The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.0899  Tuesday, 25 May 1999.

[1]     From:   Robin Hamilton <
 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
 >
        Date:   Monday, 24 May 1999 12:56:22 +0100
        Subj:   Re: SHK 10.0890 Re: Hamlet, the secret doctrine

[2]     From:   Robin Hamilton <
 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
 >
        Date:   Monday, 24 May 1999 13:02:06 +0100
        Subj:   Re: SHK 10.0890 Re: Hamlet, the secret doctrine

[3]     From:   Robin Hamilton <
 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
 >
        Date:   Monday, 24 May 1999 13:58:03 +0100
        Subj:   Re: SHK 10.0890 Re: Hamlet, the secret doctrine


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Robin Hamilton <
 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
 >
Date:           Monday, 24 May 1999 12:56:22 +0100
Subject: 10.0890 Re: Hamlet, the secret doctrine
Comment:        Re: SHK 10.0890 Re: Hamlet, the secret doctrine

>From:           Terence Hawkes <
 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
 >

>Meanwhile,
>what do you make of the fact that Fortinbras's name offers a proleptic
>link to the greatest jazz trumpeter of our century?

Surely every jazz trumpeter ever would like to think he had a such a
mouth?  Wouldn't a better reference be to Ulysses in T&C-"Time
proleptically hath a [satchel] on his back"-or am I missing something?

Perplexed In His Works,
Robin Hamilton

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Robin Hamilton <
 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
 >
Date:           Monday, 24 May 1999 13:02:06 +0100
Subject: 10.0890 Re: Hamlet, the secret doctrine
Comment:        Re: SHK 10.0890 Re: Hamlet, the secret doctrine

>For a poetic turn, however, I am reminded of the poem Love's
>Alchemy by
> John Donne, where he asks "be it true that if my valet can bear the
> performance of a bridegroom's pride that he can be as happy as I".

>Dana

Strictly:

        Ends love in this, that my man,
Can be as happy'as I can; if he can
Endure the short scorne of a Bridegroomes play?

-- Dana's substitution of valet for man irresistibly calls to mind the
Montaigne source (via Florio) from which Donne probably lifted these
lines.

Thus pigs hunt truffles, as for things forgot --
We find not what they would, but what we ought.

Robin Hamilton

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Robin Hamilton <
 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
 >
Date:           Monday, 24 May 1999 13:58:03 +0100
Subject: 10.0890 Re: Hamlet, the secret doctrine
Comment:        Re: SHK 10.0890 Re: Hamlet, the secret doctrine

 > From:           Dana Wilson <
 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
 >

>only one man has
>ever "conceived", that being Zeus to "conceived" Minerva of his
>mind.

Oh, dear, what about Sin from Satan's head (admittedly an echo of Z&M)
in PARADISE LOST?

>Shakespeare would certainly have been familiar with the
>archetype of
>Minerva as higher mind from the influence of the Florentine
>Neo-Platonists, Pico and Ficino.

As far as I know, apart from some rather undocumented remarks in John
Vynaver (sp?) 's two books, the only published documentation of a link
between Pico della Mirandola and Shakespeare is a Notes and Queries
article published in the nineteen forties.  Have I missed something?  --
"certainly have been familiar with"-huh?

>Owen Barfield considers Frances yets
>the authority on this influence in Elizabethean literature and
>I defer.

Yates, surely, and the deference due to the Dame is arguable.

>however, in the
>Elizabethan period it is most likely that Shakespeare absorbed
>these
>ideas from the Polar-logic of Giordano Bruno, who is in a line
>from Pico and Ficino.

Exactly which texts of Bruno would he have known?  There are
demonstrable texts of Pico which would have been available to
Shakespeare, a more dubiously arguable case for Ficino-but Bruno?

Or maybe Sidney didn't die in the Netherlands, and/or passed on his
Bruno MSS to Bill ...

Yeah ....

Robin Hamilton