1. Académie des Sciences Polonaise Paris
Shakespeare: the fall of the gods and the fundamentally European theme of introspective indecision
Jean-Patrick Connerade (Chaunes)
Quantum Optics and Laser Science Group
Physics Department Imperial College London
Décembre 2016
Académie des Sciences Polonaise Paris

2. What is theatre ? What is life ?
The theatre is a place where decision-making is enacted and consequences are explored. Reality is not essential to the exercise, but is by no means excluded. As Shakespeare puts it ‘Life’s but a stage’. However, theatre has an advantage over real life in allowing diverse different choices to be made, after which the whole story can be started all over again. At yet a higher level, the art of drama can be elevated to a peak, which is the portrait of indecision itself, perhaps the most sublime of all plays in our European tradition explores this: Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Décembre 2016
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3. In Antiquity, important decisions were taken, not by men, but by the gods.themselves. True, they would argue for one course rather than for another and usually disagree, in which case Zeus would often have the final word. However, while this Olympian dialogue was still taking place, men would nonetheless go to war, without any clear idea of the outcome and with little responsibility for what would actually happen. Their only chance of influencing events would be through some kind of propitiatory sacrifice to their supporting god – a tradition extending back at least as far as Homer.

4. The Nemesis
This approach carries over into Greek Tragedy, where fate (personified as the Nemesis) takes the leading role and decides on the particular curse which must bedevil the life of a hero. She is very useful to the playwright because she attenuates the horror any spectator might experience when confronted with dreadful crimes. For example Oedipus is not morally responsible for what he has done. It was all a mistake: Nemesis willed it upon him and so he can become a tragic figure despite the unforgivable nature of parricide and incest because, in fact, there was no way for him to escape his fate. Inevitability is the key.

5. Nemesis and the Stars
In Greek theatre, the essence of tragedy itself is rooted in the supernatural. This tradition was carried into European classical theatre pretty well unchanged. For example, Racine’s great tragedy Phèdre, written in the seventeenth century, follows the Greek principle completely: the principal character enters the stage invoking the Sun god, from whom she claims descent:
Noble et puissant auteur d’une triste famille,
Toi, dont ma mère osait se vanter d’être fille,
Qui peut-être rougis du trouble où tu me vois,
Soleil, je te viens voir pour la dernière fois.

6. In classical theatre it is the same
It is immediately clear to the spectator after this famous tirade that Phèdre cannot be held responsible for what she is about to do. It will not be her fault, but the responsibility of the Sun-god. The horrible events which follow are all to be blamed on the bad influence of this hereditary curse.

7. Shakespeare changes it all
All of this background is swept aside by Shakespeare. The gods, after him, will never rise again to rule over the European stage. It may seem strange that Phèdre was actually written after his work, but this is simply an accident due to poor communications : at the time, nobody in mainland Europe knew anything about Shakespeare. With hindsight, we can understand that truly modern theatre begins with the great Elizabethan poet, an aspect hinted at much later in a comparative study of Shakespeare and Racine by Stendhal.

8. Fate and Warfare
The most important of all decisions, as Homer carefully explains, is the act of going to war.
This accounts for the very striking opening to Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
The first scene revolves around the ghost of Hamlet’s father. And we are told something very important about him, namely that he has appeared clad in full armour, as if about to go to war. Against whom ? This is unclear and will remain so, except that something is rotten in the Kingdom of Denmark and must be put to right.

9. Should the gods send us to war ?
Why the evocation of warfare ? The answer is that going to war, for Shakespeare as for Homer, remains the most important of all decisions. So, the supposedly supernatural manifestation poses the vital question at the outset : must Hamlet take up arms? Must humans obey the whims of a supernatural world ? Shakespeare approaches this question in a totally different way from any dramatist before him and even changes the way in which the question is presented to the spectator.

10. Is the ghost in Hamlet ‘real’ ?
The first point is: are we dealing with a ‘real’ ghost or simply with an imaginary figure, a vision of collective guilt conjured up in human minds by the suspicion of some horrible and unresolved crime? Shakespeare plays on the supernatural in a completely new way. He will even show us that some characters believe in the ghost while other do not. Hamlet (true to his indecisions) hesitates: is this a ‘real’ ghost or merely his own imagination playing a trick on him?

11. The queen, of course, does not ‘see’ the ghost and will persistently deny its existence. In fact, as we advance in the play, this ghost turns into some kind of Freudian myth, so intangible that confirmation of its message is required at every step. We are thus led into Shakespeare’s vision of what, according to him, constitutes tragedy, namely some curious twist of human psychology itself. The gods are no longer responsible. Nor can reference to them excuse human actions. We enter a world in which the hero might very well have acted otherwise. The path he follows is one of his own choice. Tragedy is a course he has selected for himself and nobody else, not even the gods, can be blamed for what ensues.

12. The transition to modernity
We have entered into modern times, the Nemesis no longer exists and the free arbiter has been invented. Shakespeare is a man of the Renaissance and in order to understand properly how he has reformed the theatre, one has to turn to something not usually addressed in connection with his work, namely his relationship to the new subject which has just burst onto the intellectual scene in Europe, namely: modern science.

13. Science in Shakespeare’s times
Shakespeare’s greatest contemporary in science is the Danish Astronomer Tycho Brahe. I will spend some time describing the life of Tycho, who was famous throughout Europe in a period in which the name of Shakespeare would have been completely unknown outside England. This connection is a very important one for two reasons. The first is the ‘Danish connection’ which specifically concerns the play Hamlet.

14. The second is that we can establish, also through a variety of other plays and poems, Shakespeare’s own attitude towards the influence of the stars, the planets, comets, astrology and, more generally, the supernatural on the destinies of men. This detailed analysis reinforces the view that Shakespeare, like Tycho himself, did not believe in any kind of Nemesis. It also provides us with one of the most convincing connections between Science and the Arts in Western literature, underpinning and explaining the revolution he introduced in the very nature of modern theatre.

15. Académie des Sciences Polonaise Paris
Tycho Brahe
The most famous scientist in the whole of Europe in Shakespeare’s times was the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, often regarded as a founding father of modern science in that he gave absolute priority to bservation over any kind of theory.
Décembre 2016
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16. Académie des Sciences Polonaise Paris
Why was he so famous ?
As usual, this had as much to do with his lifestyle than with his remarkable gifts as an astronomer. Astronomy in his time confronted the great question: what is the correct mode for the universe? The theory of Ptolemy (geocentrism) was opposed by the theory of Copernicus (heliocentrism) and the question had become so important for the Church and for the State that everybody was concerned by the answer.
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17. Académie des Sciences Polonaise Paris
Tycho’s education
Tycho was born in an aristocratic family very close to the royal court of Denmark. He was abducted at the age of two by a very influential uncle who subsequently tried to prevent him from studying latin poetry and astronomy which he thought incompatible with his high rank and the military tradition of his family. His childhood developed in Tycho a great personal vanity and a quarrelsome disposition, but he inherited vast wealth (one percent, it is said, of the wealth of the whole of Denmark.)
Décembre 2016
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18. Académie des Sciences Polonaise Paris
Tycho and Germany
Like other Danish aristocrats, he attended several German universities, specifically Wittenberg, where Martin Luther had studied, Wittenberg was accessible by ship from Denmark. There, away from the influence of his uncle, he studied his two favourite subjects: latin poetry and astronomy and invented his first scientific instruments.
Décembre 2016
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19. Académie des Sciences Polonaise Paris
His first duel
In 1566, at the age of twenty, he fought a duel with another Danish nobleman, Manderup Parsbjerg, over a disagreement about the interpretation of a mathematical formula or perhaps some other reason. His oponent sliced his nose off and so he had to wear an artificial nose (made of bronze, or copper or silver, depending on which biographer you consult)
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20. Académie des Sciences Polonaise Paris
The island of Hveen
His uncle and adoptive father had saved the King from drowning, so the Brahe’s were much in favour at the Court. King Frederik was so impressed with the young Tycho’s knowledge that he gave him the island of Hveen in the Sound in 1576 to establish an observatory which the king supported financially. Tycho was to work there for 25 years, making it the greatest observatory in the whole of Europe.
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21. Académie des Sciences Polonaise Paris
Uraniborg
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22. A scandal at the court of Denmark ?
Tycho was surely the greatest astronomer of his day and his discoveries were of fundamental importance. I will return to them. He was also very close to the Queen of Denmark, Sophia of Mecklemburg. The gossip of the time (and indeed serious historians of today) consider that he may well be the father of the young prince who became king of Denmark as Christian IV
Décembre 2016
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23. Académie des Sciences Polonaise Paris
His exile in Prague
He fell from favour at the death of Frederik and the young king Christian (perhaps his son) sent him into exile. He fled by boat with his family and boxes full of his precious astronomical notebooks. After many adventures, he found refuge in Germany, where the Emperor Rodolphus the IInd made him astronomer of the Court. In Prague he was to meet and discover Kepler, who became his assistant.
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24. On leaving Denmark, he composed a famous latin elegy explaining to the Danes that they had all lost a great man through the fault of King Chistian. The style and tone of the poem show that, in his mind, this event was as important as the exile of the famous poet Ovid by Emperor Augustus.

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Tycho’s vanity
Around 1590, the famous man in Europe was Tycho, and Shakespeare was relatively unknown. However, Tycho was obsessed by a need for more recognition. He decided to have his portrait engraved and printed to send it round to poets from the whole of Europe, asking them to celebrate his discoveries. He promised them he would publish their poems in his forthcoming book on Astronomy.
Décembre 2016
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26. Tycho and England
Most probably, Tycho knew nothing about Shakespeare, but England at the time was a prestigious nation in the eyes of a Nordic intellectual. He would have known that it was the kingdom where Thomas Morus had written the Utopia, a most famous work, pubished in So, a poem from a British poet was important to him. He wrote to a certain Thomas Savile, from Merton College in Oxford, sending him five copies of his engraved portrait, printed in Amsterdam in 1586, together with one of his books and a letter…

27. Tycho Brahe’s Request
In his letter, Tycho asks for the participation of excellent English poets in singing his praises and he ends by sending his regards to the mathematician John Dee and to one of his pupils, Thomas Digges ( ). Digges was an astronomer and wrote the first text in the English language referring to the model of Copernicus. He knew Shakespeare, and that is how Tycho’s request may have been transmitted to the author of Hamlet, who would then have seen the famous engraved portrat..

28. About the portrait, Tycho had placed a frame in monumental style bearing the names of all his famous ancestors. This frame provides us with an essential clue as it bears the names of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the two famous traitors in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Actually, these two names were by no means unknown in England at that time. Two inseparable students from the University of Wittenberg, Knud Gyldenstierne  and Frederick Rosenkrantz, had come there in 1592 in a delegation from the Court of Denmark..

29. Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern
Thus, Tycho Brahe,  Knud Gyldenstierne and Frederick Rosenkrantz were all cousins. Even more surprisingly, Frederick Rosenkrantz came back to London in 1600, a likely date for the composition of Hamlet. He was coming from Prague, where he was visiting Tycho, and travelled part of the way in the company of Johannes Kepler. So we have clear evidence of the connection between Hamlet and the great astronomers of the day. Probably, Shakespeare was already at work on his play and looking for names associated with the Court of Denmark for two of the characters. He must also have been struck by the connection between Tycho’s life and his subject, which echoed some of the gossip of the period about adultery in the royal family..

30. The strange death of Tycho
The sudden and mysterious death of Tycho in 1601 gave rise to immediate suspicions of poisoning amongst contemporaries, because of the mysteries surrounding his relationship with the royal family. Rumour had it that a member of his own family had received the order to kill him from the King of Denmark. There is a lot of controversy about this, but public opinion at the time of Shakespeare believed the tale, repeated by some of his biographers. However, Tycho is no model for the character of Hamlet.
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31. Whence the name: Hamlet ?
An author of the XIIIth century, Saxo Grammaticus, wrote the Gesta Danorum, apparently inspired by a Nordic Saga of the IXth century which has been lost. It includes the story of ’Amleth (Vita Amlethi). A French writer, François de Belleforest translated and published the work in 1570 as Histoires tragiques. Amleth is the son of an adulterus mother. He pretends to be mad and flees from Denmark to England in the company of two traitors who have been ordered to kill him. But he unmasks the plot, has them executed and returns to Denmark to take revenge. The icelandic saga is entitled Amlóði (latinised as Amlethus) and the etymology suggests óðr (madness) as in Odin. The theme might be indo-european.

32. Location
Shakespeare modernised the subject by locating the action in the castle of Kronborg at Elsinor (Helsingor) which had been rebuilt at the time of Frederic II between 1574 and 1585 to defend Denmark against Sweden. This impressive fortress, the largest in Scandinavia, was famous even in England at the time. Shakespeare also sent Hamlet to study at the University of Wittenberg because Tycho Brahe and, more significantly, Martin Luther, had studied there, which made this university famous in England.

33. Shakespeare’s Universe
The questions which arise are: how much did Shakespeare know about Tycho’s scientific work ? What did he think of the great debate about the validity of astrology which raged during the Renaissance ? Did he believe in the geocentric theory of Ptolemy or did he adopt the heliocentric ideas of Copernicus, published in 1543 ?

34. « Racine et Shakespeare »
Racine was educated at Port-Royal, a jansenist school where prédestination was in vogue, which is very similar to the Nemesis of Greek tragedy. So he followed this tradition faithfully. Notice that astrology is also related: it is a method of reading what the gods have decided. However, pre-determined Greek tragedy was not Shakespeare’s approach to theatre. For him, human psychology and the mobility of destiny are key: in fact. Hamlet is precisely the play which establishes fundamental uncertainty as the whole basis for shakespearian drama.… If everything were pre-ordained, there would be no shakespearian theatre.

35. Astrology and Superstition
Astronomers at the time of Tycho earned their living and position by making astrological forecasts and horoscopes. Tycho, like the others, had a go at this, but soon gave it up. He wrote: : « When you study one hundred preictions, it is very rare that two of them agree with each other. Estrological predictions are like boots which one can fit to ether and any leg, large or small. That is why I never found them of any importance. »
( Tycho Brahe, letter of the 7th of December 1587
to Heinrich von Below)

36. Shakespeare and portents or curses
In Othello, Desdémona says:
Some bloody passion shakes your very frame:
These are portents; but yet I hope, I hope,
They do not point on me.
She uses the word ‘portent’ but this is not a divine curse. She can tell that there is something abnormal in Othello’s behavious with her, but her comment is entirely an expression of feminine intuition...

37. Another example Similarly, in Romeo and Juliet, we find :
Black and portentous must this humour prove,
Unless good counsel may the cause remove.
Which again has nothing to do with Nemesis. Good counsel might well remedy the situation if only men would listen to it. Nothing prevents that and so the origin of tragedy appears from the start as psychological frailty. It is a choice which Shakespeare, as a astute playwright, always prefers to any form of predestination.

38. Hamlet’s Ghost
The play opens superbly with the sighting of the ghost of Hamlet’s deceased father. But does this ghost exist outside of the imagination of characters in the play? Shakespeare plays on this ambiguity by opposing characters who can see the ghost with those who can’t. Hamlet himself, the doubting hero, moves from one state to the other. For Shakespeare, the supernatural is merely a reflection of the human psyche, not a reality. Those who believe a crime was committed see the ghost, but those who refuse the crime (like the queen) do not.

39. Stars, comets and planets…
Poets have always attributed special powers to celestial phenomena. This is the most ancient of all poetic conventions. In the works of Shakespeare, there are of course many such references. But alongside, we also find specific and unconventional statements which are much more interesting and reveal his real opinions.

40. A ‘conventional’ example
The closest one comes to an influence of planets in Shakespeare is the description by Ulysses of the Trojan War in Troilus and Cressida :
…but when the planets In evil mixture to disorder wander, What plagues and what portents! what mutiny!
What raging of the sea! shaking of earth!
Here, Shakespeare is really imitating Homer. The Trojan War is a subject which can only be treated in Greek heroic style. So, yes, planets like the gods exert their influence, but do so in a peculiar way. We do not find astrological conjunctions, but the opposite: disorder of an unspecified kind. Shakespeare transposes Homer in a new way.

41. The role of the sun: to create order
Tycho Brahe was attracted by the simplicity of the theory of Copernicus which creates order in the movement of the planets. However, the idea that the earth should not be at the centre of the world seemed too absurd for him. Also, he had noticed that the theory of Ptolemy allows one, by decomposing the motion of planets, to achieve a great precision in predicting their future movements. This was not possible in the theory of Copernicus except by the articicial device of of incorporating epicycles.

42. The Tychonian Universe
He theefore attempted to combine both theories and, in 1580, announced his own geo-helio-stationary or Tychonian system in which the Earth stays at the centre and the sun revolves around it, but the other planets revolve on spheres around the sun. This Tychonian model was the best possible synthesis before keplerian ellipses.

43. Did Shakespeare know this ?
The wisest of me, Ulysses, in Troilus and Cressida, describes the sun as the most glorious and useful of celestial objects. He declares :
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol
In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
Amidst the other; whose medicinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil…
The key words here are ‘noble eminence’ and ‘sphered’. The sun is a ‘planet’ for Shakespeare, because it revolves around the earth, but an especially noble and eminent planet as it introduces order amongst the others by imposing motion on spheres about its centre in the geo-helio-centric system. We are
indeed in the Tychonian model.

44. Shakespeare follows Tycho Brahe
Note that the famous keplerian ellipses and laws were only published around 1609, whereas Troilus and Cressida was composed around The Tychonian model is dated The description of the solar system by Shakespeare corresponds exactly to the most recent model of his time. He rejects both the model of Ptolemy and the more radical model of Copernicus which, with its circular orbits, did not provide accurate predictions without epicycles. So, his position follows Tycho Brahe exactly..

45. Tycho’s comets
Tycho observed comets and realised that they were no different from other celestial bodies. He even noticed that they penetrated through the ‘spheres’ of the ptolemaic model and, consequently, that these transparent ‘spheres’ which had until then been described as made of crystal were in fact at most conceptual. Comets, for Tycho, no longer held any particular mystery compared to moons and planets.

46. Shakespeare’s comets
The comes of Shakespeare have a strange tendency to turn up just after important events rather than announcing them. The most amusing and instructive example is in Julius Caesar, where Calpurnia declares :
When beggars die, there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.
Shakespeare uses the opportunity to explain that comets only bother to come for princes, which rather pokes fun at the whole concept of astronomical signs. This comment is hardly from a person who believes in astrology. Rather, he sees the association of comets with events
as a manifestation of human vanity..

47. Shakespeare and the moon
The moon plays a predominent role in the poetry and plays of Shakespeare, being invoked no less than 160 times in his theatre and sonnets. Many of these references are very conventional in poetry, but a few are sufficiently specific and different to provide us with a view of Shakespeare’s own opinion concerning astronomical knowledge in his own times.

48. The phases of Venus
Shakespeare never susected that Venus, like the Moon, has phases. This is not surprising. Despite some assertions, there were no unambiguous observations before the discovery of telescopes. The phases of Venus were first described precisely by Galileo in 1613, following his first observation of the effect in The last one of Shakespeare’s plays (Henri VIII) dates from The phases of Venus are very important in the history of science, since they are not compatible with the ptolemaic model, but do not actually contradict the Tychonian scheme.

49. The fleeting Moon
Not being aware of the phases of Venus, Shakespeare only knew those of the Moon. For him, the changing face of the Moon was a unique property amongst celestial bodies. The changing face of the Moon thus provided him with a wonderful astronomical allegory for a favourite theme of the Renaissance, the fickleness of woman. One thinks of the famous verse king Francis the Ist of France inscribed on a pane of glass with the diamond of his ring :
(Souvent femme varie
Bien fol est qui s’y fie)

50. Cleopatra and the Moon
The most specific example of this association comes in the play Anthony and Cleopatra, where the queen, on seeing her new hero for the first tieme, exclaims :
My resolution's placed, and I have nothing
Of woman in me: now from head to foot
I am marble-constant; now the fleeting moon
No planet is of mine.
She dissociates herself entirely from female changeability and will henceforth be as
permanent as marble…

51. The secret Moon of desire
Despite Hamlet’s hesitations, Ophelia preserves her ‘normality’ and her brother, keenly aware of the dangers in this relationship, warns her to be careful. He says::
Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister,
And keep you in the rear of your affection,
Out of the shot and danger of desire.
The chariest maid is prodigal enough
If she unmask her beauty to the moon.
The Moon, here, is the sole witness capable of understanding and protecting female desire, of which she is the arch-symbol..

52. The threatening Moon
Not only does the Moon change shape. It also changes colour. This, according to Shakespeare, must fill us with foreboding. When a great battle turns sour, a captain with long experience of warfare announces :
‘T is thought the king is dead; we will not stay.
The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;
The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth
And this description of a threatening Moon serves well enough to replace any comment on the military situation.

53. The stars according to Shakespeare
Shakespeare knows that stars are balls of fire and that their positions are fixed, but also that they do not last for ever. One must remember that Tycho had the extremely rare privilege of witnessing the explosion of a supernova which he correctly concluded to be the final end of a star. In Antoine et Cléopâtre, Antoiny says t:
When my good stars, that were my former guides, Have empty left their orbs, and shot their fires Into the abysm of hell.
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54. What influence in the stars ?
Shakespeare concedes some influence to the stars in the declarations of his characters, but this is always indirect, so we can always attribute their statements to the superstitious view they have of the universe. Thus, Pericles, disgusted by his own fate, exclaims :
Yet cease your ire, you angry stars of heaven!
While Romeo makes a heroic attempt to defy them, despite his forebodings :
my mind misgives some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Naturally more rebellious, he addresses them directly :
Is it even so? then I defy you, stars!

55. But the stars tell us nothing
Even when stars are involved, Shakespeare always gives priority to psychology and considers their influence to be hardly detectable at all. Thus, in Cymbeline, Imogen says:
… that is my lord, Leonatus! O, learn'd indeed were that astronomer That knew the stars as I his characters;

56. Good fortune and social status
Where the stars, according to Shakespeare, might have a role to play is in determining social status and accounting for the luck of high birth. He suggests this quite often in his plays and sonnets. I For instance, in Twelfth Night, there is the famous letter received by Malvolio:
In my stars I am above thee; but be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.
Likewise, in ‘King Lear’, le duc de Kent says :
The stars above us, govern our conditions;
which is the last power Shakespeare leaves them.

57. Digges and the stars
The sars were still a matter of great debate in the time of Shakespeare. Digges differed from Copernicus, as he did not place them on a single celestial sphere but seems to be the first to have distributed them through an infinite space, more or less as fixed objects, each one at a different distance from the Earth. Shakespeare does not describe the stars much, but refers indirectly to this issue in Henry the IVth (part I) where he seems to favour Digges’ hypothesis without however excluding some possible movement :
Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere; Nor can one England brook a double reign

58. What be your purpose, Astronomy ?
Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck,
And yet methinks I have astronomy;
But not to tell of good or evil luck…
says Shakespeare, at the outset of his fourteenth sonnet. Anyway, astronomy is of no use to tell the future, nor even to justify good or bad luck. In fact, it must have some higher purpose, but that is outside Shakespeare’s subject. Interestingly, the poet tells us that he ‘has asronomy’ in other words that he does indeed know a lot about it.

59. Astrology has no meaning
Shakespeare makes subtle use of astronomy to enrich his metaphors and psychological references, but he goes along with no form of superstition : at every turning, he reminds us that, in fact, astrology is without meaning and that planets do not affect our lives. He even goes beyond that in explaining, just like Tycho, that men use the stars as an excuse to justify their own errors and vices.

60. Shakespeare’s true opinion
The best example is in King Lear, where Edmund (improvising himself as Shakespeare’s spokesman) gives us a wonderful summary in the style of Montaigne:
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeit of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion;knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical pre-dominance;drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforc'd obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whore-master man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star!

61. Shakespeare’s deep understanding of the science of his times helped him free the theatre from the classical conventions of earlier ages and develop a style well ahead of his century (indeed of the two following centuries.) Voltaire, who tried a little clumsily to translate his plays to bring his drama to the French public, believed he was a primitive writer compared to classical French authors, but was wrong in this. Only with the Romantics and the translations by François-Victor Hugo did Shakespeare begin to be better understood in Europe.

62. Amongst the imitations which ensued, the best and most Shakespearian is probably Musset’s Lorenzaccio, which combines a dose of hamletian self-doubt with the heroic theme of Brutus. In French poetry (Verlaine, Rimbaud, Laforgue…) the lunar theme of Ophelia often appears, in particular with Laforgue, in a poem from l’ Imitation de Notre-Dame la Lune entitled Stérilités. Villiers de l’Isle Adam’s play Axël is aso in this style. Laforgue was deeply influenced by the character of Hamlet. He kept re-inventing him and, already very ill, spent a whole night in the damp and cold of Elsinor during the composition of his Moralités Légendaires, shortly before his death. However, none of these imitators understood Shakespeare’s connection to the science of his time, as they had no such connection themselves.

63. An unusual connection between the play Hamlet and science arose in modern times: in the period of the USSR, the father of the Ouzbek physicist Fatkhulla Abdullaev, a major expert on solitons, translated Hamlet into the ouzbekh language to be performed in Tashkent. This was considered subversive and he was sent to the goulag. Maybe the fear was that some of the rot from the Kingdom of Denmark might spread to Central Asia…

64. A remark about ‘modernity’
Studying the question of artstic innovation leads us to a very interesting question. When we ask: why did Shakespeare break with tradition and introduce a totally new framework for Western theatre ? the answer seems to be : because he was in tune with science or, more broadly, because he perceived the changing spirit of his times. In other words, art reveals something fundamental about a period : sudden changes in style and tempo indicate wider transformations in the world at large. 64
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65. Conclusion
Finally: what influence did the Play and the character of Hamlet have on Western literature since the eighteenth century (Voltaire’s study) and the nineteenth century (Victor Hugo and his son François-Victor Hugo adapt Shakespeare’s plays and invent a so-called ‘romantic’ drama) ? We can trace the outcome through some famous plays (Musset’s Lorenzaccio and Villiers de l’Isle Adam’s Axël, for example) through the work of poets such as Rimbaud, Verlaine, Laforgue, etc. and into grand opera in the adaptations by Arrigo Boito and Giuseppe Verdi of the great Shakespearian dramas.

66. Shakespeare’s influence is also felt in Nordic theatre and extends even into the foundations of psychoanalysis by the Vienna school. It has truly pervaded European thinking, and one can even ask whether it might be taken as a metaphor in a wider political sense: the European inability to come to satisfactory decisions concerning its own existence. Should Europe be or should it not be is a question which its citizens seem at present unable to resolve. It is undoubtedly the most important decision they are faced with, but is plagued by uncertainty, changes of mind, contradictions in its very formulation which are, in many ways, specifically European and characteristic of our continent. Coming to grips with hamletian doubts may hold the key to our future.

67. Epilogue
The influence of Shakespeare, arguably the greatest playwright in European culture, continues to manifest itself four hundred years after his death. Setting things right again concerns more today than merely the kingdom of Denmark. It is perhaps our whole continent which must resolve its dilemma and confront the ghostly shadows of its own past.

68. After 400 years, Shakespeare remains modern.
Thank you
merci