Maybe. Toronto science journalist Dan Falk, author of the forthcoming The Science of Shakespeare, argues that playwright William Shakespeare (1564–1616) may have had a more “modern” concept of science than we suppose:
Shakespeare could have seen evidence of the “new astronomy” with his own eyes. In November of 1572, a bright new star appeared in the constellation of Cassiopeia. (We now know it was a supernova, the explosive death of a massive star.) Shakespeare was only eight at the time – but we know Digges made observations of it, as did astronomer Tycho Brahe in Denmark. Today we call it “Tycho’s star”.
Donald Olson of Texas State University has argued that the star observed by Prince Hamlet shining “westward from the pole” was inspired by Shakespeare’s boyhood memory of Tycho’s star – reinforced, perhaps, by a reference to it in Holinshed’s Chronicles 15 years later. (At the very least, Shakespeare would have seen the next supernova, “Kepler’s star”, in 1604.) One might note that Brahe observed the stars from the Danish island of Hven, a stone’s throw from the castle of Elsinore, Shakespeare’s setting for Hamlet.
Falk admits that some of the ideas he outlines are a bit “far-fetched” but
– yet even sceptics do a double-take when they look at Brahe’s coat of arms, noticing that two of Brahe’s relatives were named “Rosencrans” and “Guildensteren”.
It’s fun anyway, and a good incentive to see the plays again.
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Its a fun thing but why is Shakespeare so relevant?
Even on wiki articles on the history of England they always mention if it came up in the barbs stories. As if the plays are as important as the history?
I saw a good BBC thing on him about his faith.
He was a minority in a very contentious protestant nation based on protestant identies.
I speculate he avoided protestant ism because he wanted England to be either Catholic again or neutral. So he strssed common history events to unite and separate from the struggle between puritans and the rest.
Just a educated suspicion.
I don’t trust him or any entertainment people.
When they can reach a audience they start propaganda.
Hi News,
Interesting question. This article from 50 years ago is still well worth reading: “The Astronomy of Shakespeare” by W. G. Guthrie in the Irish Astronomical Journal, vol. 6(6), pp. 201-211. The address is here:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1964IrAJ….6..201G
It argues that Shakespeare’s cosmology was fairly traditional (i.e. geocentric), although he was much more open-minded and scientifically well-versed than commonly realized.
Here’s another paper by Peter Usher, titled, “Astrophysicist finds new meaning in Hamlet” at http://solar-center.stanford.edu/art/Hamlet.html
The author contends that Shakespeare was influenced by the English scientist, who postulated a Sun-centered universe existing in infinite space. Another take on Usher’s paper can be found here: http://news.sciencemag.org/199.....copernicus
Here’s a more recent follow-up paper by Usher: “Shakespeare and Elizabethan Telescopy” (JRASC, Celebrating the International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009), February 2009) at http://shakespearedigges.org/JRASC-U.pdf . A few excerpts:
And from another paper in the same issue, by Michael K. Gainer; Emeritus Professor of Physics, St. Vincent College, Latrobe, PA:
Food for thought.