The Arden Shakespeare

Timon of Athens has struck many readers as rough and unpolished, perhaps even unfinished, though to others it has appeared as Shakespeare's most profound tragic allegory. Described by Coleridge as `the stillborn twin of King Lear', the play has nevertheless proved brilliantly effective in performance over the past thirty or forty years.This edition accepts and contributes to the growing scholarly consensus that the play is not Shakespeare's solo work, but is the result of his collaboration with Thomas Middleton, who wrote about a third of it. The editors offer an account of the process of collaboration and discuss the different ways that each author contributes to the play's relentless look at the corruption and greed of society. They provide, as well, detailed annotation of the text and explore the wide range of critical and theatrical interpretations that the play has engendered. Tracing both its satirical and tragic strains, their introduction presents a perspective on the play's meanings that combines careful elucidation of historical context with analysis of its relevance to modern-day society. An extensive and well-illustrated account of the play's production history generates a rich sense of how the play can speak to different historical moments in specific and rewarding ways.

“Their survey of scholarly issues...and authorship is excellent, and their lively awareness of Middleton’s contribution
is built into a critical introduction that...could scarcely be bettered...Illuminating comparisons to other works...
Pages are spiced with details from a range of stage productions....Dawson and Minton are judicious editors...(and)
have provided an admirable edition of Shakespeare and Middleton’s challenging collaborative play.”
—Shakespeare Quarterly

About the Editors

Anthony B. Dawson is Professor of English Emeritus at the University of British Columbia. The author of several books, including Hamlet: Shakespeare in Performance and, with Paul Yachnin, The Culture of Playgoing in Shakespeare's England, he has also edited the New Cambridge Shakespeare Troilus and Cressida and the New Mermaids Tamburlaine. He is currently preparing an electronic edition of Macbeth for the Internet Shakespeare Editions.

Gretchen E. Minton is an Assistant Professor of English at Montana State University in Bozeman. She specializes in Shakespeare and his contemporaries as well as the literature of the English Reformation and has published articles on Augustine, Erasmus, John Foxe, John Bale, and Shakespeare, as well as contemporary film and drama. She is currently working on a critical edition of John Bale's sixteenth-century commentary on the book of Revelation, The Image of both Churches.

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