Description
Book SynopsisIn a novel reading of Shakespeare's plays, this book addresses an observation first made many decades ago, that Shakespeare appears to neglect the intellectual upheavals that astronomy brought about in his lifetime. The author examines temporal, situational, and verbal anomalies in Hamlet and other plays using hermeneutic-dialectic methodology, and finds a consistent pattern of interpretation that is compatible with the history of astronomy and with the development of modern cosmology. He also demonstrates how Shakespeare takes into account beliefs about the nature of the heavens from the time of Pythagoras up to and including discoveries and theories in the first decade of the seventeenth century. The book makes the case that, as in many other fields, Shakespeare's celestial knowledge is far beyond what was commonly known at the time.
Students and teachers interested in Shakespeare's alleged indifference towards, or ignorance of, the celestial sciences will find
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations – List of Tables – Preface – Acknowledgements – Introduction – Modern Views –Hamlet and the Phantom Falcon – Hamlet and the Winds of Change – Hamlet and the New Astronomy –Hamlet and the Resolution Revolution – The Winter’s Tale – Cymbeline – The Merchant of Venice – The Birth of Modern Cosmology – Saturn’s Orbit and Ring Cycle – Integers in The Winter’s Tale – Location of Belmont – Extremum Diurnal Parallaxes and Angular Sizes of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn – Celestial data in Shakespeare’s plays – Glossary – Index.
