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Summary
A group of servants sent from Timon’s creditors gathers outside his house, waiting for him to emerge. They greet each other and note how odd it is that their masters should demand Timon to pay back their loans—with interest—even as they enjoy the gifts Timon has given them. Flaminius and Flavius enter, and the servants demand to know Timon’s whereabouts. Flavius asks them why they have waited until Timon’s luck has turned to present him with their bills of debt. Flavius angrily departs as Servilius enters, and the servants now assault him with questions. He explains that Timon has taken ill. But just then, Timon bursts from the house in a rage. He shouts angrily about feeling imprisoned in his own house. Each of the creditors’ servants then swarm around him, presenting their bills. Timon is horrified and rushes back inside the house, while the servants wonder if their masters may be better off giving up on collecting their money. Inside the house, Timon speaks to Flavius of a plan to organize another feast. Timon tells him not to worry about the money—he will be able to provide.
Meanwhile, in the senate house, several senators discuss the fate of an unnamed man. Alcibiades enters and pleads for his friend, whom he describes as an honorable man who acted foolishly out of passion. When he asks that his friend be freed, one senator replies that Alcibiades speaks as if he’s trying to make manslaughter legal. There’s no valor in revenge, only in learning to bear slights, the senator says. Alcibiades insists that his friend’s actions for Athens on the battlefield should be sufficient payment for his freedom. But the senators continue to disregard his pleas and condemn his friend to death. Alcibiades then offers his own achievements as further barter for his friend. Now provoked, the senators decide to banish Alcibiades. As a soldier, Alcibiades refuses to endure such a wrong and vows to gather troops to strike at Athens.
Many of Timon’s friends arrive at his house and, before the host appears, they speculate about Timon’s financial situation. When Timon enters, several lords express their regrets about not being able to help him. But Timon dismisses their apologies, and as his servants set covered dishes out on the table, he invites his guests to sit. Before the dishes are uncovered, Timon addresses the gods, thanking them and urging them to be reserved in the gifts they give to humans, but to offer each person enough so no one needs to borrow from another. As for his present friends, he says he does not bless them, for they are nothing to him, and thus they are welcome to nothing. Then the dishes are uncovered, and the “feast” is revealed to be nothing more than stones and lukewarm water. Timon curses the lords, flicking water and casting stones at them. Then, declaring his hatred for all of humanity, he leaves. The astonished lords are convinced that Timon has gone mad, and as they leave, they make sure to gather their belongings—including gifts that Timon has given them.
Analysis
The second half of act 3 extends the theme of hypocrisy that dominated the first half. In this case, Shakespeare highlights the hypocrisy by creating a sort of symmetry that mirrors the action of the previous scenes. Whereas in scenes 1–3, Timon’s servants go to the homes of his creditors to ask for money, the opposite happens in scene 4—that is, the creditors’ servants go to the home of Timon to ask for money. In both cases, of course, no money is exchanged, leaving Timon on the edge of bankruptcy and his various creditors eager to retrieve their unpaid debts. As the pressure on Timon builds, Shakespeare seems to be underscoring the perversity of debt itself—at least, debt as it functions within the practice of usury, where money must be paid back with interest. One creditor’s servant explicitly notes how unnatural it is that “Timon in this should pay more than he owes” (3.4.23). Of course, the perversity isn’t just about debts with interest attached; it’s also about how Timon is being asked to pay creditors for money he used to buy them gifts. Essentially, Timon is paying more than twice for his own generosity.
The later scenes of act 3 also demonstrate the violence intrinsic in debt. When the creditors’ servants swarm around Timon like devils, forcing their various bills on him, he responds with language of blows and dismemberment: “Knock me down with [the bills]; cleave me to the girdle! . . . Cut my heart in sums! . . . Tell out my blood!” (3.4.90, 92, 94). This language of violence foreshadows scene 5, where Alcibiades pleads on behalf of his friend, who has apparently given himself over to violence urge in response to taunting. He has accidentally killed another man, and now he is sentenced to death. Curiously, the argument Alcibiades makes in this scene is peppered with the language of debt. He offers to “pawn” (3.5.81) his own victories so that his friend no longer “owes the law his life” (83) and can thus “be in debt to none” (78). When the senators refuse this abstract type of accounting and banish him, Alcibiades curses what he calls “the usuring Senate” (3.5.109). Although the subplot with Alcibiades will not be fully developed, his language in this scene clearly indicates strong thematic parallels with the main plot.
An additional parallel between the two plots is soon revealed in scene 6, where Timon, like Alcibiades, prepares to leave Athens having transformed into a bitter misanthrope. Just as Alcibiades has just confronted “the usuring Senate” with their cruelty and pledged his revenge, Timon now confronts his former friends and pledges his hatred of “man and all humanity” (3.6.106). Before he goes, though, he stages one final “feast” that he has designed to humiliate the men who have hung him out to dry. After showing so much generosity to men who have proven unwilling to reciprocate, he prepares a special meal of stone soup. In a brilliant—and bitter—inversion of the ritual of saying grace, Timon withholds a blessing from his guests, saying that they are nothing to him, and, thus, “to nothing are they welcome” (3.6.84–85). This “nothing” is of course the soup of stones, which he soon scoops out of the dishes and hurls at his astonished guests. With this fit of rage, Timon transforms before our very eyes from a kind and generous man into a furious misanthrope.
