No record of any performance is known prior to the closing of the theatres in 1642; and the original, if it ever appeared on the Restoration stage, was soon displaced by adaptations till well into the nineteenth century. The principal one, Thomas Shadwell's Timon of Athens, the Man-hater, so captured the public taste that it was shown most of the years, 1701–45. After that it disappeared from the stage, and apart from attempts at modified versions in three or four different years London saw no Timon again till 1816. The genius of Kean in that year and of Phelps in the midcentury failed to restore the play to favour; but the present century has witnessed some noteworthy revivals.

Timon was one of three Shakespeare plays the sole acting rights in which were ‘allowed’ to the Duke's company by a royal warrant of 20 August 1668; but no record has been found of their performing it. In February 1678 Shadwell published his version, which was acted by the Duke's company in their Dorset Garden Theatre. Betterton played Timon, while his wife and Mrs Shadwell took the parts of the two new women characters, Timon's mistress Evandra, and his fiancée, Melissa; Harris was Apemantus, Smith Alcibiades, Medbourne Demetrius (= Shakespeare's Flavius), and Alcibiades's two mistresses (in Shadwell ‘Thais’ and ‘Phrinias’) were given to Mrs Seymour and Mrs LeGrand. Downes reports that the play was ‘very well Acted, and the Musick in't well Performed; it wonderfully pleas'd the Court and City, being an Excellent Moral’.