third act are probably interpolations (III. i,, ii., iii.).[1] The commonplace fourth scene is not genuine (III. iv.);[2] nor is the ill-motivated scene showing Alcibiades before the Senate (III. v.). In the sixth scene (III. vi.) I think we can safely assign only Timon's denunciation (99-116) to Shakespeare, though more considerable portions have sometimes been ascribed to him.[3] 'From the fourth act on,' as Wright says, 'the play may be called Shakspere's.' The first scene of this act is almost certainly his (IV. i.) and about the first thirty lines of the second scene (IV. ii. 1-29) may possibly have been touched by his hand.[4] The important third scene (IV. iii.) has evoked marked differences of opinion. Although it is generally conceded that almost the first three hundred lines are Shakespeare's (IV. iii. 1-292), the exact ending of the interpolated passage that follows (292 ff.) is disputed. Fleay would end it at about line 362, and others have adopted his conclusion; Wright, however, believes that Shakespeare's hand is not again discernible until about line 376. The rest of this episode, as far as the entrance of the Banditti, is conceded to be Shakespeare's (376-400). It has been customary to regard a few lines at the opening and a few lines at the closing of the Banditti episode as spurious, but it is quite possible that the whole passage is genuine (401-
- ↑ Wright develops an ingenious theory that the first two of these scenes are Shakespeare's. White holds that Shakespeare wrote some dozen lines in the first scene (III. i. 5466).
- ↑ Three characters, Titus, Hortensius, and Philotus, appear here for the only time in the play. The introduction of a character called Lucius, apparently not the Lucius of the next act, is also puzzling.
- ↑ Hudson assigns to Shakespeare all lines spoken while Timon is on the stage (28-116).
- ↑ Hudson and Wright include these lines in their ascriptions, but Fleay and Rolfe do not.
