The Politics of Wealth: Timon of Athens

Abstract

The obsessive concern of the chief characters of Timon of Athens is having and not having money. The question raised by the obsession is not merely what it means to be rich or poor but, more important, how identity is determined by external measurable phenomena like money. The play reveals the extent and the means by which the individual’s social locus is fixed and unfixed in relation to such phenomena. Because money buys power and its concomitants like authority, it serves as a convenient signifier of a complex of social practices that has arisen out of the individualist economic framework. There is, as is well known, a rather heavy overlay of morality-play to the drama, a level of allegory that directs attention to a single moral meaning and message about the corruptive power of wealth. Timon’s world of privilege perceives itself as complete, but one of the inevitable byproducts of privilege and money is poor people: they are slaves, servants, beggars, and whores, and their presence is regarded by the rich without apparent interest. They are not commented on; their plight is unremarked, and they are presented as being without social or political value. Such glaring lacunae deserve attention.