The Science of Shakespeare: A New Look at the Playwright's Universe

Science journalist Falk (In Search of Time: The History, Physics, and Philosophy of Time) speculates on what Shakespeare knew or did not know of the science of his age and how it may have informed his works. When Hamlet calls himself "king of infinite space" though "bounded in a nutshell," is he refuting Ptolemy's notion of the crystalline spheres and confirming Copernicus's idea of an unbounded cosmos? Do the four ghosts dancing around Jupiter in the dream sequence in Cymbeline depict the four moons of Jupiter recently discovered by Galileo? Is the uncaring universe of King Lear a reflection of Lucretian atomism filtered through Shakespeare's reading of Montaigne? In the closed intellectual world of Shakespeare's London, notions such as the above traveled quickly and were freely discussed among the intellectually curious. Falk takes readers on a tour of recent scholarly opinion relating to his subject. He makes a convincing case that Shakespeare was aware of some, though perhaps not all, of the new ideas circulating and probably used his knowledge to enrich his writing.