This book explores the role of alchemy, Paracelsianism, and Hermetic philosophy in one of Shakespeare’s last plays, The Winter’s Tale. A perusal of the vast literary and iconographic repertory of Renaissance alchemy reveals that this late play is imbued with several topoi, myths, and emblematic symbols coming from coeval alchemical, Paracelsian, and Hermetic sources. It also discusses the alchemical significance of water and time in the play’s circular and regenerative pattern and the healing role of women. All the major symbols of alchemy are present in Shakespeare’s play: the intertwined serpents of the caduceus, the chemical wedding, the filius philosophorum, and the so-called rex chymicus. This book also provides an in-depth survey of late Renaissance alchemy, Paracelsian medicine, and Hermetic culture in the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages. Importantly, it contends that The Winter’s Tale, in symbolically retracing the healing pattern of the rota alchemica and in emphasising the Hermetic principles of unity and concord, glorifies King James’s conciliatory attitude.
Author(s): Martina Zamparo
Series: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 387
City: Cham
Acknowledgements
Conventions and Abbreviations
Contents
About the Author
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction
The Alchemical and Hermetic Context
Early Modern Alchemy
Literature Review
Part I: “Emperors, kings and princes desired this science”. Elizabethan and Jacobean England
Chapter 2: Alchemy in Elizabethan England
“Then Indeed Shall You Lay a Trismegistus”. Elizabethan Alchemists and Patrons
“The Vndeluding Alcumist”. Alchemy and The Cult of Queen Elizabeth I
Chapter 3: Alchemy and Paracelsianism at the Jacobean Court
“Invested of That Triplicity”. King James’s Daemonologie and Renaissance Hermeticism
“Hee Rules The Starres Above”. Paracelsian Alchemy and Natural Magic at The Jacobean Court
Part II: The Alchemical Performance of The Winter’s Tale. A Reading of the Play
Chapter 4: Leontes’s tale of winter
The Chemical King
“If You Can Bring Tincture”. Leontes as Rex Chymicus
“A Sad Tale’s Best for Winter”. The Phase of Nigredo
“It Is a Gallant Child”. The Alchemical Parable of The Senex-Puer
“My Recreation”. The Healing of The King
Chapter 5: Water and Time
“We Have Landed in Ill Time”. Alchemical Dissolution
“In Fair Bohemia”. The Phase of Albedo and the ‘Rebirth’ of Perdita
“The Red Blood Reigns in the Winter’s Pale”. Saturn-Time
“In so Preposterous Estate”. The Sheep-Shearing Festival
Chapter 6: Art and Nature
Alchemy in The Art-Nature Debate
“An Art Which Does Mend Nature”. Alchemical Art in The Winter’s Tale
“What You do Still Betters What is Done”. Perdita as the Philosophical Child
Chapter 7: The Statue Scene
“Had He Himself Eternity and Could Put Breath into His Work”. Giulio Romano’s Breathing Statues
“Be Stone No More”. Hermetic Statues
“The Statue is But Newly Fixed”. Alchemical Fixatio
“We Shall Not Marry Till Thou Bidd’st us”. Paulina as Lady Alchymia
Part III: Jacobean Politics and Religion in the Play
Chapter 8: The Winter’s Tale and James I
“From The Ends of Opposed Winds”. King James and The Prisca Sapientia
“An Art Lawful as Eating”. King James’s Vivifying Magic
Chapter 9: Conclusions
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Index
