Shakespeare’s Knowledge of Astronomy and the Birth of Modern Cosmology

In attempts to understand literary works by dead authors, a primary guide is the words that comprise a work or a canon of works. It is a commonplace that the interpretation of the parts of a work potentiate understanding of the whole and vice versa, and progress occurs because human effort leads to fresh insights and new ideas both in the main and in the details, each of which builds on the other. This back-and-forth characterizes the so-called Hermeneutic Circle by which interpretation proceeds iteratively, each round leading to better understanding. If a theory is demonstrably flawed or false, revision or abandonment of the theory ensues or should ensue. Another guide to interpretation is the environment and context in which literature is created.

Methodology is as important in astronomy as in literary exegesis because objects in the Cosmos are intangible just as deceased authors are silent. Astronomers are passive observers that must settle for experiments and phenomena that nature provides, just as exegetes can only attend to literature that past writers have provided. The science of cosmology has a further limitation, that owing to the finite speed of light things are not now as they were when they emitted the light. Similarly in literature, words and circumstances may not be the same as at the time of writing and readers must be ever alert to the pitfall of presentism—seeing past events through the lens of the present.

I have endeavored to understand Shakespeare’s canon of plays to see whether celestial allusions hang together in support of the basic proposition that the bard was mindful of theories of the Universe extant during his lifetime. In the body of interpretations assembled so far, some passages may well have other meanings as would be expected from the multiplicity of Shakespeare’s minds, but my goal is limited to seeing whether evidence is self-consistent and sufficient to advance the thesis that astronomy and cosmology played a significant role in Shakespeare’s life and work.

It is incumbent upon inquirers to follow leads wherever they may lead, and in the field of Shakespeare and the celestial arts they have led me to these chief conclusions: Shakespeare does not neglect the revolution in cosmology occurring in his lifetime; some plays are allegories with a celestial subtext; he writes of properties of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars that are knowable only telescopically; telescopes were used for astronomy in the sixteenth century, possibly as early as the 1540s; contrary to popular opinion, Shakespeare pays close attention to the passage of time; the celestial allegory in Hamlet published in the First Folio shows signs of censorship; Leonard Digges and his son Thomas are most likely the telescopists; and later in life, Leonard wrote of his discoveries allegorically in his plays. Of course, these conclusions are subject to examination and further testing.

The ten chapters of this book fall naturally into four groups. The first group comprises two chapters, the first of which is introductory and presents in brief the course of events leading up to the medieval view of the cosmic World. This Worldview was based on appearances, comprising a stationary Earth lying at the center of everything and bounded by a shell of stars. Only in the sixteenth century did momentum build toward a model of the Universe that forsook appearances for the reality of the so-called New Astronomy. Chapter Two presents evidence that virtually everyone believes that when Shakespeare does venture into cosmology, he adheres to the geocentric theory of the Universe and ignores alternative models extant in his lifetime.

The second group comprises four chapters on Hamlet, which add to the evidence presented in my earlier books that the play is a cosmic allegory dramatizing the competition among cosmological models in the sixteenth century. Barnardo utters the first words of the play, “Who’s there?” which establishes a theme that permeates Hamlet and persists throughout the present work.