This essay claims that the changes in human value displayed in Shakespeare and Middleton’s Timon of Athens are cognate with the eponymous protagonist’s changing relation to matter. By adopting an ecocritical approach based on material ecocriticism and the idea that culture and nature and inherently bound to co-exist in a state of ambience, the essay traces Timon’s axiological changes in relation to his changing environment and material possessions or lack thereof. The main argument is that Timon enters the stage in a solid state as a generous lord possessing land, who then crumbles into a liquid state by bleeding out his resources to his fake friends. Escaping Athenian society and taking his abode in the wilderness, Timon transforms into a new solid state in his bewildered hatred towards both humanity and materiality. Finally, he ends his life in yet another liquid state, having become one with the ocean.
Tim Timvig (Wed,) studied this question.