SKB quoted the following from Timon:
ALCBiades: How came the noble Timon to this change?
TIMon: As the moon does, by wanting light to give;
But then renew I could not, like the moon;
There were no suns to borrow of.
MR: Funny that this should come up. I was just reading an essay-in-progress by my friend, former student, and soon-to-be-co-author Tiffany DeRewal. Tiffany has noticed several intriguing correspondences between PF and the Introduction by H.J. Oliver that appears in the 1959 Arden edition of Timon. Oliver specifically points to the passage Stan quotes above, as proof of a single author theory. Oliver believes the passage, and others, show the author's use of counterpoint, which Oliver says is the "dramatic principle on which Timon of Athens is constructed." According to Oliver, only a theory of single authorship can account for the various contrapuntal, mirror-like figures that occur throughout the play--only a single consciousness could have conceived and constructed all of the interconnected parts. The contrapuntal elements "set off against each other the reactions of one man to different situations, and the reactions of different men
to the same situation." This structure, Oliver points out, is similar to some "modern novels" like Huxley's Point Counter Point. [Let me emphasize once again that this is all Tiffany's insight, which I am passing on to the list. By the way, is there any evidence that VN knew of Oliver's intro?]
The passage above, it seems to me, nicely illuminates Kinbote's situation. Gerard De Vries has argued that Shade is associated with the sun (Kinbote says his mother's name comes from Luke, light-giver) and Kinbote the moon. Once his poet is gone, and especially once the commentary is finished, Kinbote has no sun to reflect and so must be extinguished.
Matt Roth