VI * Shakespeare

Abstract

Two Noble Kinsmen were omitted; on the other hand, Dawson and Minton admit, cowritten All is True was included in the collection. (Indeed, and co-written Titus Andronicus, 1 Henry 6, Macbeth, and Measure for Measure were included too.) The usual evidence for dating a play is missing in this case: there is no Stationers' Register entry, no quarto, no records of or allusions to early performance. Dawson and Minton's best guess is that the play was composed in 1607. However, there is a likely allusion to the Gunpowder Plot of November 1605 in "set whole realms on fire" (3.3.34). If Shakespeare returned to Plutarch's Lives (used in 1599 for Julius Caesar) in order to write Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus in 1607-8, he would have found there the story of Timon of Athens (pp. 15-16). Coriolanus is like Timon in detesting ingratitude and leaving his city, and like Alcibiades in attacking his city and then giving it a reprieve. An upper limit to the date is set by Timon of Athens's avoidance of a five-act structure, which the King's men started using once they got the Blackfriars in 1608. There is something like an act-division structure to the first half of the play, but it ceases with the Timon-in-the-woods scene. Dawson and Minton explain that they retain the "conventional act breaks (though we acknowledge their arbitrariness), partly for convenience of reference, and partly because the first half of the play really does reflect that kind of structure" (p. 17n1).