Senecan Shakespeare

In a 1986 article in Modern Philology , John Wallace argues that Timon of Athens is “Shakespeare’s Senecan Study,” reflecting on the issues raised by Seneca’s de Beneficiis : “Shakespeare must have been thinking of Seneca, but a safer argument could have been constructed on the premise that Shakespeare was testing the prevalent Senecan ethos rather than the book itself. Gift giving was a regular feature of Elizabethan and Jacobean courts, and many contemporary references to benefits do not refer specifically to Seneca. Moreover, Ben Jonson in Volpone , at about the same time Shakespeare is supposed to have written Timon , was investigating a satirical and subversive use of benefits which mocks the whole system in a quite different way; but Seneca remains by far the most important author for the dissemination of ideas concerning the obligations derived from gifts, and neither Shakespeare nor any of his contemporaries could have thought seriously about the subject without coming to terms with him.”