The Science of Shakespeare (13 page)

TALKING TO ANGELS

Jardine leads me down to the basement, and into a room that looks, at first glance, like a storeroom for Hollywood horror-movie props. I can't help noticing the array of iron torture instruments and related objects: chains with spikes; a prisoner's mask; a mask worn by an executioner. Jardine tells me they span the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. There's also a disturbingly lifelike wax head, apparently from the early twentieth century. One of the items in the room, however, has a remarkable connection to the period we've been looking at. Jardine opens a drawer to reveal a tiny display box—it fits easily in his hand—containing a small, convex glass disk, rather like a semi-transparent lens, measuring about an inch across. It belonged to Queen Elizabeth's court astrologer.

“This is actually John Dee's pendant, which he used in order to communicate with angels,” Jardine says, taking the crystal gently from its case. With a bit of imagination, one can picture the inquisitive Dr. Dee holding the crystal in front of a candle or fireplace, peering at the shimmering image it would have presented. “It's effectively a lens, and it distorts whatever is behind it,” Jardine says. “So clearly, in the right conditions, you could use it to conjure up some rather extraordinary visions.”

Stored alongside the crystal is a short manuscript, in Latin, written on vellum parchment. It was penned by a man named Nicholas Culpeper, a seventeenth-century doctor famous for his herbal recipes and treatments. Jardine reads from an English translation of Culpeper's testimony: In November 1582, it says, “the angel Uriel appeared in the window of the museum of Dr. Dee, situated to the west, and gave him this transparent stone or crystal.” The note, written in 1640, goes on to explain how the crystal came into Culpeper's possession: Dee's son, Arthur, gave it to him as a reward “for having cured a liver complaint of his with the greatest rapidity.” Culpeper went on to make use of the crystal in his own practice: “I have used this crystal in many ways, and have thus cured illness. But with its use, a very great weakness always set in and a lethargy of the body.”

In other words, the crystal was believed—by Culpeper, at least—to have been a gift from God, and to possess magical properties. “That is apparently its origin,” Jardine says. “It was a divine gift to Dr. Dee, the famous astrologer. To his enemies, he was a conjurer; to his friends, he was a mathematician and great teacher of Continental learning.” Did Dee believe in his own supposedly divine gifts? Did he really think the crystal came from God? “I don't know whether that's
his
claim or not,” says Jardine. “It's certainly his claim that using this stone, this transparent crystal, along with an obsidian mirror and some other artifacts, that he actually communicated with angels, together with some of his friends and acquaintances. The question of whether they really believed what they claimed to be seeing is an incredibly difficult one to answer.”

As the “magic crystal” suggests, John Dee (1527–1608) was a remarkable figure whose way of thinking embraced both science and magic—which is less of a surprise when we remember that he lived at a time when a distinction between the two was only just emerging. In his only known portrait, he sports a long white beard and a black skullcap. Wherever a magician-like character turns up in Elizabethan literature, scholars wonder if it is a reflection of the enigmatic John Dee. He has long been seen as a potential inspiration for Shakespeare's Prospero—and perhaps for the title characters in Ben Jonson's
The Alchemist
and Christopher Marlowe's
Doctor Faustus
. More recently he is said to have inspired the character of Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series. (His portrait “would only need a crystal ball, a cat and a pointy hat with astrological symbols to complete the picture,” as Nigel Jones noted recently.) The son of a wealthy textile trader, Dee was a skilled mathematician, astronomer, and navigator, as well as an astrologer and alchemist. He also had a sizable ego, believing that he understood God's will better than the biblical prophets did. Though he was fascinated by the occult and magic of all kinds, in some ways he nonetheless had a very modern perspective on what science is and how it should be conducted. He seems to have embraced something close to what we would now call the “experimental method”—the combination of careful observation and recording of data, the use of mathematics to analyze the data, the development of hypotheses, and the devising of new experiments to check those hypotheses.

Dee wasn't only a man of science. As a student, he had a passion for the theater. While an undergraduate at Cambridge, Dee helped to construct the props for a student production—in particular, a mechanical flying beetle. The play, an early Greek comedy, calls for a dung beetle that flies toward the sun. Dee would later claim that his beetle was so realistic that audiences ran from the theater in terror. He explained that his contraption was harmless; it was just a machine—albeit a sophisticated one—that could be understood through mechanics and mathematical laws. Many didn't believe him; he was called a “conjurer,” a practitioner of dark magic—a label that would haunt him throughout his career.

Dee was a skilled mathematician, and, when still in his early twenties, lectured widely on the Continent. He took an interest in astronomy, and was ready to embrace the Copernican theory—up to a point. In 1557 he wrote a preface for a set of ephemeris tables
*
penned by the astronomer John Field. In the preface, Dee lamented the shortcomings of the older, Ptolemaic tables. The figures in the new tables were worked out using the new model, which Dee recognized as yielding improved accuracy. He praised Copernicus “for the more than Herculean labours which he endured in giving a new impetus to the study of the heavens and confirming it most strongly by his calculations,” though he cautioned that “this is not the place to discuss his hypothesis.” (Field himself seems to have been more confident; in his own foreword to the ephemeris, he spoke of the new theory having been “established and based upon true, certain, and genuine demonstrations.”) Dee was clearly prepared to utilize the Copernican model when it proved advantageous; but did he accept it as the true description of the cosmos? We can't be sure—but at the very least, he was clearly aware of the problems raised by the conflict between the two systems of the universe.

We've already seen how theology and science were intertwined at this time, and it's no surprise that Dee referred to Psalm 19 with approval when he described the structure of the universe:

The whole frame of Gods Creatures, (which is the whole world,) is to us, a bright glasse: from which, by reflexion, reboundeth to our knowledge and perceiverance, Beames, and Radiations: representing the Image of his Infinite goodness, Omnipotency, and wisedome. And we therby, are taught and persuaded to Glorifie our Creator, as God: and be thankfull therefore.

The passage suggests a universe that was created by God but that could be understood through science—an approach hinted at in Dee's optical metaphor, with the universe compared to a glass, and light representing divine knowledge.

MORTLAKE'S MAN OF SCIENCE

Dee was England's foremost man of science in the second half of the sixteenth century. Working from his home at Mortlake, near Richmond (now fully engulfed by Greater London), he constructed a multipurpose laboratory and collected books and astronomical instruments. His vast personal library—probably the largest private library in all of England—included two copies of
De revolutionibus
, along with Ptolemy's
Almagest
. Dee was an influential teacher, instructing many (perhaps most) of the great English mathematicians and astronomers of his day, and maintaining a correspondence with scientists from across Europe, including Tycho Brahe. “Dee knew everyone who was anyone,” as Nigel Jones notes; and as Lesley Cormack puts it, “Anyone who was anyone in Elizabethan natural philosophy knew Dee.”

Could “anyone” have included William Shakespeare? Perhaps. As Peter Ackroyd notes, the playwright's company, the King's Men, stayed in Mortlake briefly in 1603, during an outbreak of the plague. “It is possible that the actors encountered the notorious Doctor Dee during their residence in Mortlake,” Ackroyd writes—though of course we cannot be sure. What we can be somewhat more certain of is that whoever did visit the Dee residence would have been exposed to the ideas of Copernicus. Historians believe that the Copernican theory was freely discussed within Dee's circle of friends—more freely, certainly, at his home than would have been possible at Oxford or Cambridge at that time—and that Dee himself played an important role in spreading word of the Copernican system. His house at Mortlake, as Antonia McLean puts it, “became the focal point of all scientific advance in mathematical and allied sciences in the first half of the reign of Elizabeth.” Dee was also a familiar presence at court, and served as an advisor to Queen Elizabeth, consulting on matters of astrology and alchemy.

Another preface written by Dee hints at his desire to foster what we would now call scientific literacy. This time it was an English edition of Euclid's
Elements
, published by a merchant named Henry Billingsley. Their goal, it seems, was to convince their countrymen of the value of mathematics; to show how mathematical proficiency would benefit the entire nation. Dee sought to make Euclid's sprawling text as comprehensible and accessible as possible. The more one understood of numbers and their manipulations, he argued, the more one could make sense of the natural world. Billingsley, meanwhile, wrote that understanding mathematics required immersion in “the principles, grounds, and elements of geometry.” And it required dedication. The student must be prepared for “diligent study and reading of old, ancient authors.” But there was more: Dee linked the study of mathematics to that of music, painting, and even medicine. It was, in effect, a summary of Elizabethan knowledge—and a call to arms to work at growing that knowledge base. Even after nearly 450 years, it remains, as McLean puts it, “one of the most comprehensive and important statements on learning ever written by an Englishman.”

Dee also mentions the “perspective glass,” presumably referring to a device similar to that mentioned by Thomas Digges. Dee writes that a military commander “may wonderfully helpe him selfe, by Perspective Glasses, in which (I trust) our posterity will prove more skillfull and expert, and to greater purposes, than in these days.…” He appreciated that such novel devices could fill the user not just with awe but with fear. Was the effect real, or was it magic? Dee showed that the telescope's effects were simply the result of the laws of perspective and optics. He even urged skeptical readers to visit the London home of a former student, Sir William Pickering, where they could partake of a demonstration.

I've mentioned the possibility that Shakespeare may have encountered Dee at Mortlake—but there is another (admittedly quite speculative) link between the two men. It has occasionally been claimed that the design of the Globe Theatre, where so many of Shakespeare's plays were performed, was based, in part, on Dee's writings. In his preface to Euclid, Dee wrote of the harmony of geometric forms, and this may be reflected in the Globe's design, which consists of a square stage bounded by a circular floor, bounded in turn by a hexagonal outer structure. The design “bears a direct and important relation to the Preface,” writes McLean, “simply because it puts the theories contained [in Dee's preface] into practise. The Globe therefore becomes the first example of a
classical
Renaissance building in London.”

Above all, Dee stressed the value of mathematics for the national interest. Armed with such knowledge, Englishmen were poised to discover “new works, strange engines, and instruments for sundry purposes in the commonwealth.” In the twenty-first century, it is commonplace to hear science-policy makers stressing the value of math and science for the national good (especially in the context of a competitive global marketplace); Dee, writing more than four centuries ago, was perhaps the first to make the case.

We have now met Thomas Digges, one of the first English thinkers to embrace the Copernican theory, and John Dee, who also lent it significant support, and was prepared to weigh it against the traditional view. As we've seen, however, both of these thinkers were preceded by a nearly forgotten Welshman named Robert Recorde (c. 1510–1558), who referred to the new theory less than a decade after the publication of
De revolutionibus
.

SETTING THE RECORDE STRAIGHT

In spite of his relative obscurity, Robert Recorde was probably the most influential English scientist of his day. A man of diverse talents, Recorde studied at Oxford and later earned a medical degree at Cambridge; he taught at Oxford and in London, and helped to train England's first generation of navigators. Recorde was something of a polymath: He was an expert on languages, metallurgy, and mathematics, served as a physician in the court of Edward VI, and in his final years held the title of General Surveyor of Mines, as well as being appointed comptroller of the Bristol Mint. He was also what we would now call a popularizer of science; though he had mastered Greek and Latin, he taught in English, and chose to write for a lay audience in clear and elegant English prose.

In 1542 Recorde published the first English textbook on arithmetic, called
The Grounde of the Artes
, which remained in print to the end of the seventeenth century and introduced the
+
,
−
, and
=
signs for addition, subtraction, and equality. Nine years later he published
The Pathway to Knowledge
, the first book in English on geometry. In 1556, he tackled the subject of astronomy, with a book called
The Castle of Knowledge
, the first comprehensive astronomy text written in English. The book is presented in the form of a dialogue between a master and a young scholar, and the crucial passage runs as follows: