The Science of Shakespeare

 

Copyright © 2014 by Dan Falk.

 

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). To contact Access Copyright, visit
www.accesscopyright.ca
or call 1-800-893-5777.

 

Published simultaneously in the United States of America by Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin's Press.

 

Cover design by Julie Scriver.

Cover illustrations: One of four extant brass astrolabes manufactured by the workshop of Georg Hartmann in Nuremberg in 1537. This one is part of the Scientific Instruments Collection of Yale University's Peabody Museum of Natural History, wikimedia (foreground); “Venus and the Night Sky Over Mammoth,” John Lemieux,
flickr.com
(background).

 

 

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

 

Falk, Dan, 1966-, author

The science of Shakespeare : a new look at the playwright's universe / Dan Falk.

 

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-0-86492-418-6 (bound). ISBN 978-0-86492-796-5 (epub)

 

1. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 - Knowledge - Science.

2. Science - England - History - 16th century.

3. Science in literature.

I. Title.

 

PR3047.F34 2014     822.3'3     C2013-907595-X

                                    C2013-907596-8

 

 

Goose Lane Editions acknowledges the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF), and the Government of New Brunswick through the Department of Tourism, Heritage and Culture.

 

Goose Lane Editions

500 Beaverbrook Court, Suite 330

Fredericton, New Brunswick

CANADA E3B 5X4

www.gooselane.com

 

contents

Title Page

Copyright

List of Illustrations

Preface and Acknowledgments

Prologue

Introduction

Fig. 0.1 Copernicus's illustration of a sun-centered universe (Image Select/Art Resource NY)

Fig. 0.2 Frontispiece from Shakespeare's First Folio (The Bridgeman Art Library, London)

  
1.
  “Arise, fair sun…”

A Brief History of Cosmology

Fig. 1.1 The earth-centered universe (The Granger Collection, New York)

Fig. 1.2 Frontispiece to the
Sphaera Civitatis
(The Granger Collection, New York)

  
2.
  “He that is giddy thinks the world turns round…”

Nicolaus Copernicus, the Reluctant Reformer

  
3.
  “This majestical roof fretted with golden fire…”

Tycho Brahe and Thomas Digges

Fig. 3.1 Tycho Brahe's diagram showing the location of the “new star” of 1572 (The Bridgeman Art Library, London)

Fig. 3.2 Tycho Brahe's “hybrid” model of the cosmos (The Granger Collection, New York)

Fig. 3.3 Thomas Digges's infinite cosmos (The Granger Collection, New York)

  
4.
  “These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights…”

The Shadow of Copernicus and the Dawn of Science

Fig. 4.1 Statue of Giordano Bruno (author photo)

  
5.
  “… sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears…”

The Rise of English Science and the Question of the Tudor Telescope

Fig. 5.1 Grounds of Syon House, west London (author photo)

Fig. 5.2 Thomas Harriot's full moon drawing (Lord Egremont)

Fig. 5.3 Hans Hobein's
The Ambassadors
(The Bridgeman Art Library, London)

  
6.
  “Who is it that can tell me who I am?”

A Brief History of William Shakespeare

Fig. 6.1 Shakespeare's birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon (author photo)

Fig. 6.2 Detail from Visscher's panorama of London (The Bridgeman Art Library, London)

  
7.
  “More things in heaven and earth…”

The Science of
Hamlet

Fig. 7.1 Scene from the
Atlas of the Principal Cities of the World
, showing Helschenor and Hven (Donald Olson)

Fig. 7.2 Tycho Brahe with the crests of members of his family (Donald Olson)

Fig. 7.3 Memorial to Shakespeare and the First Folio, London (author photo)

  
8.
  “… a hawk from a handsaw”

Reading Shakespeare, and Reading into Shakespeare

  
9.
  “Does the world go round?”

Shakespeare and Galileo

Fig. 9.1 Galileo's drawings of the moon (Scala/Art Resource, NY)

Fig. 9.2 Galileo's drawings of Jupiter and its moons (The Granger Collection, New York)

10.
  “Treachers by spherical predominance…”

The Allure of Astrology

11.
  “Fair is foul, and foul is fair…”

Magic in the Age of Shakespeare

Fig. 11.1 Frontispiece from Christopher Marlowe's
Doctor Faustus
(© British Library Board/Robana/Art Resource, NY)

Fig. 11.2 Johannes Kepler's attempt to link the planets to the five platonic solids, from the
Mysterium Cosmographicum
(BPK Berlin/Art Resource, NY)

12.
  “A body yet distempered…”

Shakespeare and Medicine

Fig. 12.1 Depiction of an anatomy lecture (The Bridgeman Art Library, London)

13.
  “Drawn with a team of little atomi…”

Living in the Material World

14.
  “As flies to wanton boys…”

The Disappearing Gods

“They say miracles are past…”
Conclusion

Fig. 15.1 Frontispiece of Francis Bacon's
The Great Instauration
(Image Select/Art Resource, NY)

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Also by Dan Falk

About the Author

 

list of illustrations

Copernicus's illustration of a sun-centered universe (Image Select/Art Resource NY)

Frontispiece from Shakespeare's First Folio (The Bridgeman Art Library, London)

The earth-centered universe (The Granger Collection, New York)

Frontispiece to the
Sphaera Civitatis
(The Granger Collection, New York)

Tycho Brahe's diagram showing the location of the “new star” of 1572 (The Bridgeman Art Library, London)

Tycho Brahe's “hybrid” model of the cosmos (The Granger Collection, New York)

Thomas Digges's infinite cosmos (The Granger Collection, New York)

Statue of Giordano Bruno (author photo)

Grounds of Syon House, west London (author photo)

Thomas Harriot's full moon drawing (Lord Egremont)

Hans Holbein's
The Ambassadors
(The Bridgeman Art Library, London)

Shakespeare's birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon (author photo)

Detail from Visscher's panorama of London (The Bridgeman Art Library, London)

Scene from the
Atlas of the Principal Cities of the World,
showing Helschenor and Hven (Donald Olson)

Tycho Brahe with the crests of members of his family (Donald Olson)

Memorial to Shakespeare and the First Folio, London (author photo)

Galileo's drawings of the moon (Scala/Art Resource, NY)

Galileo's drawings of Jupiter and its moons (The Granger Collection, New York)

Frontispiece from Christopher Marlowe's
Doctor Faustus
(© British Library Board/Robana/Art Resource, NY)

Johannes Kepler's attempt to link the planets to the five platonic solids, from the
Mysterium Cosmographicum
(BPK Berlin/Art Resource, NY)

Depiction of an anatomy lecture (The Bridgeman Art Library, London)

Frontispiece of Francis Bacon's
The Great Instauration
(Image Select/Art Resource, NY)

 

preface and acknowledgments

As it happens, my love of science and my fondness for Shakespeare date back to about the same time: I was ten or eleven when my parents took me to see
Macbeth
for the first time; and it was around then that they bought me a copy of H. A. Rey's
Know the Stars
, a wonderful children's astronomy book. (Rey was into monkeys as well as astronomy; with his wife, Margaret, he was the creator of Curious George.) I would later come to realize that Shakespeare understood a fair bit about astronomy. This was obvious from his frequent allusions to sunrises, eclipses, the pole star, and such; but for many years I gave the matter little thought. I also knew that Shakespeare and Galileo were born in the same year; but that fact is usually dismissed as little more than an item of trivia. (Sure, 1564 was a good year, but so what?)

A turning point came in January 1996, when Peter Usher, an astronomer, presented a paper titled “A New Reading of Shakespeare's
Hamlet
” at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. (The meeting, as luck would have it, was held in my home city of Toronto.) But Usher's work was clearly controversial, and his paper made only a mild splash; soon I was back to writing articles about black holes and the big bang. But in roughly 2010, with Shakespeare's 450th birthday looming, I began to dig a little deeper—quickly realizing that I had only scratched the surface of a rich and under-explored topic. I soon discovered that a handful of respected Shakespeare scholars were beginning to investigate the playwright's knowledge of science, and astronomy in particular. Another bout of luck: One of the scholars at the forefront of this research, Scott Maisano, was based in Boston, where I was living in 2011–12 while a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Sensing that “Shakespeare and science” would make an intriguing radio documentary, I pitched it to CBC Radio's
Ideas
, and they gave me the green light. This book takes advantage of many of the interviews originally conducted for that project. As my research continued, the library became my second home; I audited university Shakespeare classes; and I went to as many Shakespeare productions as I could. I've lost track of the total number of performances, but they came in all varieties: indoor and outdoor; minimalist and lavish; no-budget, low-budget, and professional. I loved being a “groundling” for
Henry V
at Shakespeare's Globe in London; I saw multiple
As You Like It
s,
Twelfth Night
s, and
Richard III
s; I took in a sadomasochist production of
Antony and Cleopatra
(let's just say there was a lot of leather) and an “anarchist” production of
Measure for Measure
in which Barnardine was played by a hand puppet (which proved quite effective, though it restricted his movements somewhat).

In
The Science of Shakespeare
, I examine the playwright's world, taking a close look at the science of his day (bearing in mind that “science,” as we think of it today, was only just coming into existence). This subject—the birth of modern science—is fascinating in its own right, and I hope that readers will enjoy this work as a history of ideas, focusing on this remarkable period of discovery. I also investigate how these discoveries are reflected in Shakespeare's work, and, more broadly, how they reshaped society at large. And so, even though much has been written on this period, and Shakespeare is one of the most-studied figures in history, I hope that, by exploring the connections between the playwright and this aspect of his world,
The Science of Shakespeare
offers something new.