How Timon of Athens drew on Plutarch's Lives
A documented line of influence: William Shakespeare demonstrably engaged Plutarch’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Plutarch's Lives
Plutarch · c. 110
Ancient GreeceThe influenced
Timon of Athens
William Shakespeare · c. 1606
ShakespeareRelevance
8/10
On Timon of Athens’s page
- Built largely on a single digression in Sir Thomas North's 1579 Plutarch's Lives — the Timon sketch tucked inside the lives of Antony and Alcibiades
- The misanthropy, the pairing with Alcibiades and Apemantus, the sardonic fig-tree offer (5.1), the rival tomb epitaphs all come straight from North's pages (with a debt to Lucian's Timon alongside)
- Reading the source shows you how little Plutarch gave Shakespeare to work with — and how much of the play is invention filling that frame
On Plutarch's Lives’s page
- The misanthrope in the margins — Plutarch's Lives of Antony and Alcibiades carry the Timon digression Shakespeare mined for a whole play
- Timon's bitterness, his foils Alcibiades and Apemantus, the fig-tree gibe, the two tomb epitaphs — all drawn from North's 1579 English Plutarch
- A few paragraphs of biographical aside became Timon of Athens