Hamlet, Elsinore and an exploded world

Yesterday, NASA posted as its Astronomy Picture of the Day an x-ray image of something called "Tycho's Supernova Remnant." (Pictured here) What the copy didn't mention is this astronomical object is also arguably known as "yond same star that's westward from the pole" in Hamlet. 

Yet it's predictably opaque and inexplicable why Shakespeare of Stratford (if he were the author of the play) would make such a seemingly random association between an old exploded star and a Danish fable whose inspiration supposedly derived from some kind of nominal homage to his recently deceased son Hamnet. (The boy was named after a Stratford neighbor of Shakspere's, Hamnet Sadler.) 

On the other hand, the allusion fits comfortably within a broader framework that supposes Edward de Vere behind the "Shakespeare" pen. 

Here's the story. 

It's hard to imagine today, but in 1572 when the light from this stellar explosion first became visible on Earth, it was a world-shaking event. Here was a new star -- not on any previous charts -- so brilliant that it was visible even in the full brightness of day. 

There was, simply, no cosmic or scientific explanation for such an unprecedented heavenly phenomenon.  

In England, the mathematician Thomas Digges studied the "new star" and wrote a book about it. Digges dedicated his book to Edward de Vere's new father-in-law Lord Burghley. In Denmark, the legendary astronomer Tycho Brahe made the most precise observations of the object in the world. Thus the object's modern-day name. 

This new star, in effect, upended everything. It provided damning confirmation of an emerging scientific understanding of a dynamic universe. Under the prevailing Ptolemaic system -- which posited all heavenly bodies were unchanging and firmly fixed in place -- such nearly unimaginable notions were heresy. 

Hamlet's reference to Tycho's Supernova (as it's known today) at the beginning of the Danish tragedy, in fact, constitutes a perfect setup to a cosmological debate that takes place throughout the drama. 

Hamlet, in fact, enacts a specific astronomical dispute that Edward de Vere arguably witnessed first-hand in 1583. (Worst case scenario: De Vere did not witness the back-and-forth at Oxford University himself but was privy to courtly gossip about it at the time and enjoyed ample insider access to every detail after the fact.) 

The debate was about old worldviews colliding with new — a familiar and comforting geocentric universe colliding with Copernicus's revolutionary heliocentric one. Hamlet, however, goes into more specific detail concerning both the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (a geocentrist) and the obscure 1583 court appearance of a bombastic Italian scholar (a Copernican) named Giordano Bruno.

There is no explanation for how a 19-year-old Shakspere of Stratford would have witnessed, read about or even cared about this esoteric, egghead dispute, one that was certainly antithetical to crowd-pleasing entertainments at the Globe Theatre. (And that's what we're told a Stratfordian Shakespeare canon is all about.) 

After the jump, two excerpts from "Shakespeare" By Another Name that pick up the story where Tycho's Supernova Remnant leaves off. 

Yet why write a play about Denmark, of all places — in 1583, of all times?

To begin with, it was the subject of current family table talk. Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford never had the chance to see Denmark with his own eyes — although de Vere's German mentor Sturmius had once confided in Burghley his hopes that de Vere and his wife might visit Elsinore.  Instead, de Vere would see the royal court of Denmark through the eyes of a trusted member of the family. The previous summer , de Vere's brother-in-law Peregrine Bertie, who in 1580 inherited the title of Lord Willoughby de Eresby, had paid an extended visit to the Danish court at Elsinore. On a mission from the queen, Bertie traversed the North Sea in June of 1582 to invest Denmark's King Frederick II as a Knight of the Garter.

Elizabeth needed the Danish king to stop harassing English ships as they passed through nearby seas. The English Muscovy Company was doing a brisk trade with Russia, and their business was greatly inconvenienced by levies exacted from them for using Danish sea lanes. So the queen sent PETRUCHIO to induct the King into the Order of the Garter and to win a more favorable shipping treaty.

Bertie proved a fine match for the blustery Danish King Frederick, and the two hit it off famously — although Bertie never did manage to change Frederick's mind on any of the seafaring matters he’d been sent to address. Between the 1582 voyage and a subsequent 1585 trip to Elsinore, Bertie spent five months in the castle that Hamlet immortalizes. Lord Willoughby’s two embassies included royal feasts, hunting expeditions, and fireworks. Bertie chronicled his trip in a handwritten memoir circulated at Elizabeth’s court. He no doubt also regaled friends and in-laws with his exploits. The Danish King, pleased to be honored with Elizabeth's knighthood, feted Bertie with multiple nights of revelry that included grand speeches about Her Majesty and the Order of the Garter. "All which [were] performed after a whole volley of all the great shot of the castle discharged," Bertie notes. Hamlet chronicles this peculiarly Danish drinking ritual: "There's no health the King shall drink today but the great cannon to the clouds shall tell," says KING CLAUDIUS.

In his capacity as ambassador, de Vere's brother-in-law met top Danish officials — including one courtier with the family name of Rosenkrantz and two surnamed Guldenstern.  Bertie also visited the legendary astronomer Tycho Brahe at his observatory. Ten years before, Brahe had observed a supernova in the constellation Cassiopea — the same bright “star that’s westward from the pole” that Hamlet’s guards on the battlements of Elsinore notice.  Brahe had also used his Danish observatory to make the most accurate observations ever of planetary conjunctions, oppositions, and retrograde motions. From this data, Brahe had concluded that the ancient geocentric theory of the universe was correct, that the Earth was indeed the celestial body around which everything else in the celestial spheres orbited. The Danish king touted his court astronomer’s achievements, a fact that escaped neither Lord Willoughby nor his brother-in-law. Hamlet's KING CLAUDIUS denies the PRINCE's request to return to school by noting that it would be "retrograde to our desire"; he says HAMLET’s excessive mourning is in "peevish opposition" to the facts of life and a "fault to heaven"; he says that his new wife GERTRUDE is "conjunctive" to his soul, and that he orbits her as a "star moves not but in his sphere."

For providing such local color, de Vere ultimately gave his brother-in-law a tip of the pen. "Enter ... English Ambassador" the stage directions read as Hamlet draws to a close. With six dour lines to recite — one of which is "ROSENKRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN are dead" — Hamlet's ENGLISH AMBASSADOR to Elsinore is hardly an ample stand-in for the colorful Lord Willoughby. Still, to those in on the joke at court, no further explanation was necessary. PETRUCHIO had made his cameo.

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Also in 1583, Edward de Vere had been re-introduced to Queen Elizabeth's court after more than a year in exile -- after having caused a scandal over impregnating one of Her Majesty's ladies in waiting Ann Vavasour. 

Days after de Vere returned to court, the Earl of Leicester led a trip to Oxford University that much of Queen Elizabeth's court participated in -- a trip in which de Vere likely participated. 

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De Vere's welcome back to court was bittersweet: On June 9, his mentor the Earl of Sussex finally gave up the ghost. The widowed countess of Sussex lamented in a letter circulated at court about the "sea of sorrows" that she now faced, and that "Were it not for the fear of God's revenge, I could with all heart redeem them with the sacrifice of my life."  These morbid sentiments may well have funneled into HAMLET'S musing over suicide and taking “arms against a sea of troubles.”

Sussex had for decades been the leading voice of opposition against Leicester's pernicious influence at court. At one point, in 1566, the Sussex and Leicester factions had been so well demarcated that Sussex’s supporters wore yellow ribbons and Leicester’s wore purple ribbons.  As he lay on his deathbed, Sussex issued a grave warning about Leicester, whom he derisively called "the gypsy": "I am now passing into another world and must leave you to your fortunes and to the queen's graces," Sussex said. "But beware of the gypsy, for he will be too hard for you all. You know not the beast so well as I do."  Sussex had been an outspoken isolationist, feeling that England had no business meddling in the Netherlands.  But now that he was no longer able to oppose Leicester, the scales began to tip further toward English military interventionism. The role of counterbalancing Leicester's influence now fell to Burghley — and to a lesser extent, to de Vere.

The Earl of Sussex — the loyal subject, brave warrior, cunning courtier, chivalrous nobleman and surrogate father to de Vere — presents the idealized paternal qualities that are projected onto the late KING HAMLET. "See what a grace was seated on this brow: Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove itself," the PRINCE observes.  Leicester had taken over many of de Vere’s lands upon Earl John’s death in 1562 — reminding a reader of CLAUDIUS’ usurpation of HAMLET’s inheritance upon KING HAMLET’s death. No one has ever adduced any evidence that Leicester poisoned Earl John, as CLAUDIUS did to HAMLET SENIOR.  But in 1584, Charles Arundell would publish a new set of libels (Leicester's Commonwealth), alleging that Leicester poisoned Sussex.

Scholars today treat Leicester’s Commonwealth as a problematic and often unreliable source. Arundell  claimed Leicester was a “rare artist in poison”  — as reckless hyperbole as Arundell’s more outrageous charges against de Vere. One nineteenth-century chronicler wrote, "[Leicester] was said to have poisoned Alice Drayton, Lady Lennox, Lord Sussex, Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, Lord Sheffield, whose widow he married and then poisoned, Lord Essex, whose widow he also married, and intended to poison, but who was said to have subsequently poisoned him — besides murders or schemes for murder of various other individuals, both French and English."   Yet even if one disqualifies these accusations as so much vicious hearsay, the fact remains that rumors circulated during the 1580s that the death of Sussex originated in a vial borne by the “gypsy’s” hands. Leicester, whose cruelty excited “extreme fear” amongst those at court who dared oppose him,  was certainly considered a suspect in Sussex’s demise. And for a lifelong opponent of Leicester, these suspicions may well have been good enough for the purpose of art. In making Leicester the contemptible poisoner CLAUDIUS of Hamlet,  de Vere had given himself two poignant levels of contemporary metaphor — one (with the 16th Earl of Oxford representing KING HAMLET) in which de Vere would raise the old issue of Leicester's usurpation of his inheritance, and the other (with the Earl of Sussex representing the poisoned KING HAMLET) which anticipated Leicester's power grab after Sussex's demise.

Leicester was practically unavoidable during de Vere’s first few days back in the Elizabethan court. Just one day after Sussex's passing — Monday, June 10, 1583 — Leicester led the court on a trip to Oxford University. The Polish prince and military general Albert Laski was in town and, as Chancellor of Oxford University, Leicester had arranged for four days of revels honoring the distinguished guest.

The leading courtiers, scholars and authors of the day would be feasting, debating and attending new dramas directed and produced by de Vere's fellow Blackfriars playwright George Peele. For more than two years, de Vere had been persona non grata at every royal banquet, entertainment, progress, and hunt. Plays performed before the queen had become as remote from him as they were when de Vere had lived in Venice. And yet, less than a fortnight after returning to court, fate had handed de Vere the prospect of a four-day-long party full of fine food, learned discussions, and courtly drama. No record exists of de Vere’s presence at Oxford during this celebration.  But circumstantial evidence suggests that the thirsty would turn down water and the frostbitten warmth sooner than the man who was Shake-speare would have let this opportunity pass.

The party centered around one distinctive figure. The warlike Prince Laski was a tall and loquacious man who had fought in dozens of battles throughout his military career, was fluent in numerous languages, and wore a long white beard nearly to his navel. Laski and his entourage stayed at Christ Church College and, after two nights of fireworks and other entertainments, he and the court took in a new Latin play titled Dido. As the chronicler Raphael Holinshed noted, Dido was a "very stately tragedy... with Aeneas's narration of the destruction of Troy."  The play, extant today in manuscript , was a bombastic spectacle, complete with a kennel of hounds and a simulated tempest with thunder, hail, fake snow, and rain — just the sort of theatrical hue and cry that a lifelong military man like Laski would have enjoyed. The general savored the play like it was a fine delicacy.

Watching this play by torchlight at the college hall, de Vere must have marveled to himself at the unexpected overlaps between the classical melodrama being staged before his eyes and the Danish tragedy he was then beginning to sketch out in his mind. For in Dido one also finds the hero, Aeneas, haunted by his father's ghost. "How often is the sad shade of my father borne before my eyes, when quiet relaxes my limbs and a sweet sleep has overwhelmed my tired body?" muses the play’s Aeneas. "How often does the sad shade of my father enter my bedchamber advising a hasty flight?"

Dido, an otherwise undistinguished university play that was never published or acted again, proved to be yet another creative spark. None of Dido's words are quoted in Hamlet; but the Danish tragedy suggests the author had seen this production.  For when the troupe of players arrive at Elsinore, HAMLET instructs one of his actors to perform "Aeneas's tale to Dido." (The real-life CLAUDIUS, Leicester, had originally commanded its performance at Oxford.) Before loosing the PLAYER KING on Aeneas’s speech, HAMLET explains that the Dido play he’s thinking of "was never acted, or if it was, not above once. "For the play, I remember, pleased not the million. 'Twas caviar to the general."  (This final line is a pun on the fact that general Laski did indeed enjoy the play like caviar and that the university drama was too refined for the general multitudes.)

Also on hand during this four-day festival was the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno. At the time, Bruno was staying with his mentor, patron, and host, the French ambassador Mauvissière — the diplomat with whom de Vere shared a chequered past. Bruno was a native of Nola, a township in the kingdom of Naples, and was one of the most free-thinking intellects of his generation. Bruno also enjoyed one of the largest egos of his day, no minor accomplishment considering the competition in the Elizabethan court. The Nolan, as he referred to himself in his writings, never passed up the opportunity to inform his readers just how important and magnanimous he was.

At Oxford, Bruno lectured the assembled crowds on "the immortality of the soul" and "the five-fold sphere."  According to one eye-witness, the stocky Bruno rolled up his sleeves "like some juggler" and laid out his argument in Latin infused with a thick Italian accent.  The university professor who then debated Bruno rebuked and embarrassed the guest. "Have them tell you with what uncouthness and discourtesy that pig acted, and about the extraordinary patience and humanity of the Nolan, who showed himself to be a Neapolitan indeed, born and raised under a more benign sky," Bruno wrote in a pamphlet that recounts the Oxford fiasco.

Oxford University and Giordano Bruno were celestial bodies in opposition. The University preached the ancient geocentric theories of Aristotle and Ptolemy. Every object in the heavens, it was said, orbited the earth, and the earth occupied the center of the universe.  All matter was composed of five elements: earth, water, air, fire and the heavenly fifth element “quintessence.” Each element seeks out its rightful place in a hierarchy of five concentric spheres. Oxford students were forbidden to defy these teachings under the penalty of a hefty five-shilling fine ($75 in today’s currency). The Nolan, on the other hand, would have nothing to do with the university's retrograde approach to scholarship. Instead, he touted the novel theory of Nicolas Copernicus, wherein the earth orbited the sun. Overturning the medieval order of a fixed universe with a tidy five-fold sphere, Bruno advocated three further heresies: That the stars, contrary to fixed church doctrine, are free-floating objects in a fluid celestial firmament; that the universe is infinite, leaving no room for a physical heaven or hell; and that elements in the universe, called "monads," contain a divine spark at the root of life itself.  Even the dust from which we are made contains this spark.

These notions prefigure a vast Newtonian cosmos, as well as an emerging field in present-day physics in which monads (renamed by the 20th century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead as "occasions of experience") are being reconsidered as a key concept in understanding the conscious mind.  Bruno, in other words, was the genius he considered himself. After departing England, seeking an intellectual climate hospitable to his bold ideas, Bruno settled at the University of Wittenberg, a major center for the study of Copernican theory, where he taught for two years. Wandering further across Europe, Bruno was captured by the Inquisition. He was thrown into prison for seven years and then burned at the stake for his heresies in 1600.

As Hamlet reveals, de Vere was moved by Bruno's remarkable show at Oxford : Each of Bruno's tenets finds expression in the play.  HAMLET, not coincidentally a student at Wittenberg, is Bruno's mouthpiece. To his fellow Wittenberg students ROSENKRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN, HAMLET recites the Nolan's theory of an infinite universe, although he admits he still finds the notion disturbing. ("I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams." ) In a poem he gives to OPHELIA, HAMLET wonders what the stars are made of and whether they are indeed fluid or fixed in place. ("Doubt thou the stars are fire/ Doubt that the sun doth move/ Doubt truth to be a liar/ But never doubt I love.") HAMLET waxes existential over losing a comforting and familiar framework of five elements. ("This goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors."  Emphasis added) HAMLET wonders about the essence underlying human life — the question that prompted Bruno to postulate the existence of monads — and whether this divine spark can indeed be found in inanimate matter. ("What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving, how express and admirable in action, how like an angel in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world; the paragon of animals; and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?" )

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In so many words, with Shakspere as author, one must imagine his digging deeply into an entire world of courtly culture and academic disputes for which there is no evidence he had the slightest access to or interest in. With Edward de Vere, the philosophical disputes in Hamlet become seamlessly integrated into the biographical details of his life and organically integrated into a larger drama about similar themes: Old ways of thinking against new, ancient orders versus an encroaching modern world, the bloody consequences of a royal cosmic order that has been overturned and a time that, in the Danish prince's words, is out of joint.