions of the tragedy attributable to Shakespeare. About the first one hundred and seventy-five lines of the play are admittedly his (I. i. 1-177). In the passage between the entrance of Apemantus and that of Alcibiades (I. i. 178-249) only the first ten lines have generally been assigned