Twelfth Night - The Wisdom of Shakespeare

Introduction to the ‘Wisdom of Shakespeare’ Series

This series on the Wisdom of Shakespeare is designed to investigate and make known the extraordinary wisdom, knowledge and philosophy contained in the Shakespeare plays.

Besides the plays themselves, a clue to the greatness of Shakespeare in this respect is given by Ben Jonson in his tribute to the Author prefacing the Shakespeare 1st Folio of 1623, as also by the inscription on the contemporaneous Shakespeare Monument.

On the Shakespeare Monument, erected c. 1620-23 in Holy Trinity Church at Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, to honour the memory of Shakespeare, the great Bard is referred to (in Latin) as ‘A Pylus in judgment, a Socrates in genius, a Maro in art’.

Pylus was the appellation of Nestor, King of Pylus, one of the Argonauts who went in search of the Golden Fleece and who was the most perfect of Homer’s heroes in the Trojan War. As a statesman, ruler and judge, Pylus was renowned for his eloquence, address, wisdom, justice and prudence of mind.

Socrates was the most celebrated philosopher of Greece and a renowned orator. The Delphic Oracle proclaimed him as the wisest of mankind. He was the principal instigator of the great philosophies that have constituted the major traditions of Western civilisation, and was the advocate of clarity and the inductive procedure, for which he was particularly famed. His great aim was the happiness and good of his countrymen, and the reformation of their corrupted morals. By introducing moral philosophy, he induced people to consider themselves, their passions, their opinions, their duties, faculties and actions. He used drama to aid him in this, and the tragedies attributed to his pupil Euripides are said to have been at least partly composed by him, although he remained hidden as a playwright behind the mask of his pupil.

Maro was the surname of Virgil, the greatest of the Roman poets. He was known as the prince of poets and Homer’s successor. He was not only a highly learned scholar and refined writer, but also a high initiate of the Orphic Mysteries as practised at Naples, where he lived for the last part of his life. His Æneid was based upon the Mysteries and Homer’s epic tales, the Iliad and Odyssey.

For Shakespeare to be likened to these three illustrious men—not just one, but all three—is an enormous compliment and says a great deal about the Bard.

This viewpoint is supported by Ben Jonson, a renowned playwright and poet in his own right. In his tributary poem to Shakespeare prefacing the Shakespeare 1st Folio, Jonson refers to his ‘beloved’ friend as an Apollo and Mercury, and as the ‘Sweet Swan of Avon’. Furthermore, implying that Shakespeare was, like him, a noted classical scholar, he declares in his tribute that even if Shakespeare had small Latin and less Greek, he (Ben) would still honour him, calling forth the great Roman and Greek tragedians to hear and applaud his tragedies. As for comedies, Ben can think of no one of the ancient Greeks or Romans who even approaches Shakespeare: he is alone, supreme.

To be likened to the gods Apollo and Mercury, rather than just inspired by them, is a mighty tribute, particularly as coming from the talented and critical poet laureate, Ben Jonson. Apollo is the god of poetic inspiration and illumination, and leader of the choir of Muses. Mercury is the god of eloquence and learning.

The ‘sweet swan’ is a reference to the singing swan, which is sweetest when singing its own ‘swan-song’. This was the symbol of Orpheus, musician to the Argonauts and the originator of the Orphic Mysteries that subsequently became the wisdom teachings and Mysteries of Classical Greece and Rome. These Mysteries formed a foundation of Classical philosophy and of all Platonic and Neoplatonic thought. Orpheus was considered to be the representative of Bacchus, the god of Drama, whose drama was in particular the Mysteries that were performed by the bacchants, bacchantes and eumolpoi (‘good singers’), the initiates and hierophants of the Orphic Mysteries. Both comedy and tragedy, and theatre as such, derive from the Bacchanalian Mysteries. Moreover, the white swan, symbol of Orpheus and the Eumolpoi, is an emblem of Apollo.

Mercury (Roman Mercurius) is derived from the Ancient Egyptian Maa Kheru, meaning ‘the True Word’ and ‘he who is of true voice’. It was a title bestowed on the high initiates of the Egyptian Mysteries—i.e. those who had sung their ‘swan-song’ and undergone psychological death and rebirth,—a title which was still used in the Classical Mysteries. Another Greek name for Mercury was Hermes Trismegistus (i.e. Hermes the Thrice Greatest), but this title was applied specifically to the greatest of all the initiates in any epoch. From this name comes the term ‘Hermetic’ for the great wisdom teachings and developing philosophical thought that have been handed on from the time of the Ancient Egyptians to successive generations and cultures, and of which we are inheritors today via the Neoplatonism of the Renaissance and the great poetry of Shakespeare.

The works of Shakespeare declare him to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of the Neoplatonists. His plays are suffused with Renaissance Neoplatonism. To understand this is to understand Shakespeare.

Renaissance Neoplatonism

The founders of Renaissance Neoplatonism were Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, both members of the brilliant circle of scholars, writers and artists associated with the Medici court in Florence in the 15th century, under the patronage of the great Cosimo de’ Medici.

Marsilio Ficino (1433-99), a scholar, physician and priest, was commissioned by Cosimo to translate into Latin the Hermetic writings and the dialogues of Plato, together with the Neoplatonic writings of Porphyry, Proclus, Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite and Plotinus. The translation of the Corpus Hermeticum was ready in 1464 and published in 1471 under the title of Pimander, and the translations of Plato’s dialogues, completed c. 1468, were published as the Platonic Theology in 1474.

Ficino’s understanding, as that of others including St. Augustine, was that a divine theology or wisdom tradition, based on love, began simultaneously with Zoroaster among the Persians and with Hermes Trismegistus (i.e. Thoth) among the Egyptians. They believed that this wisdom tradition led in an unbroken chain to Plato via Orpheus and Pythagoras. It is this wisdom that is reputed to underlie the Hebrew, Orphic and Christian teachings, all of which developed from the blended Hermetic and Magian origin.

Demonstrating that this wisdom tradition was associated with Christianity, with links via Moses and the Zoroastrian Magi, Ficino was able to reconcile Platonic and Neo-Platonic philosophy with Christian theology. He regarded both philosophy and religion as being manifestations of a spiritual life, each needing the other in order to attain the summum bonum or greatest good.

According to the Neoplatonic philosophy that Ficino founded, love is the sustaining principle of the universe, and the attainment of the highest good is dependant not upon the Church but upon an impulse universal to man. The soul is not only immortal, but all souls by an inner urge naturally seek truth and goodness.

Ficino was immeasurably helped in the development of Neoplatonism by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-94). Pico joined Ficino’s circle in 1484 and introduced Cabala into Ficino’s Neoplatonism, being the founder or first great exponent of Christian Cabala. In this Pico was following in the footsteps of the poet-philosopher Ramon Lull, who in the 13th century, in Spain, brought together Jewish Cabala, Islamic mysticism and Christian revelation into a single method, which had an enormous influence on succeeding generations. As a result of Pico and Ficino’s partnership, Neoplatonism became a universal philosophy, which blended Hebrew Cabala with the Hermetic, Neoplatonic and Christian teachings, making a synthesis of them all. As a result, the spiritual, magical and scientific core of Renaissance Neoplatonism was born.

Having travelled from Italy into France, this Renaissance Neoplatonism took a strong hold in England in the 16th century, beginning in King Henry VIII’s time and reaching a zenith during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, particularly in the works of William Shakespeare.

The Bible

Shakespeare’s knowledge of the Bible is remarkably extensive and detailed. The teachings of the Bible pervade and underlie all his plays to such a degree that the plays seem, in fact, to be dramatised commentaries on and examples of the scriptural teachings, aided by Cabalistic philosophy and the Hermetic wisdom as well as by Shakespeare’s extraordinary observation, insight into and knowledge of human nature.

Not for nothing then, it would seem, was an Englishman urged to possess a copy of both the Bible and the Shakespeare plays, and to always carry them with him when travelling.

The Teacher

Not only is Shakespeare a great poet, dramatist, Neoplatonic philosopher and Christian cabalist, but he is also a supreme teacher who teaches through entertainment, following the path of the ancients:

The wisdom of the ancients devised a way of inducing men to study truth by means of pious frauds, the delicate Minerva secretly lurking beneath the mask of pleasure.1

Minerva is the Roman name for the Greek goddess of wisdom, Pallas Athena, the Tenth (and Chief) Muse, and the especial Muse...