Timon of Athens

When I read Shakespeare's Timon of Athens for the first time, I thought it was too loud to be Shakespearean. 

The play could have come out of a Bollywood studio, so shallow it's storyline was and so bombastic were its dialogues.

Theatre critic John Lahr points out the un Shakespearean traits of Timon well:

The play in which the well-heeled Timon gives away so much money to his so-called friends that he ruins himself, can't decide if it's a comedy or a tragedy; its characters have humors but lack depth; the plot is thin, with few dramatic reversals, and Timon's trajectory from philanthropy to misanthropy is a precipitous straight line. 

There is a saying that Shakespeare was a bit embarrassed about staging Timon. It was thus never staged during his lifetime.

Perhaps it was the subject matter that made the play ahead of its time. As Lahr praises a recent revival of the play by London's National Theatre, he makes it look like Timon was written for a time of global economic meltdown. 

The play opens with an onstage replica of the tents of the Occupy London protesters, and ends with a view of the logo of HSBC, the bank that was caught laundering money for Mexican drug cartels and Middle Eastern terrorists.

According to Lahr:

In its gaudy shadows, Timon's tale of collapse catches not only the fragility of the British economy but the unnerving immanence of the collapse of its ruling elite.

Shakespeare must have written a recession play in an era when economic systems were in a very nascent stage.