Berghahn Books

'Timon of Athens'
Author(s): W. H. BIZLEY
Source: Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory, No. 48 (May 1977), pp. 69-70
Published by: Berghahn Books
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41801621
Accessed: 29-05-2020 20:03 UTC

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Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory

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 CORRESPONDENCE:

'Timon of Athens'

The Editors,
Theoria.

Dear Sirs,
It was good to have Mr Phelps's comment on my essay on Timon of
Athens , though I can't say that I am dismayed by its chief criticism. A
leading theme of the essay was that Shakespeare makes a good deal of
use in this play of the dramatic potential alive in the cultural evolution
of his time, for instance in the economic reorientation whereby the
'investment' and 'redemption' of what was once a monarchical con-
text is now used as the terminology of high finance, without necessari-
ly paying the moral price for making such a shift. I called the latter
usage a 'derivative' language, the former a 'primary' one, and it is for
this last that Mr Phelps fairly jumps out at me and (doubting my loyal-
ty to Shakespeare's text) asks whether it isn't Shakespeare's language
that is the 'primary' one.
Now I would certainly change my terms if I felt I was in danger of
threatening the authority of Shakespeare's text. The main point in my
choice of terms is to establish that there are two 'generations' of sen-
sibility involved, and that Shakespeare was able to make drama out of
this very situation. Timon might be said to illustrate Eliot's dictum tha
while 'sensibility changes in all of us whether we will or no
nevertheless 'expression is only altered by a man of genius'. Only
Shakespeare could perform the fusion, make the two generations
meet in irony and wordplay, only he could make a poetic out of a
historic process that most people were merely caught up in.
If I were unable to demonstrate that, unable to return to the text as
the 'rub' to the argument, then I have no doubt I would be vulnerable
to Mr Phelps's criticism. But as a matter of fact I must report that in
the actual teaching situation of trying to discover with a class what the
'grist' to the play was, the tactic of this 'background' reference by no
means attenuated the vitality of the text. There is always the danger of
only giving one 'slant', but provided the danger is recognised, I must
say I found it better to do that than to leave the class, and indee
myself, with our pristine reading, which was aware of a lot of word-
play but found it rather cluttered, aware of the presence of irony
without being able to see much point to it. So I must put on recor
that it was a venture into 'background' (on the understanding that sen-
sibility is a bigger thing than even the most major 'talent') that w
found did the text most service.

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70 THEORIA

My experienc
Phelps's criticis
uses 'backgroun
tion as to how t
want my proce
its claim to illu
Shakespeare's w
W. H. BIZLEY.
University of Nat
Pietermaritzbur

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