Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-18T02:17:38.509Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Shows in the Showstone: A Theater of Alchemy and Apocalypse in the Angel Conversations of John Dee (1527-1608/9)*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Deborah E. Harkness
Deborah E. Harkness*
Affiliation:
Colgate University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

On 16 November 1582 John Dee and his assistant, Edward Kelly, gathered in the study of Dee's home in Mortlake, a small town located southwest of London on the river Thames. It was five o'clock on a Friday afternoon, and the latest in a series of dramatic events was unfolding. This event, like the events that preceded it and those that followed, involved an extraordinary cast of characters and contained a significant philosophical message. In Mortlake, England's most important natural philosopher was preparing to engage in what was becoming a habitual exercise: conversing with angels, whom Dee referred to as his “scholemasters,” about matters relevant to his study of the natural and supernatural worlds.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , Winter 1996 , pp. 707 - 737
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Versions of this paper were presented to the History and Philosophy of Science Program Group of the University of California, Davis, and at the Shakespeare Association of America Annual Meeting in 1993. I am indebted to all those who commented on the paper, especially Nicolas Clulee, Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, Paula Findlen, William Sherman, Barbara Traister, and Thomas Willard.

References

Agrippa, Henry Cornelius. Three Books of Occult Philosophy. London, 1651.Google Scholar
Allen, M.J.B. “The Absent Angel in Ficino's Philosophy.” Journal of the History of Ideas 36 (1975): 219-40.Google Scholar
Allen, M.J.B. The Platonism of Marsilio Ficino. Berkeley, 1984.Google Scholar
Ashworth, William B. Jr. “Natural History and the Emblematic World View.” In Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. Lindberg, David and Westman, Robert, 303-32. Cambridge, 1990.Google Scholar
Aston, Margaret E. “The Fiery Trigon Conjunction: An Elizabethan Astrological Prediction.” Isis 61 (1970): 159-87.10.1086/350618Google Scholar
Ball, Bryan W. A Great Expectation: Eschatalogical Thought in English Protestantism to 1660. Leiden, 1975.Google Scholar
Barnes, Robin Bruce. Prophecy and Gnosis: Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Reformation. Stanford, 1988.Google Scholar
Barone, Robert J. “The Reputation of John Dee: A Critical Appraisal.” Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1989.Google Scholar
Bauckham, Richard, ed. Tudor Apocalypse: Sixteenth-Century Apocalypticism, Millennarianism, and the English Revolution. Oxford, 1978.Google Scholar
Besterman, Theodore. Crystalgazing: A Study in the History, Distribution, Theory, and Practice of Skrying. London, 1924.Google Scholar
Camden, Carroll. “The Wonderful Yeere.” In Studies in Honor of De Witt T. Stames, ed. Harrison, Thomas P., 163-79. Austin, 1967.Google Scholar
Cardano, Girolamo. The Book of My Life (De vita propria liber). London, 1931.Google Scholar
Carlson, Marvin. Places of Performance: The Semiotics of Theatre Architecture. Ithaca, 1989.Google Scholar
Cassirer, Ernst. The Platonic Renaissance in England. Trans. Pettegrove, James P.. Austin, 1953.Google Scholar
Chambers, E.K. The Elizabethan Stage. 4 vols. Oxford, 1923.Google Scholar
Charbonneau-Lassay, Louis. The Bestiary of Christ. Trans. Dooling, D.M.. New York, 1991.Google Scholar
Clulee, Nicholas H. “At the Crossroads of Magic and Science: John Dee's Archemastrie.” In Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance, ed. Vickers, Brian, 57–71. Cambridge, 1984.Google Scholar
Clulee, Nicholas H. John Dee's Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion. New York, 1988.Google Scholar
Copenhaver, Brian P. “Iamblichus, Synesius, and the Chaldaean Oracles in Marsilio Ficino's De vita libri tres: hermetic magic or neoplatonic magic?” In Supplementurn Festivum: Studies in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. Hankins, James, Monfasani, John, and Purnell, Frederick Jr., 441-55. Binghamton, 1987.Google Scholar
de Bellis, Carla. “Astri, Gemme e Arti Medico-magiche nello ‘Speculum Lapidum’ di Camillo Leonardi.” In Il Mago, il cosmi, il Teatro degli Astri: Saggi sulla Letteratura Esoterica del Rinascimento, ed. Formichetti, Gianfranco, 67–114. Rome, 1985.Google Scholar
Dee, John. A True and Faithful Relation. Ed. Casaubon, Meric. London, 1659.Google Scholar
Dee, John. The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee and a Catalogue of His Library of Manuscripts. Ed. Halliwell, James O.. London, 1842.Google Scholar
Dee, John. The Compendious Rehearsal. In Autobiographical Tracts of Dr. John Dee. Ed. Crossley, James. Manchester, 1851.Google Scholar
Dee, John. “Propaedumata aphoristica.” In John Dee on Astronomy. Ed. and trans. Shumaker, Wayne, intro. Heilbron, J. L.. Berkeley, 1978.Google Scholar
Dee, John. John Dee's Actions with Spirits. Ed. and intro. Whitby, Christopher. 2 vols. New York, 1988.Google Scholar
Delatte, Armand. La Catoptromancie Grecque et ses Dérivés. Paris and Liege, 1932.Google Scholar
Dobbs, Betty Jo Teeter. Alchemical Death and Resurrection: The Significance of Alchemy in the Age of Newton. Washington, DC, 1990.Google Scholar
Evans, R.J.W. Rudolf II and His World: A Study in Intellectual History, 1576-1612. New York, 1973.Google Scholar
Feingold, Mordechai. The Mathematician's Apprenticeship: Science, Universities and Societies in England, 1560-1640. Cambridge, 1984.Google Scholar
Feingold, Mordechai. “The Occult Tradition in the English Universities of the Renaissance: A Reassessment.” In Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance, ed. Vickers, Brian, 73–94. Cambridge, 1984.Google Scholar
Findlen, Paula. “Empty Signs? Reading the Book of Nature in Renaissance Science.” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 21 (1990): 511-18.10.1016/0039-3681(90)90008-VGoogle Scholar
French, Peter J. John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus. London, 1972.Google Scholar
Harkness, Deborah E. “The Scientific Reformation: John Dee and the Restitution of Nature.” Ph.D. diss., University of California at Davis, 1994.Google Scholar
Heninger, S. K. The Cosmographical Glass: Renaissance Diagrams of the Universe. San Marino, 1977.Google Scholar
Heym, Gerard. “Some Alchemical Picture Books.” Ambix 1 (1937): 69–75.Google Scholar
Hunter, G.K. “Flatcaps and Bluecoats: Visual Signals on the Elizabethan Stage.” Essays and Studies n.s. 33 (1980): 16–47.Google Scholar
Jones, G. Lloyd. The Discovery of Hebrew in Tudor England: A Third Language. Manchester, 1983.Google Scholar
Klossowski de Rola, Stanislas. The Golden Game: Alchemical Engravings of the Seventeenth Century. London, 1988.Google Scholar
Kuntz, Marion Leathers and Kuntz, Paul Grimley, ed. Jacob's Ladder and the Tree of Life: Concepts of Hierarchy and the Great Chain of Being. New York, 1988.Google Scholar
Leader, Damian Riehl. The University to 1546. Vol. 1 of A History of Cambridge University. Cambridge, 1988.Google Scholar
Linden, Stanton J. “Alchemy and Eschatology in Seventeenth-Century Poetry.” Ambix 31 (1984): 102-24.10.1179/amb.1984.31.3.102Google Scholar
Linden, Stanton J. “Mystical Alchemy and Eschatology in Seventeenth Century Religious Poetry.” Pacific Coast Philology 19 (1984): 79–88.Google Scholar
Lovejoy, Arthur O. The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. New York, 1960.Google Scholar
Marshall, John. “‘The manner of these playes’: The Chester Pageant Carriage and the Places Where They Played.” In Staging the Chester Cycle, ed. Mills, David, 17–48. Leeds, 1985.Google Scholar
McEvoy, James. “The Metaphysics of Light in the Middle Ages.” Philosophical Studies (Dublin) 26 (1979): 124-43.Google Scholar
McEvoy, James. The Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste. Oxford, 1982.Google Scholar
Mills, David, ed. Staging the Chester Cycle. Leeds, 1985.Google Scholar
Orgel, Stephen. The Illusion of Power: Political Theater in the English Renaissance. Berkeley, 1975.Google Scholar
Patrides, C.A. and Wittreich, Joseph A. Jr., ed. The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature. Ithaca, 1984.Google Scholar
Purvis, J.S., ed. The York Cycle of Mystery Plays. London, 1957.Google Scholar
Reed, John. Prelude to Chemistry: An Outline of Alchemy. Cambridge, MA, 1966.Google Scholar
Roberts, Julian and Watson, Andrew G., ed. John Dee's Library Catalogue. London, 1990.Google Scholar
Sheppard, H.J. “The Redemption Theme and Hellenistic Alchemy.” Ambix 7 (1959): 42–46.10.1179/amb.1959.7.1.42Google Scholar
Sherman, William H. John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance. Amherst and Boston, 1995.Google Scholar
Shumaker, Wayne. The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance. Berkeley, 1972.Google Scholar
Singer, Thomas C. “Hieroglyphs, Real Characters, and the Idea of Natural Language in English Seventeenth-Century Thought.” Journal of the History of Ideas 50 (1989): 49–70.Google Scholar
Strong, Roy. The Cult of Elizabeth. New York, 1981.Google Scholar
Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic. New York, 1971.Google Scholar
Toulmin, Stephen and Goodfield, June. The Discovery of Time. New York, 1966.Google Scholar
Twycross, Meg. “The Chester Cycle Wardrobe.” In Staging the Chester Cycle, ed. Mills, David, 100-23. Leeds, 1985.Google Scholar
Walker, D. P. Ancient Theology. Ithaca, 1972.Google Scholar
Walker, D. P. Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella. Notre Dame, IN, 1975.Google Scholar
Wickham, Glynn. Early English Stages 1300-1600. 2 vols. New York, 1971.Google Scholar
Wilson, Jean. Entertainments for Elizabeth I. Woodbridge, NJ, 1980.Google Scholar
Wittkower, Rudolf. “Hieroglyphics in the Early Renaissance.” In Developments in the Early Renaissance, 58–97. Albany, 1968.Google Scholar
Woolf, Rosemary. The English Mystery Plays. Berkeley, 1972.Google Scholar
Yates, Frances A. “The Emblematic Conceit in Giordano Bruno's De Gli Eroici Furori and in the Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 6 (1943): 101-21.Google Scholar
Yates, Frances A. Theatre of the World. Chicago, 1969.Google Scholar
Yates, Frances A. Astraea. London, 1985.Google Scholar