What Shakespeare knew: The Universe

Hello all,

The Pleiades Cluster - which also stars in Auden as the 'seven sisters'.

For those of you that ditched the lesson today in favour of Maths, I'd like you to read Act 2 Scene 1 of The Winter's Tale. If you need any help getting your head around the text, try using this.

As well as reading the scene, we looked at Shakespeare's references to the earth and the stars. The Elizabethan period was an exciting time in astronomy, and Shakespeare's contemporaries included Galileo and Johannes Kepler.

Here's two competing theories about how the Universe worked.

It appears that Shakepeare believed in Ptolemy's model, which was widely taken for granted for centuries, placing the Earth at the centre of the universe. Ptolemy (and Shakespeare?) believed the earth was fixed, the sun rotated around it with the planets, and the 'fixed stars' were set in an outer sphere which rotated. His theory of the 'epicycles' of some of the planets was a complicated and awkward way to explain the retrograde motion of the planets.

But in Shakespeare's time, another theory did exist which made more sense (still wrong though). Shakespeare's writing seems to suggest that he didn't believe in Copernicus's model - but it's likely he knew about it:



It's also possible that Shakespeare took Ptolemy's model as 'common knowledge' and used it for his audience. We'll never know.

Of course, science went with pseudo-science in the early 17th century, and Shakespeare is full of references to astrology (the reading of the stars for omens or to explain a person's fortunes) too. Here, Shakespeare mentions astronomy and astrology in consecutive speeches in Act 2 Scene 1:

• Leontes. No; if I mistake
  In those foundations which I build upon,
  The centre is not big enough to bear
  A school-boy's top. Away with her! to prison!
  He who shall speak for her is afar off guilty
  But that he speaks.

• Hermione. There's some ill planet reigns:
  I must be patient till the heavens look
  With an aspect more favourable. 

The retrograde motion of Mars - a headache for early astronomers.

If you'd like to know more, take a look at these:

http://www.universetoday.com/100002/shakespeare-wrote-of-an-earth-centered-sola/
http://www.shakespearedigges.org/ox2.htm
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/10599438/William-Shakespeare-the-king-of-infinite-space.html
http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/elizabethan-astrology.htm

I'll blog later on some of the classical references in The Winter's Tale.


Mr M

PS. If, like me, you love all this geeky science and the universe stuff, you can still catch an amazing hour of TV on iPlayer: The Human Universe. Mind-blowing!