TIMON

noble Athenian of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens. Through the course of this underdeveloped play, Timon is transformed from magnanimous friend to the bitterest of misanthropes. Though Timon is warned by Flavius and Apemantus that he has cultivated shallow friendships, he reacts just as foolishly to the betrayal by his friends. He affects such an exaggerated cynicism (as in his speech at the opening of Act IV, scene 3) that he appears to have always been without wisdom or a sense of restraint. His early self-delusion is replaced by unalloyed bitterness, and the comparison to the much more sympathetic character of Lear is inevitable.