Shakespeare's Philosophy

First annotation on Feb 15th, 2025.

2 quotes

In Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, published in 1817, William Hazlitt remarks (discussing Iago in Othello) that Shakespeare "was as good a philosopher as he was a poet." In his discussion of Coriolanus, he observes that Shakespeare writes with "the spirit of a poet and the acuteness of a philosopher."
The achievements of Descartes, Leibniz, Galileo, Newton, Locke, Boyle, and other heroes of the Renaissance were still in the future. The laws of mechanics were unknown; disease was a mystery; genetics was unheard of. Intelligent people believed in witchcraft, ghosts, fairies, astrology, and all the rest. Eclipses were greeted with alarmed superstition. Scientific method was struggling to gain a foothold (Francis Bacon was laying the groundwork).