the play departs from Shakespearian patterns in ways that are not dependent on Middleton’s contribution. As a tragedy it is anomalous because the titular hero fades into an anticlimactic death off stage. As a depiction of social life it is deeply abnormal because it almost entirely excludes women and children. As a drama it resorts to the remarkable and apparently untheatrical device of having almost a third of its action made up of the single sequence in which Timon, statically dwelling in the woods, is visited by a succession of Athenians. By such means the play develops as an extreme drama
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