CASE FILE 7

Hello and welcome back to Tracing Shakespearean Mysteries. In the Case Files so far, we have discussed several plays set in Italy and one in Navarre. Today, we turn north to Denmark, to the setting of what is perhaps the most famous play in the Shakespearean canon, renowned for the psychological complexity of its protagonist, Hamlet. It is a tragedy shaped by the supernatural and filled with celestial imagery — heaven and stars, sun and moon, planets and eclipses. But what underlies all the astronomical language? What intellectual currents or shifting cosmic visions shape it? Well, that's the mystery we’re about to investigate.

Let’s start with a quick recap of the main events in the play. When Prince Hamlet returns to Denmark after his father’s death, he finds that his uncle, Claudius, has taken the throne and married his mother, Queen Gertrude. Soon after his arrival, the ghost of his father appears, revealing that he was murdered by his brother, now King Claudius, and demanding revenge. Troubled by doubt and uncertainty, Hamlet resolves to investigate the crime by feigning madness — though at times it is unclear whether his madness is pretence or not.

At the king’s request, Hamlet’s childhood friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are summoned to court and instructed to discover the cause of their friend’s strange behaviour. They bring with them a group of players, who Hamlet decides to use to confirm Claudius’s guilt, by asking them to perform The Mousetrap, a play that reenacts his father’s murder. Claudius’s agitated reaction convinces Hamlet of his guilt. He confronts his mother, and, hearing a noise behind a curtain, mistakenly kills the hidden figure, believing it to be Claudius. The victim, however, is Polonius, the king’s adviser and father of Hamlet’s love, Ophelia.

Seeing that ‘mad’ Hamlet is dangerous, Claudius orders Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to escort the prince to England with secret instructions for his execution. But Hamlet uncovers the plot, turns it against his friends and returns to Denmark.

In his absence, Polonius’s death has driven his daughter Ophelia to madness, and she subsequently drowns. Her brother Laertes, seeking revenge, conspires with Claudius to kill Hamlet in a fencing match, using a poisoned sword. During the duel, both Laertes and Hamlet are wounded by the poisoned blade, while Queen Gertrude accidentally drinks poisoned wine intended for her son. Before he dies, Hamlet kills Claudius by wounding him with the sword and forcing him to drink the poisoned wine. In the end, only Hamlet’s faithful friend Horatio lives to tell the story.

As mentioned previously, this play is pervaded by references to the cosmos. An earlier ‘astronomical’ play was Christopher Marlowe’s tragedy Doctor Faustus, which tells the story of a scholar who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for magical powers. The play dramatises the old conception of the cosmos - a morally ordered, finite universe in which overreaching ambition leads inevitably to damnation. Written in the early 1590s, Doctor Faustus reflects the geocentric cosmology of Ptolemy, with the Earth at the centre, surrounded by concentric celestial spheres, which was the standard cosmology taught at European universities in the late 16th century.

A brief overview of studies in astronomy during this period will help us to situate the play more precisely. Although Nicolaus Copernicus had published his heliocentric theory in 1543, proposing that the Earth revolved around the Sun, his ideas circulated mainly among specialist mathematicians and remained controversial. For most scholars, the traditional Aristotelian - Ptolemaic cosmos - orderly, hierarchical, and finite - remained the accepted framework through which both the physical universe and humanity's place within it were understood.

In 1576, in England, Thomas Digges promoted Copernicus’ theory and went further by suggesting that the universe was infinite and filled with stars. Around the same time, Thomas Harriot, a brilliant mathematician and astronomer employed by Sir Walter Raleigh, was contributing to cartography and astronomical navigation for overseas voyages. Later, in the first decade of the 17th century, Harriot used the newly- invented telescope to observe features of the Moon, predating Galileo's observations. Yet, because he never published his findings, he received little to no credit for this achievement.

However, it was the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe whose extraordinarily precise observations - particularly of the "new star" in 1572 and the comet of 1577 - that began to shift intellectual thinking, undermining the long-held belief that the heavens were unchanging. In 1576, with the support of King Frederick II of Denmark, Brahe established Uraniborg on the then-Danish island of Ven, just across the sea from Elsinore, creating one of the first purpose-built astronomical research centres in Europe. Working before the invention of the telescope, Brahe constructed enormous instruments capable of measuring star and planet positions with unprecedented accuracy. Uraniborg functioned like a modern research institute, with trained assistants meticulously recording all celestial observations, enabling Brahe to develop his geo-heliocentric model of the cosmos, according to which the Earth occupied the central position, with the Sun and Moon revolving around it, while the remaining planets orbited the Sun.

However, royal funding ceased after Frederick II’s death, and Brahe was forced to leave his Uraniborg in 1597. By 1599, he had moved to Prague to serve as Imperial Mathematician to Rudolf II. One of his assistants was Johannes Kepler, who, after Brahe’s death, used his mentor’s precise planetary observations and tables to develop the laws of planetary motion, laying the foundation for modern astronomy.

So why have I ended up in Prague with Kepler when I started out in Denmark with Hamlet? Well, it’s all part of our investigation, so let’s begin unravelling the evidence.

The earliest known account of Amleth appears in the medieval Danish chronicle Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus. A French adaptation was published in 1570, included in Histoires tragiques by François de Belleforest, whom we have already encountered in connection with the story of Romeo and Juliet. In the 1580s, a now-lost play, known as the Ur-Hamlet, appeared on the London stage, whose authorship is commonly attributed to Thomas Kyd. This lost work is generally regarded as the principal source behind the Shakespearean Hamlet play, which was written around 1600.

However, while the story-line may have been inspired by Thomas Kyd, I would suggest that Hamlet’s distinctly “astronomical” tone came from the work of Tycho Brahe - not merely because he was Danish, and the story is set in Denmark - although that may have informed the author’s choice of the story - but primarily because the text appears to reference, among other heavenly phenomena, Brahe’s observation of a bright comet sweeping across the autumn sky over Europe in 1577. This was a rigorously documented scientific event that challenged the long-standing Aristotelian-Ptolemaic view of an immutable heaven, in which celestial bodies were fixed and unchanging. Brahe’s blazing, moving comet seems to have made its way into the opening scene of the play, where Horatio compares the vision of the ghost of Hamlet’s father to the supernatural events which preceded the fall of Julius Caesar:

As stars with trains of fire, and dews of blood,

Disasters in the sun; and the moist star

Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands

Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.                         (1.1.129-132)

Here the comet functions as a celestial omen, a harbinger of disaster and turmoil to come: from the traditional superstition of red-coloured dew, and strange events involving the sun, such as dark spots and eclipses, to the moon, which governs the tides of Neptune’s empire, and is darkened by an eclipse, as if it were diseased. The words seem to reflect a late 16th century changing awareness of celestial phenomena, which is referenced again in Hamlet's words to Horatio in the first act of the play:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. (1.5.187-188)

And again, when in a love letter to Ophelia, Hamlet writes:

Doubt thou the stars are fire;

Doubt that the sun doth move;

Doubt truth to be a liar;

But never doubt I love.       (2.2.124-127)

In contrast, the playwright places traditional cosmology in the mouth of the actor portraying the king in the play-within-a-play, The Mousetrap. He recounts, in grand cosmic terms, that he has been married to his queen for thirty years - explaining that the Sun has moved around the Earth and sea thirty times, and thirty dozen moons have completed twelve times thirty orbits.

Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round

Neptune's salt wash and Tellus' orbed ground,

And thirty dozen moons with borrowed sheen

About the world have times twelve thirties been,

Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands

Unite co-mutual in most sacred bands. (3.2.176-182)

But there is another aspect of Brahe’s work that deserves our particular attention. In 1598, he published a magnificent volume, Astronomiae Instauratae Mechanica, which could be translated as The Instruments of the Renewed Astronomy, which compiled his discoveries, his astronomical tables and 22 detailed illustrations of the enormous instruments - several with a radius of 2 metres or more - that he had constructed for his observation of the heavens. Fewer than a hundred hand-coloured copies of this book were produced and sent to rulers and men of science across Europe. Among the distinguished recipients we know about were Emperor Rudolf II, the Archduke Matthias, Prince Maurice of Orange, King Christian IV of Denmark, Ferdinando dei Medici in Florence and Marino Grimani the Doge of Venice. Now in the Bodleian Library, the Doge’s copy was presented to Oxford University in 1633 by Sir Henry Wotton, who was English ambassador to the Republic of Venice between 1604 and 1624.

Another copy sent to the Professor of Mathematics at the University of Bologna, Giovanni Magini, also survives to this day, so it is highly likely that one was also sent to the Professor of Mathematics at the University of Padua, Galileo Galilei. Indeed, the book contains a letter in Latin which recounts Galileo's first lesson at the university in 1592, describing it as 'splendidum'.

In addition, it is known that in 1600 Brahe wrote to Galileo, proposing an exchange of correspondence between them. However, Galileo did not respond, likely because he disagreed with Brahe's geo-heliocentric system - or perhaps because he was just rude!

Aside from this, you may be wondering why I have concentrated so much on the book and on who received a copy from the author. That is because there is something else which is very important to our investigation and directly connects the book to the play. The introductory poem was written by Brahe's relative Holger Rosencrantz, and on the following page his name appears in one of the family crests surrounding the portrait of Brahe himself, together with another crest, a single star, which bears the name Guildenstern. These are both names with which we are familiar, as they appear as Hamlet’s childhood friends in the play. In addition, below the portrait of the astronomer is Brahe's motto, Non haberi sed esse - not to seem but is. We find these words incorporated into the first act of the play as Hamlet’s reply to his mother when she accuses him of seeming to display excessive grief for his father's death.

Seems, madam, Nay, it is. I know not 'seems.'

'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother

[...] That can denote me truly...                                              (1.2.79-80)

So, only two years after the publication of Brahe’s book, we find not only a motto, but also the names Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Hamlet. Such alignment cannot easily be dismissed as mere coincidence. Consequently, a vital question emerges: how did the author gain access to this highly restricted text? Whose copy did he see? Any ideas? I have posted a link on the website so that you can see this wonderful book for yourself.

All these references to the work of Tycho Brahe appear to suggest that the playwright held him in high regard - indeed considered him an authority on the cosmos. If this were the case, maybe we should look more deeply into the true meaning of an early soliloquy by Hamlet. As the ghost of his father departs, whispering “Remember me,” Hamlet declares:

Ay, thou poor ghost while memory holds a seat

in this distracted globe. Remember thee?

Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,

All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live

Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmix'd with baser matter. Yes, by heaven!  (I.5.103-111)

On one level, this speech would seem to be a son’s vow to follow his father’s command - thy commandment - and avenge his murder, yet the density of the imagery woven into the lines would seem to suggest another layer of meaning, as it references tables, observation, a book and volume - and Hamlet vows to wipe from his mind all of his previous records and pressures past - terms which evoke the erasure of earlier writings or printed works - so as to follow a single, undeniable truth - thy commandment; in other words, a whole shift in the speaker’s philosophy. So what is this speech really about? What is thy commandment? Is this simply Hamlet making a promise to his father’s ghost or is it something more?

Let’s look at some dates. The play Hamlet is thought to have been written between 1599 and 1601, with its earliest known publication, the so-called “First Quarto” in 1603. Might the fact that Tycho Brahe died suddenly on 24th October 1601 have influenced this speech? Put another way, rather than being Hamlet’s promise of revenge to his father’s ghost, could it instead be the playwright paying homage to the ghost of the astronomer of Tycho Brahe, whose studies, his ‘commandment’ had a revolutionary impact on his contemporary world by transforming philosophical speculation - the traditional Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmos - into an exact empirical science?

In fact, as mentioned before, following Brahe's death, his more famous assistant, Johannes Kepler, used his mentor’s meticulous observations to revolutionise astronomy. By analysing Brahe's precise measurements, Kepler discovered that planetary orbits were elliptical rather than circular. This breakthrough allowed him to formulate the first two laws of planetary motion, which he published in his groundbreaking 1609 treatise, Astronomia Nova.  So what do you make of all this? Our evidence certainly seems to suggest that the playwright greatly admired Tycho Brahe, which in turn, would suggest a keen personal interest in scientific progress. This interest is certainly something we will need to investigate further in a future episode.

But before we leave Hamlet in Denmark, we must briefly return to Italy to examine the play-within-a-play, The Mousetrap. As we are told, it is a modified version of another story, The Murder of Gonzago, said to have been ‘done in Vienna’. I believe this is likely a printing error for Vinegia, (Vienna - Vinegia) which was a common alternative spelling of Venezia in sixteenth-century Venice.

In fact, in the mid 16th century, a story was circulating in Venice that bears a striking resemblance to the murder in the play. The method used to kill Hamlet's father—poison poured into the ear—echoes an account of the alleged murder of the Duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria della Rovere, in 1538. According to the story, a barber administered the poison in Venice, although the Duke actually died in the town of Pesaro, on Italy's Adriatic coast, some 175 kilometres southeast of Venice. The tale was one of several rumours fuelled by the widespread suspicion that the Duke's sudden death was anything but natural. In fact, the writer Pietro Aretino, living in Venice at the time, was outraged by the death of his patron the Duke, and accused two noblemen of complicity in the murder, though he later withdrew the allegation. Their names were Cesare Fregoso and Luigi Gonzaga, and it is the latter who seems to have found his way into the play-within-a-play, transformed into the poisoner, Lucianus. Hamlet refers to him by saying:

His name's Gonzago.The story is extant, and written in 

very choice Italian.     (3.2.87-89)

So we are left wondering: how did our playwright come to know a story that appears to have circulated little beyond Venice? Yet another Italian mystery for our investigation.

And before leaving Venice, just a brief word about Pietro Aretino, as he was an influential writer in his time. Born in 1492, he was originally from Arezzo in Tuscany, but spent most of his life in Rome and Venice, where he died in 1556. He was a witty, provocative, and deliberately irreverent writer who succeeded in recovering sixteen copies of a series of erotic engravings after they had been confiscated by the Roman authorities. These images had been drawn by his friend, and an artist now familiar to us, Giulio Romano. To accompany the images, Aretino composed a set of explicit erotic sonnets, which when published in Venice in 1524, quickly caused a major scandal. Often described as the first printed pornographic book, I Modi ensured Aretino’s Europe-wide reputation, and news of the work - along with his other writings - soon reached England.

In fact, the writer Gabriel Harvey in his 1592 pamphlet, entitled Four Letters, which was written during his on-going quarrel with Thomas Nashe, disparagingly referred to Nashe as “the Devil’s Orator,” and to his friend Christopher Marlowe as “Aretine”, invoking Aretino’s reputation for scurrilous and transgressive writing.

 So, in summary, in this episode we have investigated the importance of astronomy in Hamlet and are now left with two questions. Firstly, what is the exact nature of the connection between Hamlet and Tycho Brahe? Secondly, the astronomer’s scientific volume appears to inform the astronomical imagery of the Shakespearean play, while two of his relatives, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are actually characters in the play. However, as yet, we do not know how the playwright gained access to a book that was privately printed for a select group of people. A final question is how did our author know about the local story on which he based the play-within-a-play?

In the next Case File, we’ll be looking at the mystery surrounding Othello. Again we’ll be exploring the source story, locations, and also the intriguing pictorial origin of a particular speech, which will give us more food for thought in our investigation.