The Science of Shakespeare

by Dan Falk

  Witches were the ultimate scapegoat, as the case of an eleven-year-old Lancashire boy named Edmund Robinson illustrates. One day, when tending cattle, he returned home late, saying that he had been abducted by witches; for good measure, he named a number of local women. A judge was suspicious, and referred the case to Westminster, which sent a bishop to investigate; the boy and several of the accused women were brought to London for questioning. At length, young Edmund admitted that he made the whole thing up: He had been late getting the cattle home, and was afraid his mother would punish him.†

  GOD VS. THE WITCHES

  The connection between witchcraft and religion is worth exploring. On a psychological level, the appeal of witchcraft as an explanation for one’s misfortune is clear enough. After all, to claim it was God’s doing suggests that the creator of the universe went out of his way to punish you—hardly an appealing thought. Better to blame the lonely old woman who lives down the road. For the theologians, however, the very existence of witchcraft was troubling. Why would God allow witches to flourish in the first place? One contemporary writer attempted an answer. The Lord permitted witchcraft in order “to chasten sinful humankind; to punish sin directly; to punish humankind’s ingratitude in not accepting revealed truth; to shake up the godly who were lapsing into sinfulness; [and] to test Christians to see if, under adversity, they would cleave to God or desert Him for the devil.” The idea of witchcraft was, in a sense, an outgrowth of organized religion. It was, as Susan Brigden puts it, “just one part of the eternal, cosmic struggle between God and Satan, between good and evil, between salvation and damnation.”

  Churchmen were, of course, the most ardent opponents of witchcraft, and, given the religious turmoil of the time, it’s no surprise that Catholics and Protestants treated the phenomenon of witchcraft quite differently. While the old religion may have called for an exorcism, the new faith rejected such practices “as a meaningless piece of popish superstition,” as James Sharpe puts it; instead, prayer and fasting were the first line of defense. The most famous author to weigh in on the subject of witchcraft (and on demonology in general) was none other than King James VI of Scotland (later to be James I of England); his treatise, Daemonologie, was published in 1597. Six years earlier, a plot against the king was supposedly uncovered following the torture of several alleged witches.* It has long been suspected that Macbeth, first performed in 1606, was written specifically for the king’s pleasure. It is “the Scottish play,” honoring England’s first Scottish king (and patron of the playwright’s acting troupe)—but Shakespeare surely knew of James’s fascination with the occult.

  As the decades passed, cases of witchcraft came to be treated as curiosities. Pamphlets that documented the latest cases circulated widely, along with reports of monstrous births, earthquakes, fires, whales washed up on beaches, and the like. Eventually, the idea of witchcraft began to fade from the national consciousness. The last hanging was in 1685; the last conviction in 1712. Why it declined is perhaps easier to comprehend than why it was so prominent for so many centuries. As Kathryn Edwards writes, “the growing preoccupation with witchcraft and the danger it posed during this time has not been conclusively explained.”

  NATURAL AND UNNATURAL MAGIC

  Witchcraft was just one kind of magic that confronted the citizens of early modern Europe. Just about everyone, from the university-educated to the rural poor, considered witches on a spectrum of the supernatural, alongside “cunning” or “wise” men and women, fortune-tellers, magicians, and sorcerers of various kinds. (Note that Shakespeare was especially prone to including soothsayers and fortune-tellers in those of his plays set in the ancient world: Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Cymbeline.) As late as 1621, Robert Burton would write, in The Anatomy of Melancholy, “Sorcerers are too common; cunning men, wizards, and white witches, as they call them, in every village, which, if they be sought unto, will help almost all the infirmities of body and mind.” As the quote suggests, these sorcerers and magicians offered competition to the doctors—which perhaps isn’t a surprise, since doctors themselves had limited power to aid the sick. And yet, as Keith Thomas notes, even when a Renaissance magician specialized in “medicine,” it was usually “only one branch of a very diverse repertoire.” The magician was, typically, performing his magic at the request of a client with a specific problem. Of course, there were trustworthy magicians as well as charlatans, and the public was understandably wary.

  Some kinds of magic were said to be readily learned, and could be used by anyone who had mastered the requisite skill—for example, techniques for recovering lost or stolen property. In the case of theft, the “sieve and shears” method was one way of rooting out the guilty party. The mechanics of this “test” seem to have been lost in the mists of time, though it likely went something like this: All of those involved would sit in a circle, with the sieve and the shears (presumably attached to each other) suspended at the center of the group; a verse from the Bible was probably recited. In the end, the sieve would point to the guilty person. Another peculiar superstition pertained to murder, the most serious of all crimes. If a murderer’s guilt was in doubt, he might be asked to touch the victim’s body; the theory was that the wounds of the deceased would bleed once again. (As Thomas notes, this practice was endorsed by scientists and judges well into the seventeenth century.)

  Of course, quackery abounded. Often practitioners were exposed, and occasionally they were arrested. When that happened, as Thomas points out, it was not unusual for townspeople to rush to their defense—after all, who else could they turn to in times of crisis? The practice of cunning men and women was occasionally profitable; but if it brought prestige, that was likely enough. They flourished because they filled a need. A writer named William Perkins summed up the situation:

  Let a man’s child, friend, or cattle be taken with some sore sickness, or strangely tormented with some rare and unknown disease, the first thing he doth is to bethink himself and inquire after some wise man or wise woman, and thither he sends and goes for help.

  And if the sick party recovers, Perkins notes, “the conclusion of all is the usual acclimation: ‘Oh, happy is the day that I ever met with such a man or woman to help me!’”

  Needless to say, the Church opposed all kinds of lay magic; the official position was that only God, and perhaps the Devil, had the power to manipulate nature and harness supernatural forces. James himself asserted that magicians and witches served “both one Master, although in diverse fashions,” and that both should be punished with death. Indeed, the links between religion and politics in Shakespeare’s England were seamless; kings, after all, claimed to rule by divine right, and the Bible made it clear that rebellion and witchcraft are equally sinful. Magic was also seen as linked to paganism; after all, such traditions no doubt dated back many centuries, and many beliefs and rituals had pre-Christian origins. In 1554, a London bishop declared that “witches, conjurers, enchanters, and all such like, do work by the operation and aid of the Devil,” and that “all such commit so high offence and treason to God, that there can be no greater.” Of course the Church’s own brand of magic, like that associated with Mass, or with the traditional healing power of the saints, was perfectly legitimate. The source of the magic was crucial: Magic was acceptable if it derived from God; and it was also acceptable if it came from nature, and was uncovered by careful study and investigation—this was “natural magic,” a pursuit at least somewhat allied with what we now call “science.” (“Natural magic” roughly parallels “natural astrology,” which, as noted, was seen as a harmless pursuit akin to astronomy.) This is the question that looms over the dramatic final scene in The Winter’s Tale, in which the statue of Hermione, the queen who had been dead for sixteen years, comes to life. As with the appearance of the ghost in Hamlet, the immediate question is whether the sight we are witnessing is heavenly or demonic. Paulina, who has overseen this seemingly miraculous return from the dead, insists she was not “assist
ed / By wicked powers” (5.3.90–91), a sentiment echoed by the king: “If this be magic,” Leontes says, “let it be an art / Lawful as eating” (5.3.110–11).

  Shakespeare’s greatest magician is, of course, Prospero, protagonist of The Tempest. We have to assume that Prospero’s magic is legitimate; for one thing, he talks of his “art” in contrast to the demonic power of his archenemy, Sycorax the witch. Sycorax uses her powers to trap the spirit Ariel in a tree for twelve years; only Prospero’s magic is strong enough to break the spell and secure his release. Prospero seems to use his powers for good rather than for evil—and yet there are hints of something darker. As he explains to Miranda, it was a craft that required an intense and focused period of learning; he eventually became “rapt in secret studies” (1.2.77). Even so, he strikes many readers as more of a scientist than an alchemist. As Elizabeth Spiller notes, Prospero’s art “can only be imagined to work for the same kinds of reasons that natural philosophers like Gilbert and Bacon understood their sciences to do so.” He gives us “a history in small of the larger cultural transformation by which Aristotelian philosophy would become Baconian science.” And while Prospero performs some rather impressive feats—creating and directing the storm that gives the play its title, for example—there is also something of the street magician, even the hustler, in his craft. Such performers were a common sight in Jacobean London, and Shakespeare’s audience would have instantly recognized such a character on the stage. As Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan note in the Arden edition of The Tempest, the play’s protagonist is “a combination of serious magician and carnival illusionist.” We might also note the link between Prospero’s magic and astrology: “I find my zenith doth depend upon / A most auspicious star…” (1.2.181–82). Of course, the playwright wields his own peculiar brand of magic: Attending a theatrical performance is, after all, accepting an invitation to be (benignly) deceived. No wonder that the character of Prospero, of all of Shakespeare’s creations, is seen as a plausible reflection of the author himself.

  “TELL ME WHO MADE THE WORLD”

  Another quasi-legitimate “magic” was alchemy, the quest to turn one kind of substance into another (and especially, to turn cheap metals such as lead into gold). Again, the theory of the four elements is key; alchemists believed that by changing the balance of these elements, they could transform one kind of material into another. This could be achieved through burning, distilling, dissolving, sublimating, and melting, usually with the aim of purifying one of the ingredients. (The fact that the transmutation of metals was prohibited by law suggests that many people believed it could actually be done.) As with other kinds of magic, including astrology, there were countless quacks. Ben Jonson’s satirical play The Alchemist (1610) serves as a kind of theatrical debunking of alchemy and those who practice it. Jonson makes endless fun of the main characters, a con man named Subtle and his sidekick, Face—as well as those gullible enough to fall for their trickery (the “gulls”).

  Who was Jonson’s model for Subtle, the title character in The Alchemist? As we saw in Chapter 4, he may have been influenced by John Dee, the Elizabethan scientist-magician (and Dee is mentioned by name in the play); but another line of reasoning connects the play to Giordano Bruno’s comedy Candelaio, published in 1582. After weighing the evidence of a Jonson–Bruno connection (including a tally of who may have known whom), Hilary Gatti concludes that it is “at least possible, if not probable, that Jonson had some knowledge of Bruno and perhaps of his works, even if only through conversations with those who had known him personally in London.”

  As with astrology, there would have been those who believed in the power of alchemy, and those who doubted—and some who would have harbored both views simultaneously, just as someone today may claim to dismiss astrology, but might check their horoscope in the newspaper, even if just for its entertainment value. As Gordon Campbell puts it, both Jonson and his audience would have regarded alchemy “as a combination of science and imposture.” For Jonson, this duality creates the perfect dramatic and comedic vehicle.

  Shakespeare seems to have had less use for alchemy than Jonson, though he mentions it on a handful of occasions. It comes up metaphorically in Timon of Athens (“You are an alchemist; make gold of that” [5.1.114]), for example; and in King John, where Philip, the king of France, says:

  To solemnize this day the glorious sun

  Stays in his course and plays the alchemist,

  Turning with splendour of his precious eye

  The meagre cloddy earth to glittering gold …

  (3.1.3–6)

  But the greatest magician on the London stage was not one of Shakespeare’s creations, nor was it one of Jonson’s. Twenty years before Prospero cast his first spell, audiences were treated to Christopher Marlowe’s masterly play The Tragicall History of Doctor Faustus (ca. 1592). Marlowe did not invent his doctor out of whole cloth: His play is based on age-old stories of learned men who sell their souls to the devil in return for knowledge. By the sixteenth century, these tales had become associated with the real-life figure of Johannes Faustus, a German astrologer who lived in the early part of the century. A fictionalized account was set down by an anonymous German writer in 1587, and an English translation had appeared in 1592, serving as Marlowe’s immediate source.

  Marlowe’s Faustus was a magician and also a scholar; he studied at Wittenberg just like Hamlet and his friend Horatio. Faustus yearns to know the secrets of the universe; in keeping with the traditional story, he promises his immortal soul to the devil in exchange for worldly knowledge. He abandons the traditional fields of academic learning for black magic (“’Tis magic, magic that hath ravished me” [1.112]). As we saw in Chapter 1, one of the first things Faustus asks of Mephistopheles concerns cosmology: He inquires after the structure of the heavenly spheres. “Now would I have a book where I might see all characters and planets of the heavens, that I might know their motions and dispositions” (7.171–3). His questions become ever more dangerous: “Tell me who made the world … Sweet Mephistopheles, tell me” (7.66–8).

  Fig. 11.1 “Tell me who made the world … Sweet Mephistopheles, tell me.” Both a scholar and a magician, the title character of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus yearns to understand the universe’s workings. This is the frontispiece of a 1631 edition of the play. © British Library Board/Robana/Art Resource, NY

  Faustus gradually gains both knowledge and power. He travels around Europe, casting spells, wreaking havoc in the royal courts, and playing tricks on the pope. As the end nears, the Devil comes to make good on the bargain. Faustus is now filled with regret—and fear—and pleads for mercy. All of that learning, he laments, was a terrible mistake: “O, would that I had never seen Wittenberg, never read a book!” (14.19–20). It is to no avail (spoiler alert!): The Devil carries Faustus’s soul off to hell.

  * * *

  Astrology, witchcraft, alchemy, magic … and science. It was all part of a package; all were thoroughly intertwined in the sixteenth century, and even into the early years of the seventeenth. Belief in fairies, demons, ghosts, and witches was common; like religion, these spirits were simply a part of everyday existence. What we now think of as “science” was only beginning to disentangle itself from magical thinking. We have heard about John Dee and his magic crystal, and the subtle mix of science and magic that informed the works of thinkers like Bruno and Gilbert. Indeed, Gilbert’s magnetism seems almost tailor-made for mystical interpretations. As Keith Thomas notes, the very idea of magnetic forces “seemed to open the possibility of telepathy, magical healing, and action at a distance.” (For example, if someone was injured by the use of a weapon, it made sense to apply the healing ointment not only to the wound, but also to the weapon; after all, if magnetic forces could affect planetary orbits, might not vital spirits readily traverse the short distance between weapon and wound? Even the Royal Society, in its early years, took an interest in such matters.)

  Another pivotal figure wh
o embodies both mysticism and the emerging scientific worldview is the German astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler (1571–1630). Today we remember Kepler as the man who completed what Copernicus had begun—the scientist who finally worked out the precise mathematical laws governing planetary motion. But there was another side to this Renaissance genius, a side that reveals his deep-seated connections to the thinking of past ages.

  Born near Stuttgart and educated at Tübingen, Kepler studied theology with the expectation of becoming a Lutheran clergyman. Instead, he ended up teaching mathematics at a provincial school, where he read De revolutionibus and became interested in the mathematical underpinnings of astronomy. He would later work as Tycho Brahe’s assistant in Prague, and eventually served as court mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II and his successors.

  THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES

  But Kepler was more than just a mathematician: Like the ancient Pythagoreans before him, he was obsessed with numerology; he was sure that certain numbers had special properties.* Why, for example, were there six planets (counting the Earth), rather than five or seven or some other number? The Creator must have had a reason for this state of affairs, and numerology presumably held the answer. When he was developing his model of the solar system, Kepler was careful to make it conform to his notions of mathematical beauty. He was enamored with the parallels between mathematics and music, and dreamed of translating the positions and motions of the heavenly bodies into a musical score. This was the “music of the spheres,” another idea that goes back to the Pythagoreans. Shakespeare alludes to this ancient concept several times—for example, in the words of Olivia in Twelfth Night:

  O, By your leave, I pray you!