Shakespeare and Science to Mark the 450Th Anniversary of the Bard’S Birth, Jennifer Rampling Probes How Mathematics and Technology Shaped His Era

BOOKS & ARTS COMMENT BEINECKE RARE BOOK & MANUSCRIPT LIB. BEINECKE MARIE-LOUISE OSBORN COLLECTION/ & JAMES MARSHALL

A prototype wetsuit — one of several innovations presented in the 1590s manuscript MS Osborn a8.

TUDOR TECHNOLOGY Shakespeare and science To mark the 450th anniversary of the bard’s birth, Jennifer Rampling probes how mathematics and technology shaped his era.

ike the plots of William Shakespeare’s diverted energies that might have other- best-sellers included almanacs, collections plays, from The Merchant of Venice wise been channelled into exploration. By of alchemical and household ‘secrets’ and to Hamlet and Othello, Tudor science the time of Elizabeth I’s accession in 1558 vernacular mathematical textbooks such as Ltook its inspiration from abroad. However, (six years before the playwright’s birth on Robert Recorde’s oft-reprinted Arithmetic, its dramatis personae include few easy 23 April 1564), her Spanish and Portuguese or The Grounde of Arts (1543). analogues of continental stars such as Nico- counterparts had amassed vast New World Enter Shakespeare. Born in Stratford-upon- laus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Paracelsus territories — and with them, knowledge Avon, by 1592 he was in London as both or Galileo. England and Wales undoubtedly of new plant and animal species, peoples, player and playwright. From temporary had scholars of international calibre, includ- geographies and commodities. England’s stages in inn yards to purpose-built theatres, ing the mathematician-astronomers John rotting fleet and dearth of native pilots and the capital offered increasing scope for com- Dee, Thomas Digges and Thomas Harriot. navigational know-how offered dispiriting panies of players. There, a growing population Yet the expansion of its scientific horizons prospects for the expansion of either terri- of ‘mechanical’ artisans, instrument-makers, was driven as much by artisanal and mer- tory or natural knowledge. engineers, printers and medical practitioners cantile interests as by university learning or A quick scene change to almost 40 years helped to constitute one of the most sophis- royal patronage. Detailed globes, astronomi- later, towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign, ticated play-going audiences in history, eager cal instruments and translations of French and we find the port of London booming for new material and swift to detect topical and Spanish navigational texts offered new and England a maritime power, defending its allusions. Whatever the causes and effects of tools for mastering both England’s coastal shores from Spanish fleets and establishing the English transformation, we might expect waters and the ocean voyages required for fledgling colonies in the Americas. Goods, to catch some hint of it on the stage. inter continental trade and exploration. people and ideas poured in from conti- For both playwrights and audiences, the Shakespeare’s “scepter’d isle” was a late- nental Europe and beyond, bringing new connection between global ambition and comer to Europe’s scientific renaissance. experiences and expertise. London’s presses artisanal know-how would have been hard The upheavals of the English Reformation added to the flow of information. Scientific to miss: new technologies simultaneously

drew on classical precedents and the latest knowledge from abroad. Grenades, printing presses and fireworks attached to the backs of cats (intended to “raise a tumult” in enemy camps) appear in one manuscript collection BRIDGEMAN ART LIB. of Elizabethan inventions. The anonymous compiler (possibly the engineer and alche- mist Ralph Rabbards) combined practical experience of Italian military campaigns with fanciful ideas for adapting ancient inventions — among them, an ingenious design for a wetsuit with adjustable snorkel, for covert attacks on enemy shipping. The tension between learning and experience, speculation and utility, can also be detected in scholarly works. When John Dee famously surveyed the “Artes Math- ematicall” in his preface to Henry Billings- ley’s 1570 English translation of Euclid, he stressed the value of mathematics in study- ing both natural phenomena and practical problems — from arranging artillery to com- pounding medicines. The utilitarian ethos helps to explain why Digges, for all his astro- nomical skill, served Elizabeth primarily by consulting on the construction of Dover Harbour. Dee, who coined the term “Brytish Elizabeth I rests her hand on a globe — an instance of technology advertising naval prowess. Impire”, eventually left England to pursue his dream of a court-philosopher post abroad. enabled expansion and advertised it. In understood the analogy between heavenly Only in The Tempest does Shakespeare 1592, the Lambeth-based mathematician and political stability, and the anxieties trig- evoke the kind of philosopher that Dee and instrument-maker Emery Molyneux gered by inauspicious stars, comets and sun- sought to embody: the magus Prospero, presented Elizabeth I with intricate, 65-cen- spots (the “disasters in the sun” mentioned whose expertise in natural and occult philo timetre globes that tracked the voyages of the by Horatio in Hamlet). The playwright’s sophy grants him the upper hand over the English explorers Francis Drake and Thomas dramatic use of celestial portents does not unschooled Caliban and the shipwrecked Cavendish. The globes’ fame helped to pro- stretch to promoting a Copernican model, royal party. Dee, who tried and failed to per- mote the use of smaller versions as navigation although we may detect a glancing refer- suade Elizabeth to sponsor a ‘research insti- aids, and even reached the stage: playwright ence to heliocentrism in Hamlet’s love letter tute’ under his direction, might well have Thomas Dekker referenced “Molyneux his to Ophelia — “Doubt thou the stars are fire; envied Prospero the freedom to experiment globe”. In 1599, Shakespeare’s company, the Doubt that the sun doth move ... But never without the constraints of patronage. On Lord Chamberlain’s Men, named their new doubt I love”. Only after Shakespeare’s death the whole, the “brave new world” of Tudor theatre the Globe — a fitting symbol of Eliza- and Galileo’s energetic interventions would knowledge-making lay elsewhere — between bethan aspirations. The unexpected richness Copernican ideas take the commercially minded Antonio, the epon- of New World discoveries, and the challenges centre stage. “Elizabethan ymous merchant of Venice, and the “rude they posed to ancient authorities, forced Few Elizabethan science, like mechanicals” of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Europeans to expand their world views even scholars pursued Elizabethan This is the world of Shakespeare’s plays, as their voyages put a girdle round the Earth. astronomy on the dramaturgy, populated with ideas and technologies that Shakespeare’s famously sparse biogra- scale of Brahe or Gali- responded his audience would have recognized from phy offers few clues to his own views on the leo, both recipients of to funding contemporary life: clocks, globes, com- sciences. Young Will may have witnessed the princely patronage. priorities.” passes, the distorting ‘perspective glass’. blazing Stella Nova: the supernova spotted by (An exception was Even his famous evocation of England, a Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe and others Harriot — the protégé of Walter Raleigh “precious stone set in the silver sea”, suggests in 1572. Unlike comets, the new star had no and Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland the technique of foiling to create brilliant apparent parallax or proper motion, suggest- — who mapped the Moon by telescope reflective backings for jewels and mirrors. ing that it lay at a great distance from Earth before Galileo.) Elizabethan science, like If Shakespeare declined to furnish later ages — a novelty where none should have existed, Elizabethan dramaturgy, responded to fund- with a convenient narrative of Elizabethan according to the generally accepted Aristo- ing priorities, and theoretical advances car- science, he surely succeeded in holding up a telian model of the cosmos. For Digges, the ried less weight with Elizabeth’s government mirror to the technological and commercial star offered a potential confirmation of the than pragmatic and potentially high-profit vibrancy of his own age. ■ Copernican system, and an opportunity to schemes to improve navigation, exploit min- advance his reputation through timely pub- eral resources or alchemically transmute Jennifer Rampling is a historian of lication of his own work on stellar parallax. metals on an industrial scale. medieval and early-modern science and Not all observers read the star in that Petitioners to the queen often sought medicine. An assistant professor of history way. For astrologically literate Londoners, monopoly grants for such projects. Others at Princeton University in New Jersey, she stellar novelties might also presage war- hoped for financial investment. Apart from specializes in the history of alchemy. fare and dynastic change. Shakespeare well utility and personal expertise, proposals e-mail: [email protected]