Abstract

This thesis contextualizes Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, Antony and Cleopatra, and King Lear within Early Modern English discussions of astronomy and astrology, two terms and areas of discourse not sharply delineated in Shakespeare's time. The interdisciplinary nature of astronomy and astrology, two sciences which considered questions which today we would classify as physical, philosophical, theological, and ethical, argues for Shakespeare's knowledge of the heavens without any technical training in astronomy. The three plays which I have investigated manifest an overt interest in nature and the world and interrogate classical and contemporary conceptions of cosmos. For example, I read Antony and Cleopatra within the context of European Anti-Aristotelianism and the rise of anti-peripatetic cosmologies based on Stoic, Hermetic, Epicurean and Platonic thought. In Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare invokes many of the classical metaphors involving order, including micro-macrocosmic imagery, the discourse of the musically bound universe, and the Platonic and Augustinian conception of archetypal divine numbers. King Lear, with its repeated refrain of 'nothing,' can be productively situated within the scholastic and Christian discourses of cosmic void space and atomism. Edgar's speech on the excellent foppery of astrology also draws on contemporary controversy over judicial and natural astrology. By examining almanacs, astronomical textbooks, and polemics issued by astrologer's themselves, we find the same questions debated in the Shakespearean text, such as the limits of human agency, the extent of astral influence, and the nature of providence