Everyone says "Shakespeare is universal"---this is why

1. Shakespeare is Universal-
--Why?

2. William Shakespeare(1564-1616)
• Born in Stratford-on-Avon.
• His plays are performed more often than
any other playwright.
• His identity is disputed by some.
• Records show him beginning to be active in
London in 1592.
• His plays are performed all over the world
(more than any other playwright)and
translated into many languages.

3. Shakespeare is popular—why?
• People choose to perform his plays again and again—
all over the world.
• The key to Darwin's theory of evolution is the survival
of the fittest. Species survive according to their
capacity to adapt, to evolve according to
environmental circumstances.
• As with natural selection, the quality that makes a
really successful, enduring cultural artefact is its
capacity to change in response to new circumstances.
Shakespeare's plays, because they are so various and
so open to interpretation, so lacking in dogma, have
achieved this trick more fully than any other work of
the human imagination. –Professor Jonathan Bate,
Oxford

4. Global Shakespeare, popular Shakespeare (Chinese “Hamlet”, Japanese “Titus
Andronicus”, South African “Macbeth”, Takarazuka “Romeo & Juliet”, modern
California “Much Ado About Nothing”, modern USA “Julius Caesar”)

5. “Lacking in dogma”
Shakespeare recognized that human affairs
always embody a combination of permanent
truths and historical contingencies (in his own
terms, "nature" and "custom"). He grasped the
structural conflicts shared by all societies:
religious/secular, country/city, birth/education,
strong leadership/the people's voice, the code
of masculine honour/the energies of erotic
desire. Professor Jonathan Bate, Oxford

6. In a 1947 essay, George Orwell wrote that "We do not
know a great deal about Shakespeare's religious
beliefs, and from the evidence of his writings it would
be difficult to prove that he had any... The morality of
Shakespeare's later tragedies is not religious in the
ordinary sense, and certainly is not Christian. Only
two of them, Hamlet and Othello, are supposedly
occurring inside the Christian era, and even in those,
apart from the antics of the ghost in Hamlet, there is
no indication of a ‘next world’ where everything is to
be put right."
“…not religious in the ordinary
sense”

7. Shakespeare had a philosophy, but it
was not usual religious dogma
What was it?
It must have been something.
It cannot have been “nothing” or “zero”.
It must have been something beautiful
since his poetry and plays are so
beautiful…
And it is just as beautiful as the stars!

8. Allow me to propose an answer!
• Shakespeare used the beauty of the sun
and the earth as the basis for his plays.
• The sun warms the earth and makes life
possible.
• This is a universal concept on our planet,
since the sun shines everywhere.
• It’s lovely and simple!
• It’s cosmic!

9. The planets circle the sun and receive
its light and heat—we know it’s true

10. But the mainstream view of the cosmos was different in the 1500s
and 1600s---a few people like Copernicus and Giordano Bruno
proposed heliocentrism but it was disputed

11. The sun and its role—its very position and its
function---thus were in dispute in the world in the
1500s and early 1600s
• Giordano Bruno proposed
thermodynamic heliocentrism in the
1580s. He was then imprisoned and put
on trial. (He was executed one year
before Shakespeare wrote “Hamlet”!)
• Pre-Christian nature festivals (based on
seasons & sun) were under attack by
Puritans in England.

12. Who was Giordano Bruno?
• Giordano Bruno was a philosopher and
natural scientist.
• He used Copernicus’ heliocentric model to
propose a thermodynamic heliocentric
model of the solar system.
• He said the sun was a star.
• He was executed for heresy (burned at the
stake) in Rome on February 17, 1600.
(After a trial that started in 1592 in Venice
and ended in Rome.)

13. Some images of Giordano Bruno

14. Bruno had come up with a thermodynamic
model of our solar system and…..
• The opening lines of Bruno’s Lo Spaccio della besta trionfionta
(1584) (“The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast”) are all about
the sun:
He is blind who does not see the sun,
foolish who does not recognize it,
ungrateful who is not thankful unto it,
since so great is the light, so great the
good, so great the benefit, through which
it glows, through which it excels, through
which it serves, the teacher of the senses,
the father of substances, the author of
life. (Bruno, Lo Spaccio della besta
trionfante

15. In De Immenso (1582), Bruno wrote:
“The Earth, in the infinite universe, is not
at the center, except insofar as everything
can be said to be at the center. In this
chapter it is explained that the Earth is
not central among the planets. That place
is reserved for the Sun, for it is natural for
the planets to turn towards its heat and
light and accept its law.” (De Immenso,
III.iii)

16. In other words,
• Thanks to Giordano Bruno (who had
read Copernicus) the science about the
sun was there; Bruno’s modern ideas
were present when Shakespeare was
active as an artist, although Bruno’s
ideas were still pretty daring.

17. How about Shakespeare and the
sun?
• One of his most famous lines is “Juliet is
the sun”

18. Couldn’t this be an image of or metaphor
for man on planet Earth and the sun?
• The sun is like a beautiful shining being
providing nature and bounty to mankind
• In the balcony scene, Juliet says “My
bounty is as boundless as the sea, my
love as deep; the more I give to thee, the
more I have, for both are infinite.”
(II.iii.132-5)

19. When they meet, there is the heavy use of
religious language….
• Romeo: If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
Juliet: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand
too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do
touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.

20. Please watch Act I scene v of
Romeo and Juliet
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAbpWYmTzhE
• This scene is so beautifully done!
• Notice how the lovers share the scene alone
(through their dialogue) although others are
around.
• This movie was a huge hit!
• Shakespeare was probably trying, in the party
scene of Romeo and Juliet, to depict in allegory
mankind’s earliest relationship with the sun—
these were nature religions where the sun and
nature were worshipped.

21. Subsequent scenes where the lovers are
together play out the rest.
But this slideshow is not about that.
This slideshow is only about how the sun
and its beauty and importance for the
Earth was likely an inspiration for
Shakespeare.

22. From Twelfth Night
Viola: I saw thee late at the Count
Orsino’s.
Feste: Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb
like the sun, it shines everywhere….
… ….and so does the work of
William Shakespeare

23. Thank you!