1. Stars in Calculating the Science of Hamlet
How the Astronomical Worldview influenced William Shakespeare Adapted from a presentation by Josh Pattison

2. Stars in Hamlet
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets; As stars with trains of fire, and dews of blood, Disasters in the sun; and the moist star Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse. …(Horatio)
Good madam, stay awhile. I will be faithful. [Reads.] 'Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love. 'O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers; I have not art to reckon my groans; but that I love thee best, O most best, believe it. Adieu. …(Polonius reading lines of a letter from Hamlet)
But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of my prison house, I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end Hamlet…(the ghost of Hamlet Sr.)

3. Astrology permeates Shakespeare’s plays
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings."
"Messala, this is my birthday; as this very day was Cassius born. This day I breathed first; Time is come around and where I did begin, there I should end." Julius Caesar.
"It is the stars. The stars above us govern our condition. Else one self mate and make could not beget such different issues.“
This is the excellent foppery of the world that when we are sick in fortune, we make guilty our disasters, the sun, the moon and the stars.“
"My nativity was under Ursa Major." King Lear.
"Bidding me depend upon thy stars, thy fortune, and thy strength."
"Now, now, you stars, that move in your right spheres, Where be your powers?" King John.
"Servile to all the skyey influences." Measure for Measure.
"The heavens themselves do guide the state." Merry Wives of Windsor .
"Being, as thou sayest thou art, born under Saturn."
"I was not born under a rhyming planet."
"There was a star danced, and under that was I born." Much Ado About Nothing.
"O heavy hour! Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse of sun and moon, and that the affrighted globe should yawn at alteration."
"As if some planet had unwitted men."
"It is the very error of the moon; she comes more nearer earth than she was wont and makes men mad." Othello.
"Until our stars that frown lend us a smile."
"Yet cease your ire, you angry stars of heaven." …Pericles
"That I, being governed by the watery moon, may send forth plenteous tears to drown the world."
"Be opposite all planets of good luck to my proceedings."
"Lo, at their births good stars were opposite." Richard III.
"A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life."
"Inauspicious Stars." Romeo & Juliet.
"I find my zenith doth depend upon a most auspicious star, whose influence if now I court not, but omit, my fortune will ever after droop." The Tempest.
"But truer stars did govern Proteus' birth." Two Gentlemen of Verona .

4. Numbers in Hamlet
"And let all sleep, while to my shame I see The imminent death of twenty thousand men That for a fantasy and trick of fame Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, Which is not tomb enough and continent To hide the slain?
References to meteors in Shakespeare’s plays and poems =~ 20
References to astronomy in general = >400 in the plays and >60 in the poems
Most plays average about references each

5. Why care about Astrology?
Maybe the oldest art of humankind
Father of nearly all the sciences
Based on observation, analysis, prediction
Influenced nearly every aspect of public and private life until the Enlightenment
Highly technical: one of the Quadrivium
Applied science
Exact science
Empirical science
A complete holistic integrated Theory of Everything

6. Continuing Influences of Astrological Terms
In language:
Influenza
Disaster
Conjunction
Opposition
Forecast
Aspect
Lunatic
Dog days
Venereal
Mercurial
Jovial
Saturnine
Lucky stars
Fall (autumn)
Revolution
Days of the week (French and English)

7. In the sciences Astronomy
(considered to be the same until 18th century)
Calculation of time
Maths
Medicine
Botany
Mineralogy
Chemistry (alchemy)
Logarithms
Ray theory of vision  optics
Navigation
Quadrivium: Arithmetic (universal understanding of quantity and proportion), Geometry (quantity at rest), Music (quantity in proportion/relation to itself), Astronomy (quantity in motion)
Trivium (trivial): Grammar (language in relation to itself), Logic (language in relation to ideas), Rhetoric (language applied to persuasion)
Both were considered symbolic: but symbols were reality, in that they pointed to God’s mind. The Platonic Ideas were “real” in a deeper sense than empirical reality as we know it.

8. Order Large and Small
Man is the centre of the “cosmos” according to an ancient Greek Neo-Platonic view of the world
The largest scale was the macrocosm and the smallest was the microcosm and they concerned themselves with looking for patterns and the rational explanation for everything in an ordered world

9. As in the stars, so it is on earth
Congruencies: macro- and micro-cosm
Empirical observation: tides affected by moon; why not the element of water in the human body?
Relationship not causal, but reflective, echoic
Free will not disproved, nor directly affected: mind (soul) (ψυχή = Greek) not physical
The body creates certain conditions of mood and circumstance

10. Vitruvian Man Combines sacred geometry and anatomy Circle = Heaven
Square = Earth
Pentangle = Man, the Infinite
Man is the nexus between Earth and Heaven

11. The humors Theory of medicine since before Galen
Determined mostly by diet and environment
Holistic medicinal theory: psychology and personality as well as physical health
Balanced humors allow one to better deal with the vicissitudes of the stars (“antic dispostion” of Hamlet diagnosed as having “melancholia”)

12. Stars were not seen as deterministic
"...the planets had more than a physical effect. They influenced the course of events and they influenced human psychology.”
"The important question, theologically, was whether the planets compelled or merely disposed men to action.”
"Planetary influence could not remove free will but it could alter the states of mind and imagination which free will has to deal with.
"Any man can master the psychological raw material and thus refute the prediction; but few men do and therefore the predictions will succeed as regards the majority.
From C.S. Lewis, “Imagination and thought in the Middle Ages”

13. What kind of order? The Great Chain of Being: metaphysical order
A hierarchy based on similarity to God
God defined as “totality”, the infinite, perfection itself

14. The chain of being is a fractal
Interconnectedness of all things with God
Apparently based on “phi”, the Golden Ratio, which when expressed as a star in geometry gives you the infinite pentagram: based on 5, the number of humanity
Disorder in one link of the chain is universal disorder: return to chaos

15. Fractals in nature
Fern zoom on Youtube

16. Properties of motion
The levels of the Macro-chain have increasing complexity of motion
Minerals: cause
Plants: stimulus
Animals: motive
Humans: will (shared with angels and God: God is pure will; angels are in accord; humans have access)
The first mover (Primum mobile) defined as God
Four elements have linear motion: Fire, air: Up; Earth, water: down.
The Aether has circular motion: perpetual, unchanging.
Everything sublunary made of the elements (including human bodies): they can be separated (burn a branch)
Mediaeval medicine based on Galen  balance of elements in the form of humors

17. What kind of order? Physical cosmos
Claudius Ptolemy is the expert
Adapted by Christians and Neoplatonists
Again, symbol and physics interact and overlap
Hell is as much a state of being as a place…heaven, too.
Astrology makes physical sense given this model.

18. Musica Universalis: The Music of the Spheres
The universe is created according to number, weight, and measure: proportions are key
Pythagoras discovered that the pitch of a lyre string is in proportion to the length; also, that harmonious sounds are proportional in mathematical ratios
Plato describes astronomy and music as “twins”: eyes and ears perceiving numerical ratios
Music and astronomy are half the Quadrivium
Each sphere produces a note proportional to its orbit: inaudible to the ear, but audible to the soul: the music of perfect harmony – the universe working as it should
Kepler, Brahe’s student, publishes his third law of planetary movement (The “Harmonic” law) in 1619: it states: P2 α a3
That is, the square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit – as the orbit is an ellipse, not a sphere
This produces a more complex harmony

19. Iambic pentametre
Shakespeare uses rhythm to indicate the presence of universal order; when it breaks down or is absent, chaos is come again
Dance, music, and rhyme (as another layer of patterned sound) are all used similarly: echoes of musica universalis

20. Astronomy in Elizabethan Life
The average person had a fair to good knowledge
Folk wisdom intersects: it’s crude, but popular
Philosophers (even great ones) linked it to theology (Aquinas, Dee)

21. Hamlet and the Cosmos
BERNARDO
Who's there?
FRANCISCO
Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.
Long live the king!
Bernardo?
He.
You come most carefully upon your hour.
'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco.
For this relief much thanks: 'tis bitter cold,
And I am sick at heart.
Have you had quiet guard?
Not a mouse stirring.
Well, good night.
If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,
The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.
I think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who's there?
Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS
HORATIO
Friends to this ground.
MARCELLUS
And liegemen to the Dane.
FRANCISCO
Give you good night.
O, farewell, honest soldier:
Who hath relieved you?
Bernardo has my place.
Exit
Holla! Bernardo!
BERNARDO
Say,
What, is Horatio there?
Enormous emphasis on overwhelming darkness: where is the moonlight?
Bitter cold: winter
(sometime between September and March)

22. Astronomy in Hamlet MARCELLUS It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.
The cock is the symbol of the sun (Christ)
During Advent (4 Sundays leading up to Christmas) the sun moves toward solstice over the ecliptic:
No ghost can walk during this time: the date must therefore be either before 27 November, or after Christmas

23. Astronomy in Hamlet BERNARDO Last night of all,
When yond same star that's westward from the pole
Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
The bell then beating one,--
Casual reference to a star:
Shakespeare’s audience might know it. Perhaps Deneb, a bright star in Cygnus, the Swan, also known as “the Northern Cross”: stands erect over Europe Christmas Eve 9 pm: it is a portent of the Crucifixion.

24. Cygnus in mythology has resonances:
With Orpheus – death/rebirth/underworld
Orpheus' beloved Euridice died from the poisonous bite of a snake, as did Old Hamlet: "The serpent that did sting thy father's life Now wears his crown" ( ).
Cygnus also heavily associated with royal adultery and revenge
Clytemnestra’s first husband and son were murdered by her second husband, Agamemnon, and she takes a lover who helps her kill him in revenge
In astrology, Cygnus is the patron of persons born with an "adaptable, intellectual, contemplative, and dreamy nature. It generates disorderly and unstable relationships" and "causes talents to mature late “ Sounds familiar, Hamlet!

25. Death, Ghosts, and Purgatory
Two nights together had these gentlemen, Marcellus and Barnardo, on their watch In the dead waste and middle of the night Been thus encounter'd ( )
"And I with them the third night kept the watch" ( ). On the fourth night the ghost appears again, and discourses with Hamlet .
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd,
No reck'ning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head.
( )
In fact, ALL the characters who die do so unabsolved, and consequently should be doomed to Purgatory

26. Shakespeare: the importance of Free Will
"Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings". Julius Caesar
Aspects of the cosmos may affect our bodies, emotions, and the physical world, but only incline the will indirectly, as the will is not made of the Elements.
One can take advantage or disadvantage, depending on one’s predilections and choices, as the stars can only set up situations for one to respond to.

27. Does Hamlet have free will to act?
Act I, scene iii - lines LAERTES:
"His greatness weighed, his will is not his own For he himself is subject to his birth." Act I, scene iv - lines 31-38
HAMLET: "These men carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect, Being nature's livery, or fortune's star Their virtues else, be they as pure as grace, As infinite as man may undergo, Shall in the general censure take corruption From that particular fault.  The dram of evil Doth all the noble substance of a doubt, To his own scandal."