How did William Shakespeare make use of Giordano Bruno's ideas in his plays? This explains how.

1. Giordano Bruno and
William
Shakespeare
“..an entirely new approach to the problem of
Bruno and Shakespeare will have to be made.
The problem goes very deep….” from
Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition,
page 391, by Dame Frances Yates

2. When I was in graduate school, 22
years ago
A professor patiently explained to me that there
is no coherence in Shakespeare. There is no way
to unify his works, I was told. Shakespeare has a
collection of concerns and issues he addressed,
but nothing that sweepingly could be a basic
framework.

3. Intuitively, I was just not so sure about
that.
I wondered why millions of people
were spending so much time on
Shakespeare if there really was no
coherence.
But I did not argue the point. After all,
I was only 25 years old. What did I
know?

4. Then a few years ago, I started researching
imagery related to fossil fuels.
After a little while, I noticed the first two lines of
Romeo and Juliet were about coal:
Sampson: Gregory, upon my word, we’ll not
carry coals.
Gregory: No, for then we should be colliers.

5. I wondered about it.
Then I discovered the secret play about Man and
the Sun.
“Juliet is the
sun”

6. It was only natural for me to wonder if
this theme exists in Shakespeare’s
other plays.
YES.
The answer is Yes.

7. For example,
Why is Hamlet’s cloak “inky”? Why does he have
“windy suspiration of forc’d breath” and “the
fruitful river in the eye”? (I.ii.76-80)
These are the signs of exposure to heavy coal
smoke. London was powered by coal.

8. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600)starts
off Lo Spaccio della bestia trionfante
with an interesting sentence:

9. “He is blind who does not see the sun, foolish who does
not recognize it, ungrateful who is not thankful unto it,
since so great the good, so great the benefit, through
which it glows, through which it excels, through which it
serves, the teacher of the senses, the father of
substances, the author of life.”
Lo Spaccio della bestia tronfante,
(The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast,
translated by Arthur D. Imerti, U. of
Nebraska Press, p. 69)

10. Giordano Bruno
-Agreed with the Copernican idea of a
heliocentric solar system
-Bruno went beyond Copernicus however.
Bruno recognized the sun’s energy made it
very special and UNIQUE for us on Planet
Earth.
-Bruno said the universe was infinite
-He also said the universe was all one
system

11. My idea is that Shakespeare used Bruno’s
philosophy, including Bruno’s art of
memory to sketch out allegories. Actually,
“Juliet is the sun” points to the cosmic
allegory in Romeo and Juliet.
Shakespeare was an Hermeticist, cloaking his
ideas in disguises. Drama was the perfect
form for him, of course.

12. My ideas are simple, radical, original,
and new and explain a lot about
Shakespeare.
Recently, what I have to say has been
getting a lot of attention online.
(Thank you, by the way)

13. Giordano Bruno’s Art of Memory
– “….the thoughts singled out for attention could be
into what Bruno called ‘a distilled and developed
order of conceivable species, arranged as statues,
or a microcosm, or some other kind of
architecture…by focusing the chaos of the
imagination’”.
-Giordano Bruno: Philosopher,
Heretic by Ingrid Rowland, p. 123

14. Or look at this quote by Bruno:
“When you conform yourself to the celestial
forms, „you will arrive from the confused
plurality of things at the underlying unity‟.
For when the parts of the universal species
are not considered separately but in relation
to their underlying order-----what is there we
may not memorize, understand, and do?”
Giordano and the Hermetic Tradition,
Dame Frances Yates, page 219

15. Shakespeare used just such an “architecture”, or “microcosm”
Romeo: But soft, what light through yonder
window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the
sun.
Shakespeare has given away the secret identity of Juliet here! Shortly
thereafter, in the same speech, Romeo uses words like “lamp” “daylight”,
“stars”, “heaven”, “airy region” and “bright” to further describe Juliet and
subtly imprint upon the minds of listeners her identity in the parallel play.
Romeo is Man embracing an agricultural era. In such an economy,
everything is from the sun in one way or another; fish, grain, baskets,
cotton, meat, leather, feathers, linen, wood, and more.

16. –My real name is Marianne Kimura and
I’m on Academia.com if you’re
interested in further details of my work.
–I’m a very obscure academic, an expat
off the beaten track, in many ways.
(And to be really original, that is what
you have to be……)
–And I never use any boring and difficult
theory! A 6-year old could understand
my ideas!
–So have a look!
eeeeeee

17. And….
Why don’t you also buy my novel
Juliet is the
Sun
…..all about passion, love, ghosts, Japan, ninjas,
Shakespeare and solar energy…..
(it’s delightful, it cracks the code, and it pays homage
to the sun!)
---I used the pen name Gemma Nishiyama

18. ….since Marianne Kimura only writes academic articles.
(Gemma Nishiyama, my alter ego, is a bit more of a wild
child…..)
My novel is on Amazon.com and it’s only available as an
ebook right now.
“The End”
Thank You for reading this !