The Science of Shakespeare (28 page)

As we've seen, Digges's book,
A Prognostication Everlasting
, was published in 1576, and reprinted seven times before 1605, always with the fold-out diagram of the infinite cosmos. There were thousands of copies in circulation during Shakespeare's most productive years in London. Digges, as mentioned in Chapter 3, embraced Copernicanism wholeheartedly, and told his readers that he included excerpts of Copernicus's own treatise, translated into English, “so that Englishmen might not be deprived of so noble a theory.”

*   *   *

It would be easier to tell
what Shakespeare thought of this “noble theory” if his characters were a bit more plainspoken when discussing the cosmos. Consider Hamlet's peculiar love poem to Ophelia:

Doubt thou the stars are fire,

Doubt that the sun doth move,

Doubt truth to be a liar,

But never doubt that I love.

(
Hamlet
2.2.115–18)

The astronomy alluded to in the passage is that of Ptolemy, but is Hamlet endorsing it, or urging Ophelia to question it? The usual interpretation is that Hamlet is telling Ophelia that his love is more reliable and more dependable than whatever she had been taught about the workings of the cosmos. Roughly: “Question the unquestionable, but don't question my love.” (The third line is the trickiest of the bunch: Here the meaning of the word “doubt” seems to change from “question” to “suspect.”) The play was written at a time when a handful of philosophers were indeed questioning whether the Earth moved. Is there any trace of Copernicanism in Hamlet's poem? In
1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare
(2005), James Shapiro writes, “The Ptolemaic science on which Hamlet's prognostications are grounded, as Shakespeare knew, was already discredited by the Copernican revolution. The stars aren't fire, the sun doesn't revolve around the earth. In such a universe, the truth may well turn out to be a liar.” (Indeed, the sun doesn't revolve around the Earth, but I'm not sure about the other half of Shapiro's statement—after all, stars are certainly
like
fire.
*
) Harold Jenkins, in the 1982 Arden edition, seems to share Shapiro's view. The poem, taken at face value, refers “to the orthodox belief of the Ptolemaic astronomy that the sun moved around the earth,” but Jenkins adds that there is also a hint of Shakespeare's possible awareness of Copernicanism: “Since each of the poem's first two lines assumes the certainty of what had now begun to be doubted, there is an irony of which Shakespeare (though not, I take it, Hamlet) must have been aware.” Even T. J. B. Spencer, who suggested that the star “westward from the pole” was a planet, shares the suspicion that the shadow of Copernicus may loom over the play: Hamlet's poem “is a clever epitome of some of the poetical tendencies of the 1590s: cosmological imagery, the Copernican revolution, moral paradoxes, all illustrating amorous responses.” Shakespeare's characters often speak in riddles, Hamlet above all. Perhaps the biggest riddle of the time was whether the universe was small, comfortable, and human-centered—or whether, as a handful of bold thinkers had suggested, it was enormous, with mankind a mere speck and our planet, on the cosmic scale, little more than a dot. No wonder Hamlet sees “this goodly frame the earth” as nothing more than a “congregation of vapours,” a “sterile promontory” (2.2.298–303).

THE BRUNO CONNECTION

Digges had pondered the possibility of an infinite universe—and so had Giordano Bruno. The connections between Shakespeare and Bruno are perhaps more speculative that those that connect him to Digges, but they are worth exploring. The Shakespeare–Bruno link runs through a key middleman—a Londoner with Italian roots by the name of John Florio. We know that Florio became close friends with Bruno, having met his countryman while working as a tutor for the French ambassador. At a dinner party in Whitehall Palace, he is said to have told the assembled guests about Bruno's theory of multiple inhabited worlds. The Italian thinker, who was both a Copernican and an atomist, seems “to have left a mark on some of the most cultured people in England” living at that time, according to Hilary Gatti. The usual argument is that Shakespeare, eager to make the acquaintance of learned men from diverse backgrounds (and perhaps especially Catholics), would have befriended a number of Italians in London, with the eloquent (and bilingual) Florio at the top of the list. Shakespeare and Florio had at least one more connection: Florio had served as a tutor to one of Shakespeare's patrons, the Earl of Southampton. (Certainly Shakespeare knew of the Italian's work: He clearly read Florio's translation of Montaigne's
Essays
. More on that in Chapter 13.) It is through Florio and his circle of friends that Shakespeare supposedly became acquainted with Italian ways and customs of Italy—material that he would make much use of in his plays, thirteen of which were set partially or entirely in Italy. Perhaps he also acquired a basic comprehension of the Italian language, allowing him to gloss the Italian texts identified as source material for many of his dramas. (As we've seen, another theory—a more tenuous one—is that Shakespeare visited Italy, perhaps before settling in London, a claim for which there is no solid evidence.)
*

The Shakespeare–Bruno connection has had its ups and downs: In the late nineteenth century, a number of Shakespeare scholars argued that the playwright was deeply influenced by Bruno's philosophy, acquired via Florio—a view that has since fallen out of favor. “The Bruno-Shakespeare discussion has become a historical curiosity,” writes Gatti, “of which many Shakespearean scholars of today are no longer even aware.” A degree of skepticism is in order. As Gatti notes, given the time frame of Bruno's visit to England, a meeting between Bruno and Shakespeare is “extremely improbable”—still, he may well have heard something of Bruno's ideas. (And, as mentioned in Chapter 5, we have a loose connection between Shakespeare and Bruno via the printers Richard Field and Thomas Vautrollier.) At the very least, Shakespeare would have read the favorable mention of Bruno in the preface to Florio's translation of Montaigne. Perhaps he read Bruno's only dramatic work, a comedy called
Candelaio
—echoes of which, Gatti argues, can be found in Shakespeare's
Love's Labour's Lost
as well as in Ben Jonson's
The Alchemist
and Christopher Marlowe's
Doctor Faustus
. Gatti concludes, “A convincing basis for knowledge of Bruno on the part of Shakespeare, probably mediated through John Florio, thus undoubtedly exists.”

Looking for traces of Bruno's philosophy in
Hamlet
, one might begin with the prince's love poem, with its obsession over the issue of “doubt.” Bruno writes passionately on the question of doubt in one of his final works,
De triplici minimo
(
The Triple Minimum
), published in Frankfurt in 1591:

Whoever wishes to philosophise, doubting all things at first, must never assume a position in a debate before having listened to the opinions on all sides, and before carefully weighing the arguments for and against. He must judge and take up a position not on the basis of what he has heard said, according to the opinion of the majority, their age or merits, or their prestige. But he must form his own opinion according to how persuasive the doctrine is, how organically related and adherent to real things, and to how well it agrees with the dictates of reason.

Bruno, as we've seen, was as much a mystic as a scientist—but in this passage we see a glimpse, and perhaps more, of the modern scientific approach. It was also a way of thinking that was seen, at the time, as dangerous—which is part of the reason Bruno was eventually deemed “a particularly obstinate heretic … author of a number of enormously dangerous opinions.” For Hilary Gatti, the parallel to
Hamlet
is profound, beginning with the doubts concerning the ghost's identity, and continuing with Prince Hamlet's quest to find the truth behind the story of his father's death while at the same time uncovering Polonious's scheming and the double-dealing of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. “Thus Hamlet, like Bruno, finds comfort in a systematic exercise of skepticism,” Gatti writes. “The truth must be pursued, and nothing lie hidden in the obscure shadows of deceit.… What lies at the center of Shakespeare's drama is not so much the murder of a king as the murder of truth itself.”

Of course, Shakespeare's own characters frequently argue about what is true and what is illusory. In the opening scene, the guards put their trust in Horatio, the intellectual—the closest thing the play has to a scientist—to ascertain the ghost's true essence: “Thou art a scholar, speak to it, Horatio” (1.1.46). At first, he doubts that the apparition will even appear; later he says he wouldn't have believed it unless he had seen it with his own eyes. Hamlet is less amazed than his friend. In one of the play's most quoted lines, he says “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy” (1.5.174–75). If the play had been written in our own time, he probably would have said “science” instead of “philosophy” (recalling that the closest thing to “science” in Shakespeare's time was “natural philosophy”). (Another small complication is that it's “your” philosophy in the quarto editions, but “our” philosophy in the later folio: Thus the jab may not be directed at Horatio's scholarly learning in particular, but rather at all such learning.) Hamlet is looking for truth, even as he questions whether his friend's worldly knowledge—his science—is up to the challenge.

It is only natural to ask what
Hamlet
, which has so much to say about so many aspects of the human condition, might have to say about our place in the universe. As Donald Olson has shown—building on the work of Hotson, Meadows, and others before him—there is an argument to be made concerning Shakespeare's awareness of the work of Tycho Brahe and Thomas Digges. And as Hilary Gatti suggests, perhaps more tentatively, there may also be signs of Bruno's bold philosophy. Shakespeare covers a lot of ground in
Hamlet
, and quite possibly the physical nature of the universe was among his concerns. Next we will meet a scholar who takes the argument further. Is it possible that Shakespeare's most famous play is
all about
the structure of the cosmos?

 

8.     “… a hawk from a handsaw”

READING SHAKESPEARE, AND READING INTO SHAKESPEARE

It's the world's largest gathering of astronomers and astrophysicists: The American Astronomical Society meets twice a year, giving its members a chance to talk about their research and to announce the most newsworthy findings. I attended for the first time in January 1997, when, by luck, it was held in my home city of Toronto. As an aspiring science journalist, I was eager to take it all in: extrasolar planets, exploding stars, galaxies, black holes, the latest findings in astrophysics and cosmology—whatever was on offer. The AAS always picks out a handful of papers to publicize during the meeting, in the hope of garnering media attention, and one of these highlighted papers, titled “A New Reading of Shakespeare's
Hamlet
,” caught my attention. What did Shakespeare have to do with astronomy?

According to the presenter, quite a lot. His name was Peter Usher, an astronomer from Penn State University, and his paper made some bold claims: “I argue that as early as 1601 Shakespeare anticipated the new universal order and humankind's position in it.” The journalists at the press briefing listened attentively, if skeptically, as Professor Usher outlined his new interpretation of
Hamlet
; afterward, the professor answered a handful of questions. It is perhaps not surprising that the reporters from the British newspapers showed the most interest; after all, Shakespeare is “one of theirs.” “Astronomer discovers cast of stars hidden in Hamlet” was the headline when the story ran in the next day's London
Times
.

*   *   *

Peter Usher became a Shakespeare enthusiast
by accident. Born in South Africa, he taught astronomy for many years at Penn State, where he still holds the title of Professor Emeritus in astronomy and astrophysics. Often, while teaching introductory astronomy, he sought to engage his students by looking for connections across disciplines—for example, by connecting physics and astronomy with music or literature. Eventually he turned to Shakespeare, poring through the canon in search of astronomical references, and looking, in particular, for anything that might hint at the “new astronomy” of Copernicus.

At first, Usher came up empty-handed. It's not that there weren't any astronomical references in the canon; in fact they seemed fairly common in Shakespeare's work. As Usher has pointed out, happenings in the sky were simply a “bigger deal,” so to speak, in Elizabethan England than they are now, partly because there was less light pollution, and partly because many of the trappings of our perennially distracted information-drenched culture hadn't yet been invented. But most of these astronomical references seemed to either reflect the medieval, Ptolemaic view of the cosmos, or to be phrased in such a way as to render them ambiguous. There didn't seem to be anything that pointed directly to the Copernican model of the heavens. This left Usher somewhat puzzled, given the profundity of the new discoveries unfolding at the time, and Shakespeare's obvious curiosity about the world. “It seemed to me that someone who lived through the beginning of the Scientific Revolution would have
something
a little more strongly to say about it, because this was a major upheaval in the worldview,” he says. Or, as he puts it in the preface to his book
Shakespeare and the Dawn of Modern Science
(2010), “It is simply not credible that a poet of this stature could remain ignorant of the cultural impact that the New Astronomy was having during his lifetime—or that he would refrain from using the literary devices at his command to address the topic if he was not ignorant of its significance.” He spent his spare time “hunting through the canon, to find whether Shakespeare did or didn't have any knowledge of heliocentrism.” Once he began his search, there was no turning back.