Description
Book SynopsisThis book explores the role of alchemy, Paracelsianism, and Hermetic philosophy in one of Shakespeare’s last plays,
The Winter’s Tale. A perusal of the vast literary and iconographic repertory of Renaissance alchemy reveals that this late play is imbued with several
topoi, myths, and emblematic symbols coming from coeval alchemical, Paracelsian, and Hermetic sources. It also discusses the alchemical significance of water and time in the play’s circular and regenerative pattern and the healing role of women. All the major symbols of alchemy are present in Shakespeare’s play: the intertwined serpents of the caduceus, the chemical wedding, the
filius philosophorum, and the so-called
rex chymicus. This book also provides an in-depth survey of late Renaissance alchemy, Paracelsian medicine, and Hermetic culture in the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages. Importantly, it contends that
The Winter’s Tale, in symbolically retracing the healing pattern of the
rota alchemica and in emphasising the Hermetic principles of unity and concord, glorifies King James’s conciliatory attitude.
Trade Review“The author … is to be commended for demonstrating how deeply dyed a Shakespeare text can be in its pan-European, transhistorical intellectual milieu, in ways that would be invisible to most twenty-first century readers without a guide as learned and as well-written as this.” (M. L. Stapleton, Memoria di Shakespeare. A Journal of Shakespearean Studies, Issue 10, 2023)
“Zamparo’s study deserves recognition as an in-depth work on alchemy and, unusually, a single play. The book is meticulously researched with a wide variety of alchemical examples from both England and Europe, and is filled with an array of images which help to give a sense of the richness of alchemical literature. … This book is engaging, thoroughly researched, and is an important contribution to the field.” (Rachel White, The British Society for Literature and Science, bsls.ac.uk, December 7, 2023)
Table of Contents1. Introduction.PART I. “Emperors, kings and princes desired this science”. Elizabethan and Jacobean England.2. Alchemy in Elizabethan England.3. Alchemy and Paracelsianism at the Jacobean Court.PART II. The Alchemical Performance of
The Winter’s Tale. A Reading of the Play.4. Leontes’s
tale of winter.5. Water and Time.6. Art and Nature.7. The Statue Scene.PART III. Jacobean Politics and Religion in the Play.8.
The Winter’s Tale and James I.9. Conclusions.
