Editing Timon of Athens (section)

==Date and text==
{{main article|Chronology of Shakespeare's plays#Timon of Athens (1605–1606)}}
[[File:Second Folio Title Page of Timon of Athens.jpg|thumb|First page of ''Timon of Athens'', printed in the Second Folio of 1632]]
The play's date is uncertain, though its bitter tone links it with ''Coriolanus'' and ''[[King Lear]].'' [[John Day (dramatist)|John Day]]'s play ''Humour Out of Breath,'' published in 1608, contains a reference to "the lord that gave all to his followers, and begged more for himself"{{snd}}a possible allusion to ''Timon'' that would, if valid, support a date of composition before 1608. It has been proposed that Shakespeare himself took the role of the Poet, who has the fifth-largest line count in the play.<ref>Michael Lomonico.  ''The Shakespeare Book of Lists: The Ultimate Guide to the Bard, His Plays, and How They've Been Interpreted (And Misinterpreted) Through the Ages''. p. 165. He attributes the list of roles played by Shakespeare to a professor at [[Brandeis University]].</ref>

The play was entered into the Stationers' Register in 1623. There are no contemporary allusions to the play by which its date of composition may be determined,{{efn|There was, however, a "cluster of brief references" to the subject of Timon the misanthrope in the years 1600–06.<ref name=Jowett>{{cite book|last=Shakespeare|first=William|title=Timon of Athens|year=2008|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=New York|isbn=978-0-19-953744-0|editor=John Jowett}}</ref>{{rp|p.16}}}} nor is there an agreed means of explaining the play's "loose ends and inconsistencies". Editors since the twentieth century have sought to remedy these defects through conjectures about Shakespeare's emotional development (Chambers);<ref name=Chambers>{{cite book
|last=Chambers
|first=E. K.
|title=William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems
|volume=1
|edition=reprint
|year=1963
|orig-year=1930
|publisher=Oxford University Press
|url= https://archive.org/details/williamshakespea005375mbp
}}</ref>{{rp|p.86}} hypotheses concerning the play's "unfinished state" (Ellis-Fermor) and "scribal interference" (Oliver); and through statistical analyses of vocabulary, stage directions, and so forth.

Assuming the play is a collaboration between Shakespeare and Middleton, its date has been placed in the period 1605–1608, most likely 1606.
In his 2004 edition for the Oxford Shakespeare, John Jowett argues the lack of act divisions in the ''Folio'' text is an important factor in determining a date. The King's Men only began to use act divisions in their scripts when they occupied the indoor Blackfriars Theatre in August 1608 as their winter playhouse. ''Timon'' is notoriously difficult to divide into acts, suggesting to Jowett that it was written at a time when act divisions were of no concern to the writer, hence it must have been written prior to August 1608.<ref>{{cite book | editor-last=Jowett | editor-first=John | editor-link=John Jowett | title=The Life of Timon of Athens | location=Oxford | publisher=Oxford University Press | series=The Oxford Shakespeare | year=2004 | page=4 | isbn=978-0199537440}}</ref> A ''terminus post quem'' may come from a possible topical allusion to the [[Gunpowder Plot]] of November 1605; "those that under hot ardent zeal would set whole realms on fire" (scene 7, 32–33<ref>John Jowett's 2004 edition of the play for the Oxford Shakespeare does not divide the play into acts. In editions which do divide the play, Oxford's scene 7 is usually act 3, scene 3.</ref>). In the context of the play, the line is referring to religious zeal, but some scholars feel it is a subtle reference to the events of November.<ref>{{cite book | editor-last=Dawson | editor-first=Anthony B. | editor2-last=Minton | editor2-first=Gretchen E. | title=Timon of Athens | location=Boston, MA | publisher=Cengage Learning | series=The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series | year=2008 | pages=12–13 | isbn=978-1903436974}}</ref>
The play may also have been influenced by a pamphlet published in June 1605, ''Two Unnatural and Bloody Murders'', which served as the primary source for Thomas Middleton's ''[[A Yorkshire Tragedy]]''.<ref>{{cite book | editor-last=Jowett | editor-first=John | editor-link=John Jowett | title=The Life of Timon of Athens | location=Oxford | publisher=Oxford University Press | series=The Oxford Shakespeare | year=2004 | page=6 | isbn=978-0199537440}}</ref> This would narrow the possible range of dates to sometime between November 1605 and August 1608. Furthermore, MacDonald P. Jackson's rare-word test found the conjectured Shakespearean parts of the text date to 1605–1606. Going further, Jackson found that if one examines the non-Shakespearean sections in the context of Middleton's career, a date of 1605–1606 also results.<ref>{{cite book | last=Jackson | first=MacDonald P. | author-link=MacDonald P. Jackson | title=Studies in Attribution: Middleton and Shakespeare | location=Salzburg | publisher=Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik | year=1979 | page=155 | isbn=978-3705203709}}</ref>