What Shakespeare thought if the American Indian

[Enzo Michelangeli]

Tidbit: allegedly, Prospero was modelled at least in part on Giordano Bruno,
the Renaissance philosopher and writer from Nola who was eventually burnt in
1600 for heresy. It is unclear whether Shakespeare and Bruno ever met, but
surely Bruno was a good friend of other figures at court, such as Sir Philip
Sydney and John Dee (Elizabeth' astrologer). Another character bearing
strong resemblance to Bruno, both in name and statements, is Biron in
"Love's Labours lost": his speech about love is closely modelled on "Lo
Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante".

Bruno's interests were more about that peculiar mix of magics and natural
science, common in the Renaissance, than about politics, but his liberalism,
although confusingly, made him feel closer to the England of Elizabeth and
France of Henry of Navarre than to the counter-reformist Spain of Philip the
Second. That was, of course, the major damning factor that precipitated his
trial and execution. Interestingly, the same issue resurfaced a few years
later and almost cost Galileo his life: his "Dialogo dei due massimi
sistemi" (published in 1632) has a structure very close to Bruno's "La cena
delle ceneri"; and by additional misfortune the cover of its first edition
was decorated with the logo representing a dolphin, which was understood by
the Inquisition as a covert allusion to "le Dauphin de France".

See also Frances Yates, "Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition",
University of Chicago Press; ISBN: 0226950077

Enzo

-----Original Message-----
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3 at panix.com>
To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
Date: Monday, December 07, 1998 1:14 AM
Subject: re: What Shakespeare thought if the American Indian


>Frances Bolton wrote:
>
>>Actually, the evidence that Shakespeare did not set The Tempest in Bermuda
>>is overwhelming. I did a bit of research--he read the Bermmuda accounts
>>but the play is more based on continental north America.
>
>Frances, thanks for the fascinating followup that I will crosspost.  I
>guess I wasn't clear enough. I don't think the island is supposed to be
>Bermuda, only that accounts of a shipwreck on Bermuda were the inspiration
>for the play. It is probably true that Shakespeare pulled together pits and
>pieces from different travelogues about the New World and produced a
>composite roughly based on them.  As your citation put it nicely, all these
>sources "set Shakespeare's fancy working."
>
>Louis Proyect
>(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
>