Timon of Athens was originally a play by William Shakespeare, but for a revival of that play at the Duke's theater in London, Thomas Shadwell was asked to revise it. He revised the original into a play called "The History of Timon of Athens, The Man-Hater." The resultant work is pretty bad. Shakespeare's poetry is wrecked, and so is his meaning.

Thomas Shadwell was born in 1640 in Norfolk, and, after rejecting the study of law, became a playwright in 1688. He was an author of comedies, and his friends considered him quite a wag. He and Sir John Dryden were archrivals; Dryden satirized Shadwell severely several times, but finally political events conspired to favor Shadwell. After the ascension of William and Mary to the throne of England, papists were virtually banished from the kingdom. Dryden, having converted to Roman Catholicism, had to flee the country, and Shadwell became the Poet Laureate.

Shadwell added a masque to Timon of Athens. for which Purcell composed the music. The verse Shadwell gave to Purcell to set is little better than doggerel, but Purcell, a young composer at the time, did a fine job with it. Purcell composed the music in such a way as to turn the masque into an essential part of the drama. The poem features shepherds, nymphs, and Bachants, in an argument over the relative merits of addiction to wine and love. It is an allegory of the main plot of Timon's struggle between his two would-be loves, one a hedonist and the other a stoic.

The overture is a "trumpet overture", full of dotted rhythms, and trumpet fanfare music. There is plenty of rhythmic interplay between the voices, and Purcell demonstrates an early affinity for a highly contrapuntal style. The effect is sophisticated and joyous. Usually orchestral pieces of this type open with a slow movement and close with an allegro, but here Purcell begins with a happier, quicker feeling and closes with a deliciously moving Adagio. Purcell rewrote the piece to use again as the opening of his Birthday Ode for the Duke of Gloucester.

Eight of the songs from Timon of Athens appear in Orpheus Britannicus, a posthumous collection of Purcell's songs. The opening duet for two flutes and two sopranos uses rhythmic figures and running sixteenths in a delightful imitative texture.The bass solo for the follower of Bacchus is slightly florid, highly picturesque, and quite bold in its harmonic treatment of the text.

"The Cares of Lovers" is also known to have been quite a popular song. It is completely free rhythmically, and is a very good example of Italian influence on English vocal music. Purcell spins his musical line out, making it as long and as expressive as he dares. It's full of sighing motifs and coloratura-like passagework. The accompaniment plays only chordal underpinnings at appropriate resting places in the musical line, or at points that help propel the phrase onward. The effect is one of extreme delicacy and beauty.

Purcell also wrote an instrumental "Curtain Tune" that was probably used as background music in the fourth act. Tragedy has struck Timon, and he has become a recluse. The music is full of agitation and distress. Purcell has often been accused of using what are known as false relations in his harmony. Here he builds his harmonic framework around these. In a series of ascending false relations he builds the tension of the music with constant dissonance and a driving rhythm in a polyphonic texture. At the end of the work, he suddenly begins writing with no dissonance at all, providing sudden contrast to end the piece.

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