The Renaissance Hermetic Tradition in Shakespeare's Plays
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THE RENAISSANCE HERMETIC TRADITION IN SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS M. WALLS °ubmitted in partial fulfillment of the degree of Master of Arts. The Shakespeare Institute, Birmingham University, January 1986. University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. TABLE OF Introduction 1 CHAPTER 1 15 Numerology.. Renaissance numerol.ogical theory. As .You Like It, Ajyiidsummer Night's Dream , Twelfth Might, The Merchant of Venice and.' The Tempest. Footnotes to Chapter 1 50 CHAPTER 2 51 Orphic Music. Renaissance and Pythagorean philosophy of music. King Lear, Hamlet, Pericles, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest. Footnotes to Chapter 2 88 CHAPTER 3 89 The New Eden. The golden age and renaissance Utopias. The Winter's Tale and The Tempest. Footnotes to Chapter 3 1 3*4 CHAPTER 4 135 Alchemy. Alchemical theory, Ben Jonson's approach. Timon of Athens. Footnotes to Chapter 4 195 CHAPTER 5 186 Satumian Melancholia. Melancholia - mundane and inspired. Saturn, the angelic hierarchies, Eurer's 'Melencolia 1 , Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Pico's 'Oration on the Dignity of Man', Milton, Hamlei. j1ootr:otes to Chapter 5 228 CHAPTER 6 229 The Magus. Aspects of the renaissance magus. Timon of Athens, Hamlst and The Tempest. Conclusion 246 Select Bibliography 253 SYNOPSIS The plays of Shakespeare included in this thesis are:- As You Like It, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, King Lear, Timon of Athens, Pericles, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. Some receive a much greater share of attention than others do. This is due to their relevance to the areas of the Renaissance Hermetic Tradition which are covered here. Renaissance interpretations which come through the work of Agrippa, Bruno, Picino, Pico and John Dee are included. The areas covered here are Numerology, with its Pythagorean and cabalistic roots and its renaissance interpretations. Orphic Music which is also derived in part from Pythagoras' influence. The New Eden with its Utopian links and the renaissance hankering for a return to the original golden age. I discuss Saturnian Melancholia, both mundane and inspired, and the insight this gives us to Hamlet and his supposed madness. Also included is Alchemy and its relevance to an understanding of Timon of Athens. The first chapter, which is Numerology lays a foundation on which the subsequent chapters rest, and leads up to the concept of the magus who was considered the master and manipulator of such esoteric powers. Estimated approximate word length is J^ Introduction In Hamlet. Shakespeare, through Hamlet, informs Polonius and the audience of the role of the actor in society: Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear? Let them be well used, for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live. (2.2.520-24) Whilst issuing instructions about the interpolation he wishes the players to add to the play they will perform, Hamlet again touches upon the procedures and purposes of acting: Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, than you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own features, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. (3.2.17-24) As both playwright and actor himself, Shakespeare must necessarily have had some conception of the role of the actor in society. Although it is a dangerous business to suggest that Shakespeare's own beliefs are mouthed by his characters it is perhaps equally dangerous to discount what Hamlet says on this subject. Particularly when we bear in mind that such a conception, with its associated constraints and aims, is still of paramount importance to many playwrights and actors today. This is not to say that all such attempts to reflect the universe and the peoples who inhabit it are based in realism. Many such attempts to understand the universe are modern day parables and allegories verging on speculative fiction. Such literature, particularly drama, cannot reflect the entire universe in which they are set, but rather depict fragments of it and the inter-relationship of elements making up those fragments, - 2 - Thus, we would not expect the universe reflected by Shakespeare's plays to be altogether complete, realistic, or different from the universe depicted by his contemporaries. Although his method of treatment, mode of perception, and degree of craftsmanship, might present us with an entirely different and perhaps more complex series of images to assimilate and understand, we would expect to see some degree of common-ground, at least in the basic philosophy of the time. I suggest that such an area of common-ground resides in the renaissance hermetic philosophy. In her numerous books and articles Prances Yates has striven to recreate, establish and unify the seeming disparate threads of the philosophy of the renaissance. She has concentrated in that area of the philosophy relating to the hermetic tradition, as have Alan Debus, Fritz Saxl, C. H. Josten and her fellow labourers at the Warburg Institute, contributors to its journal, and the contributors to Ambix. The understanding and application of this philosophy in the literary field has led to new insights into the works of Chapman, Spenser, Marlowe, Milton, Jonson and in some cases Shakespeare himself. This approach is reflected in the work of Yates herself and in the work of Fowler, Hankins, Hieatt and Nicholl. In the visual arts it has led to a revaluation of Durer, Leonardo, and Rembrandt. This knowledge of contemporary occult philosophy, illustrated in the works of the above artists and writers; the fact that John Dee, renaissance magus and philosopher, was adviser to Elizabeth I; that Giordano Bruno met with the Oxford 'pedants' and lectured at Wittenberg University; that Sir Walter Raleigh is known to have carried out 'experiments' in the Tower, together with James I's book Daemonologie, illustrate the wide area of its influence. - 3 - Not all who knew of or wrote about occult philosophy were experts in the area or among its supporters. Nor was the knowledge that such a philosophy existed and was practised limited to courtly and artistic circles. A mob, inflamed by reports that John Dee was a necromancer and involved with the occult, destroyed a large part of his library and house at Mortlake. An in-depth knowledge of occult philosophy may not have been prevalent among the 'mob 1 , but they did understand that it existed, and that it called upon and utilized supernatural powers. If Shakespeare chose to dramatise such a philosophy it does not mean that he either practised or adhered to such a school of thought, merely that such a school of thought was prevalent at the time. His handling of such subjects and the qualities with which he endows his heroes might lead us to make judgements as to his own degree of knowledge, belief, and commitment, but before doing so it is necessary to isolate the tangled threads within his plays. To understand best the implications that can be drawn from any such threads a familiarity with the philosophy itself is essential. Such an understanding will further illuminate the literature and art of the time, and in its turn the literature and art will illuminate the time itself. There is not room here for a deep and complicated exposition of renaissance hermetic/occult philosophy, but a simplified foundation is essential and I will attempt to establish such for the following chapters to rest upon. England, more northerly than the mainland of Europe, and separated from it by the Channel, was, and still is, in certain respects separated from the mainstream of European thought by this same divide. Consequently the hermetic tradition took longer to - 4 - become integrated into a philosophy in England than in the rest of Europe. Ey the time the philosophy reached England it had become tinged with Protestantism and Reformation. Thus, while being purged by the Roman Catholic church and abandoned or driven under ground in Southern Europe, it was finding more fertile and tolerant ground in Northern Europe and England. The occult tradition stems from two forms of gnosticism, the Jewish (mainly Spanish) Cabala and the gnostic writings of the supposed Hermes Trismegistus. Both traditions of gnosticism were Christianized by Pico, who felt that they could be shown to prove Jesus as the Son of God and the Messiah. He felt that he could convert Jews and Moslems to this truth by using his perception and understanding of the Cabala, an idea echoed by several of his learned successors, not least Reuchlin who also strove to understand Pythagorean numerology and mathematics. This synthesis of Jewish and Greek/Egyptian gnosticism into one philosophy with a Christian outlook also incorporated several elements of medieval philosophy. In essence then the renaissance hermetic tradition was the unification of Christian religious philosophy and neoplatonic and cabalistic tradition into a united whole.