Page:Timon of Athens (1919) Yale.djvu/139

Timon of Athens usual versification on the ground that the play had been injured by the actors, and was of the opinion that the editors of 1623 saw only a mutilated copy of the original. This theory would be more tenable if there existed positive proof that the play was frequently acted before 1623. But such proof is not to be had. Opportunity for interpolation by the players was almost certainly limited. This theory has, generally speaking, given way before more vigorous hypotheses.

(2) Shakespeare rewrote or revised an earlier Timon of Athens, the work of an inferior dramatist. This theory, having its genesis in a belief of Farmer's that there had been an earlier popular play with Timon as a hero, was first advanced by Knight in 1838: 'Timon was a play originally produced by an artist very inferior to Shakespeare, [and] probably retained possession of the stage for some time in its first form; It has come down to us not wholly rewritten but so far remodelled that entire scenes of Shakespeare have been substituted for entire scenes of the elder play.' Delius gave this theory its fullest development in 1867. With slight divergences of opinion Delius' view has been supported by the Cambridge Editors, Staunton, Dyce, Nicholson, Evans, and others. 'The original play,' say the first of these, 'on which Shakespeare worked, must have been written, for the most part, either in prose or in very irreg-