Shakespeare and the Goddess

1. The #metoo moment in Shakespearean scholarship: Giordano Bruno’s Gli
Eroici Furori and the Divine Feminine in Love’s Labor’s Lost
In this new era of women’s empowerment, with social, political and ecological movements now rising around the
world to strongly question the traditional dominating masculine power narrative, it’s very fitting that Shakespeare’s
cloaked allegiance as a proponent of goddess worship can now be revealed.
The logical place therefore,to start in an inquiry into goddess worship in Shakespeare is Love’s Labor’s Lost, in
which men seek to attain wisdom and knowledge by excluding women, only to have this project exposed as
fundamentally flawed exactly because of thisexclusion.
Love’s Labor’s Lost and its conceit
Several of Shakespeare’s plays, including Love’s Labor’s Lost, were first published with the word “conceit” in the
title.1
(Aconceit is an extended metaphor with a complex logic; extended conceits in English are part of the poetic
idiom of Mannerism, a movement in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.)
The question is: what exactly is the conceit, the hidden structure which Love’s Labor’s Lost is cloaking yet
faithfully mirroring?
To answer that question, I’d like to address the history of scholarship surrounding this play, in particular, the close
similarity between Berowne’s name and the name of Giordano Bruno. FrancesYates wrote that “Along line of writers,
amongst them myself, have argued that the character of Berowne must be an echo of Bruno’s visit to England, but we
have none of us known what to look for in the play…”(1964) (GBHT, 391). Yates also called Berowne “Giordano
Bruno’s namesake” (GBHT, 391). In fact,Bruno= brown in Italian.
Giordano Bruno was born in 1548 and was burned alive at the stake for heresy by the Roman Inquisition in 1600.
1 Source: DEEP (Database of Early English Playbooks) http://deep.sas.upenn.edu/

2. His original ideas about heliocentrism, stars,the quintessence, and other scientific questions threatened the dogma and
the power of the Catholic Church.
The importance of Giordano Bruno’s work in Shakespeare has been very much underestimated. The massive and
central role that Bruno’s ideas have played, rather secretly,in Shakespeare’s work, needs to be better understood. Bruno
modified Nicholas Copernicus’ heliocentric but mechanical model to include a thermodynamics and wrote “The Earth, in
the infinite universe, is not at the center, except in so far as everything can be said to be at the center. In this chapter, it is
explained that the Earth is not central amongst the planets. That place is reserved for the Sun, for it is natural for the
planets to turn towards its heat and light and accept its law” (Bruno, De Immenso, III, iii, quoted in Michel, page 181)
According to my research2
,Shakespeare was aware of this idea and used it as the conceit in his tragedy Romeo
and Juliet (originally entitled An excellent conceited tragedie of Romeo and Juliet3
):
Once we know that Bruno’s work was of centralimportance to Shakespeare,then, to paraphrase Yates,we now
know what to look for. Bruno’s dialogue Gli eroici furori, like Love’s Labor’s Lost, has many images of blindness, eyes,
2
“Juliet is the Sun” : The Secret anti-Coal Play in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and the Cosmic Heliocentrism of Giordano Bruno
(33), pp.93 - 120 , 2012-03-31 , 筑波大学大学院地域研究研究科 (TsukubaUniversity Graduate Department of Area Studies Journal)
http://jairo.nii.ac.jp/0025/00028049/en
3
Database of Early English Playbooks (http://deep.sas.upenn.edu/search.php)
Act I, scene v
Man (Romeo in
the allegory)
starts out
worshipping
the sun (Juliet
in the allegory).
The religious
language of the
lovers
symbolizes this
stage. “If I
profane with
my unworthiest
hand, this holy
shrine, the
gentle sin is
this…”
Act II, scene ii
Man becomes
separated from
nature through
Christianity.This
separationis
symbolized by the
fact that Juliet is
above at her window.
Her identity in the
secret allegory is
revealed: “Juliet is
the sun”.
Act II, scene v
Friar Lawrence
marries the
couple. He is the
only character
allowed into the
magic circle since
he represents
Shakespeare in
the allegory
Act III, scene v
Man “leaves” the
sun completely
now as fossil fuels
give rise to an
early industrial
economy. Britain
in Shakespeare’s
era was
increasingly
dependent on
coal. “”I must be
gone and live, or
stay and die.” To
stop using coal
would have
entailed
hardship.
Act V, scene iii.
Tomb scene.
Man returns to
the sun economy
as finite fossil
fuels become less
economic to
produce. “Ah,
dear Julie, why
art thou yet so
fair?” The sun
shines just as
brightly as
before. However
the economic
connection has
been lost.

3. deer, and so forth. In addition, both works contain a story of a group of men searching for wisdom only to find it when
they have received help from a woman.
Love’s Labor’sLost contains much evidence―in the form of imagery― that Shakespeare was conversant with
this book. Moreover, Gli Eroici Furori directly (though in a secretive,shrouded way) rejects the notion of monotheism
and proposes a dual or pantheistic god+goddess system. I shall show that Gli Eroici Furori is the main source of
material for Love’s Labor’s Lost and additionally I shall show that Shakespeare’s subsequent comedies, especially the
festive comedies, which were written around 1600, the year that Bruno was executed,all have a some important features
in common with Gli Heroici Furori and support Bruno’s rather idiosyncratic concept of the Goddess.
Finally, once you understand what Gli Heroici Furori is about (although it’s a philosophical work, it’s also an
allegory) then you can see that it was Bruno’s own position paper on the necessity and virtues of having a goddess as
well as a god. Moreover, he even explains, in a coded way, what “the Goddess” means to him exactly. In addition I will
show that the real project of Love’s Labor’s Lost is to publicly though secretly affirm allegiance to “the Goddess”, a
female deity that has long been effaced in Western (Judeo-Christian) based culture.
There are two main allegorical narratives included in Gli Heroici Furori, which is written in the form of several
dialogues. The first narrative that appears,in the Second Dialogue of the second part, is a retelling of the well-known
Diana Actaeon Greek myth. However, Bruno retells it in light of his own concerns.
In Bruno’s version of this famous Greek myth, Actaeon is a ‘Heroic Lover’(furioso amante in the Italian) who
desires the Divine Truth of nature (allegorized as the goddess Diana). ‘Love’is therefore conceived of as a metaphor for
pursuing true knowledge and wisdom. Just as in the original Greek myth, in Bruno’s work, Actaeon is turned into a stag
by Diana and devoured by his hunting dogs; however, in Bruno’s retelling, this is not a tragedy, but instead it is seen as a
metaphor for reaching true understanding and therefore becoming one with nature, ‘being devoured by the truth and
merging with it’:
MARICONDA……I say very few are the Actaeons to whom destiny gives the power to contemplate Diana naked,
and the power to become so enamored of the beautiful harmony of the body of nature, so fallen beneath the gaze of
those two lights of the dual splendor of goodness and beauty, that they are transformed into deer, inasmuch as they
are no longer the hunters but the hunted. For the ultimate and last end of this chase is the capture of a fugitive and
wild prey, through which the hunter becomes the hunted, the pillager becomes the pillaged…… in that divine and
universal chase he comes to apprehend that it is himself who necessarily remains captured, absorbed, and united.
Therefore,from the vulgar, ordinary, civil, and ordinary man he was,he becomes as free as a deer,and an inhabitant
of the wilderness; he lives like a god under the protection of the woods in the unpretentious rooms of the cavernous

4. mountains, where he contemplates the sources of the great rivers, vigorous as a plant, intact and pure, free of
ordinary lusts, and converses most freely with the divinity, to which so many men have aspired…….4
The second narrative in Gli Heroici Furori is the story of the “nine blind philosophers”, stricken blind by the witch
Circe when she opens a jar filled with liquid and sprinkles it on them. She then gives the men a second vessel and
explains that although she is powerless to open it, water from it sprinkled on them would make the men able to see again:
“O curious spirits, take this other fatal vesselwhich my hand is powerless to open; and go far and wide on a
pilgrimage through the world….for destiny wishes that this vase remain closed until lofty wisdom and noble chastity
and beauty together apply their hands to it……But if it happens that those gracious hands with this water besprinkle
whoever approaches them for a cure,you will be able to experience divine virtue, for your cruel torment being
changed to remarkable joy, you will see the two most beautiful stars in the world.”5
The men journey far and wide and finally arrive on the shores of the River Thames, in England, where a river
nymph then opens the jar:
“One of the nymphs took the vase in her hand, and without essaying further, offered it to each one of the
others, but none could be found who dared to open it first. But all of them by common agreement, after merely
looking at it, referred and proposed it in deference and reverence to only one among them; who seized it finally,
not so much from a desire to demonstrate her glory, but though pity and the desire to bring succor to these hapless
men; and although uncertain, she clasped it in her hand, and almost spontaneously, opened it herself.”6
Now let’s look at the beginning of Love’s Labor’s Lost. InAct I,scene i, Berowne asks the King of Navarre:
Berowne:What is the end of study, let me know.
King: Why, that to which else we should not know.
Berowne:Things hid and barr’d (you mean) from common sense.
King: Ay, that is study’s godlike recompense. (I.i.55-9)
Like the nine blind philosophers who are in need of having a mysterious and magical jar opened for them, the
men in the court of Navarre have some “things hid and barr’d” from them, which they intend to find through study.
Also, like the nine blind philosophers, the French men do not have a woman in their group.
In fact,the first thing Berowne finds out is that he will have to give up the company of women in order to be loyal
to the King of Navarre (and join in the study program devised by this king.)
Berowne then criticizes the King’s idea to study books and pursue philosophy without the company of women.
Notice how the criticism of the king’s idea is accompanied by several images of blindness and eyes:“blind the eyesight
4 http://esotericarchives.com/bruno/furori.htm
5 http://esotericarchives.com/bruno/furori.htm#p2d1
6 http://esotericarchives.com/bruno/furori.htm#p2d1

5. of his look”, “your light grows dark by losing of your eyes”,etc.:
Berowne:Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain,
Which with pain purchased doth inherit pain:
As, painfully to pore upon a book
To seek the light of truth; while truth the while
Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look:
Light seeking light doth light of light beguile:
So, ere you find where light in darkness lies,
Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.
Study me how to please the eye indeed
By fixing it upon a fairer eye,
Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed
And give him light that it was blinded by.
Study is like the heaven's glorious sun
That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks:
Small have continual plodders ever won 86
Save base authority from others' books
These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights
That give a name to every fixed star
Have no more profit of their shining nights
Than those that walk and wot not what they are.
Too much to know is to know nought but fame;
And every godfather can give a name. (I.i.72-93) (my emphasis)
The men in the King of Navarre’s court have now been, in a hidden and shrouded way, identified with the nine blind
philosophers. Berowne stands apart, critical of this single-sex approach.
Bruno portrayed a certain type of grammarian pedant (such as Manfurio in his play Candelaio)“with masterly
linguistic verve” (Gatti, 168) and this skill, Gatti writes, served him well also “in his Italian philosophical dialogues
written later in London” (Gatti, 168), of which Heroici Furiori is one. Furthermore, “according to a critical tradition
of some standing, Shakespeare may have had Bruno in mind when creating some of his most ludicrous pedants”
(Gatti, 168). The main passage in Gli eroici furori dealing with pedants is in the Second Dialogue of Part II:
…Certain grammarians, having worn themselves out upon the rumps of infants and on the
anatomies of words and phrases, have wished to set their minds to the creation of a new logic and
metaphysics, judging and giving opinions about matters they have not hitherto studied and do not
understand now…. One warbles about whether the noun existed before the verb; the other about
whether the sea existed before its source… By the grace of these vile notions they think they ascend
to the stars and are like the gods, and they think they comprehend the beautiful and the good which
philosophy promises.7
7 http://esotericarchives.com/bruno/furori.htm

6. Berowne’s criticism of the “continual plodders…..These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights/ That give a name
to every fixed star/ Have no more profit of their shining nights/Than those that walk and wot not what they are”)
strongly echo the lines by Bruno above which I underlined.
However, the passage in Love Labor’s Lost which reverberates most intensely with images from Heroici Furori
occurs in Act IV after Berowne is also revealed to be secretly in love with Rosaline (as Dumaine, Longaville and the King
have also been just revealed to be secretly in love with their own respective court ladies). It is the climax of the play, since
all the secrets have just been revealed, and it echoes the ‘revelation’ in Heroici Furori that occurs when the nine blind
philosophers are given their sight back after the capable nymph on the Thames opens the jar. Berowne replies, (to the
king’s question “What, did these rent lines show some love of thine?”(IV.iii.216)):
Berowne: Did they, quoth you? Who sees the heavenly Rosaline,
That, like a rude and savage man of Inde,
At the first opening of the gorgeous east,
Bows not his vassal head and strooken blind
Kisses the base ground with obedient breast?
What peremptory eagle-sighted eye
Dares look upon the heaven of her brow,
That is not blinded by her majesty? (IV.iii.217-223)
The word “opening” together with the word “heavenly Rosaline” echoes the feat of the nymph to open the vesselin
Gli Heroici furori, and the word “vassal” sounds a bit like “vessel”. The word “blind” is countered by the words “see”,
“eagle-sighted” and “look upon”, conveying the secret action occurring under the obvious one: the nymph has opened the
vessel and the blind men can now see. Berowne is using one very obvious metaphor: for him, seeing Rosalind gives him a
profound and worshipful feeling that he can only compare to the way a sun-worshiper from India feels when he sees the
sun, the object of his reverence:this is the moment that the vessel is opened in the hidden structure of the play. Rosaline is
therefore the nymph in the conceit.
Moreover, since the Divine Feminine includes the concept that the material earth, nature and the sun are sacred and
holy, the idea of sun worship (“At the first opening of the gorgeous east/ bows not his vassalhead…”) is also actually
being put forward as a good thing (it is quite likely that Shakespeare practiced it personally), though it seems like only a
conventional poetic metaphor on the elegant Mannerist surface.
The King of Navarre then responds with these lines:
What zeal, what fury, hath inspir’d thee now?
My love (her mistress) is a gracious moon

7. She (an attending star) scarce seen a light. (IV.iii224-6)
Shakespeare has inserted the word “fury” (as in Heroic Furies) into the play to mark the climax and pay homage. In
addition the words “my love”, “mistress” and “gracious moon” recall the goddess Diana, such a central figure in Gli
eroici furori. So here,then, and very importantly and deliberately, we see placed side by side (rhetorically and secretly)
the key two supernatural female figures, in symbolic form, from Gli heroici furori: 1) Rosaline is the nymph on the River
Thames; 2) the Princess of France is then equated to the moon, or the goddess Diana.
These two supernatural women, the nymph and Diana, represent a complete view of the Goddess for Bruno. The
nymph on the Thames, more tied to Protestantism and Britain (and away from Roman Catholicism which probably
seemed to Bruno to be scientifically backward),is a view of the holistic and integral world of science: the universe is
infinite, the earth moves around the sun, the sun is a star, the earth relies on the heat and light of the sun. The other
supernatural figure, Diana, is simply the spellbinding beauty of nature. Bruno’s particular Goddess is based on the beauty
and sacredness of material earth (Diana) but she also has an open and methodical mind for education, study and learning
(the nymph on the Thames).
“Makes Flesh a Deity”
Underscoring the underlying support of pantheism, the word “goddess” appears severaltimes in Love’s Labor’s
Lost. Longaville calls Maria a “goddess”:
Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye,
'Gainst whom the world cannot hold argument,
Persuade my heart to this false perjury?
Vows for thee broke deserve not punishment.
Awoman I forswore; but I will prove,
Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee…(IV.iii.58-63)
Berowne,hidden from Longaville, responds in an aside with:
This is the very liver-vein, which makes flesh a deity, Agreen goose a goddess; pure, pure
idolatry. God amend us, God amend! We are much out a’the way (IV.iii.71-4) (my emphasis)
Underneath his sneering critique, Berowne is actually laying out Shakespeare’s sincere goddess worshipping faith:
“makes flesh a deity” (i.e. nature and the material earth would be sacred),which is “pure, pure idolatry” in Christian
dogma. “God amend us, God amend!” of course means (secretly) that Shakespeare wants personally to see people
“amend” themselves and turn to Goddess worship.
The Two Stars

8. The nine philosophers see “two stars”8
(also called “two suns”9
) after the nymph on the Thames opens the jar. Once
again, the ‘twinning’ concept is important. Just as Diana and the nymph represent different facets of the Goddess, the two
stars represent two gods: a goddess and a god, male and female deities. Indeed, nature includes male and female and
clearly Bruno and Shakespeare preferred a dualconcept of the divine, including the female (material, earthly) and the
male (immaterial, heavenly).
In Love’s Labor’s Lost, the concept of “two” and “light” appears linked (occurring within one sentence) in an
interesting, apparently rambling and tossed-off (though again really quite Mannerist and carefully worded) speech of
Berowne’s,where the word “eye” (a reference to the nine philosophers regaining their vision) also occurs within this
same sentence:
The king he is hunting the deer; I am coursing
myself: they have pitched a toil; I am toiling in
a pitch,—pitch that defiles: defile! a foul
word. Well, set thee down, sorrow! for so they say
the fool said, and so say I, and I the fool: well
proved, wit! By the Lord, this love is as mad as
Ajax: it kills sheep; it kills me, I a sheep:
well proved again o' my side! I will not love: if
I do, hang me; i' faith, I will not. O, but her
eye,—by this light but for her eye, I would not
love her; yes, for her two eyes. Well, I do nothing
in the world but lie, and lie in my throat. By
heaven, I do love: and it hath taught me to rhyme
and to be mallicholy; and here is part of my rhyme,
and here my mallicholy….(IV.iii.1-14) (my emphasis)
“Love” can here be understood as a reference to same love of the Divine truth (the pursuit of a truthful philosophy) that
motivates the Heroic Lover to pursue Diana in the forest. “Lie and lie in my throat”, “(love) hath taught me to rhyme and to
be mallicholy” are not just Berowne’s conventional lovers’ sentiments, these are also lines that explain in a disguised way
that the pursuit of the Goddess motivates and inspires Shakespeare to write fiction (i.e. “I do nothing in the word but lie”,
and “it hath taught me to rhyme). The pursuit of philosophical truth was,in in Shakespeare’s case a religious act which
included using his art to revere the Goddess (as Giordano Bruno conceived of her in Gli eroici furori.) It is not surprising
therefore that the idea which Berowne introduced in Act IV,to compare Rosaline to a sun and worship her, is repeated by
him in Act V:
8 p. 118 Gli Heroici Furori.
9 p. 120 Gli Heroici Furori

9. We number nothing that we spend for you:
Our duty is so rich, so infinite,
That we may do it still without accompt.
Vouchsafe to show the sunshine of your face,
That we,like savages,may worship it. (V.ii.198-202) (my emphasis)
It is likely that Shakespeare worshiped the sun and nature and that writing was one of the ways in which he
accomplished this act of reverence.
Actaeon and the Deer
In Act III, the Princess of France talks about hunting a deer:
See see,my beauty will be saved by merit!
O heresy in fair, fit for these days!
Agiving hand, though foul, shall have fair praise.
But come, the bow: now mercy goes to kill,
And shooting well is then accounted ill…….
::::::::
Thus will I save my credit in the shoot
As I for praise alone now seek to spill
The poor deer’s blood, that my heart means no ill. (III.i.21-35)
Her line “O heresy in fair, fit for these days!” is clearly a comment on the then-ongoing imprisonment of Bruno for
heresy. (Bruno was imprisoned from 1591 until his execution in 1600). “The poor deer’s blood” alludes to Bruno, whom
Shakespeare perhaps saw as a real-life Actaeon, a philosopher who had enthusiastically, heroically, furiously, pursued the
rich truths of the universe and for this pursuit, had been arrested (in 1591) and tortured and who was to be sentenced to
death two years after this play was written. In effect,Bruno was consumed and devoured by the universe whose truths he
had discovered.
Holofernes, a pedant school teacher, makes a ridiculous comment on the hunted deer which distills and symbolizes the
pedant’s attitude towards the true philosopher (the deer):
Holofernes: The deer was,as you know, sanguis, in blood; ripe as the pomewater, who now
hangeth like a jewel in the ear of caelo, the sky,the welkin, the heaven; and anon falleth like
a crab on the face of terra,
the soil, the land, the earth. (IV.ii.2-6)
It is clear that Holofernes (“hollow furnace”) has missed the sad point of its death (as Bruno’s ideas were ignored or
suppressed) and Holofernes just adds layers of pointless vocabulary.
In Act V. scene ii, Holofernes plays Judas Machabeus in a courtly presentation of the “Nine Worthies”. He makes sure
to point out that he is not Judas “Iscariot, sir” (V.ii.596) but he is nevertheless heckled mercilessly by the court members

10. (these are the men who represent in the hidden conceit the enlightened nine philosophers whose eyes have been opened to
the truth) and finally he is sent offstage (of course, by Berowne): “For the ass to the Jude; give it him. Jud-as, away!”
(V.ii.628). Love’s Labor’sLost, the ‘heroic love child’ of Gli heroici furori, fittingly banishes pedants.
Speaking of the Nine Worthies, there is an amusing sequence of lines in Act 5 scene 2, wherein the number “nine” (a
secret reference to the nine blind philosophers in Gli eroici furori) is repeated. Performed,the word would have been hard
to miss:
Costard: O Lord, sir, they would know
Whether the three Worthies shall come in or no.
Berowne:What, are there but three?
Costard: No sir, but it is vara fine,
For every one pursents three.
Berowne:And three times thrice is nine.
Costard: Not so, sir, under correction, sir, I hope it is not so.
You cannot beg us, sir, I can assure you, sir, we know what we know.
I hope, sir, three times thrice, sir―
Berowne: Is not nine.
Costard: Under correction, sir, we know whereuntil it doth amount
Berowne: By Jove, I always took three threes for nine. (V.ii.485-495) (my emphasis)
Because of the immense importance of disguise and plays-within-plays in Shakespeare,it is also worth examining the
other courtly entertainment performed in costumes in Love’s Labor’s Lost, the masquerade with the French king and the
three men dressed as Russians. Boyet reports to the French Princess and her court what he overheard as the four men
made their plans to dress as Russians and approach the ladies in this disguise:
Boyet: Under the cool shade of a sycamore
I thought to close mine eyes some half an hour;
When, lo! to interrupt my purposed rest,
Toward that shade I might behold addrest
The king and his companions: warily
I stole into a neighbour thicket by,
And overheard what you shall overhear,
That, by and by, disguised they will be here.
Their herald is a pretty knavish page,
That well by heart hath conn'd his embassage:
Action and accent did they teach him there;
'Thus must thou speak,' and 'thus thy body bear:'
And ever and anon they made a doubt
Presence majesticalwould put him out,
'For,' quoth the king, 'an angel shalt thou see;

11. Yet fear not thou, but speak audaciously.' (V.ii.89-104)
Here we have a cunning tableau (in a conceited, hidden form) which presents the artist (someone with open eyes,
someone who understands Bruno’s Divine Truth of nature) but who must go in disguised form (i.e. through the medium of
fiction, drama, masques, poetry, etc.) to confer or mingle with the “Presence majestical”,also she is called “an angel”, and
this is actually the Goddess or Divine Feminine, who is generally represented in this play by the French Princess and her
court.
The court masquerade in Love’s Labor’s Lost is a cloaked social comment by Shakespeare that the Goddess or Divine
Feminine has continued to be available to us, but only in the realm of fiction and drama. In that sense,the ending of the
play, where the men cannot be united with the women until some later date after the play ends, is a stark reminder that this
play changes nothing (since the European world was still monotheistic). Berowne is told by Rosaline that before he can
marry her he must “visit the speechless sick”, “converse with groaning wretches” and use his “wit to enforce the pained
impotent to smile” (V.ii.851-3). He agrees,saying, “I’ll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital” (V.ii.872), expressing in
allegorical form how Shakespeare conceived of his own artistic job: to amuse those who are suffering because they are
still without the Divine Feminine.10
Implications for the Goddess in Shakespeare’s Other Comedies
In his other comedies, Shakespeare continued to signal strong support for Bruno’s dualistic concept of the Goddess
through particular patterns: pairs of female characters with some ties to each other: Katherine and Bianca (sisters),
Adriana and Luciana (sisters), Hermia and Helena (similar names),Olivia and Viola (similar names); Portia and Nerissa
(employer and employee); Rosalind and Celia (cousins); Hero and Beatrice (cousins); Isabella and Mariana (both
involved in Vincentio’s plot). Significantly, one or both of the female characters often disguises herself, a reference to the
fact that these main female characters are cloaked goddess figures.
In conjunction with these main female characters (disguised goddesses), are further references to Diana, secret
tributes to Gli eroici furori:“Diana’s lip is not more smooth and rubious” than Viola’s; Rosalind “will weep for nothing,
like Diana in the fountain”; Orlando addresses Diana when he says: “hang there, my verse, in witness of my love/ And
thou, thrice-crowned Queen of Night11
, survey/ With thy chaste eye,from thy pale sphere above…”; Claudius tells Hero,
10
On April 18, 2014 at the Plenary speech of the Societe Francais Shakespeare conference Shakespeare 450 in Paris,
Yves de Bonne Foys said that Shakespeare’s works are concerned with “le probleme occidentale” (the Western
problem, my translation.) He gave no further particulars (I was in the audience) but I speculate that he was referring to
monotheism.
11
When in the skies, the moon-goddess is named Cynthia, Phoebe or Luna; when on the Earth, she is Diana; in the
underworld, she is Hecate.

12. “You seem to me as Dian in her orb”; Portia complains that she “will die as chaste as Diana”; Hermia is told that she must
either “wed Demetrius or on Diana’s altar to protest for aye austerity and single life”. Petruchio says to Kate:“Did ever
Dian so become a grove/ As Kate this chamber with her princely gait?/ O, be thou Dian, and let her be Kate;/And then let
Kate be chaste,and Dian sportful!” Shakespeare set A Comedy of Errors in Ephesus, the site of the famous Temple of
Artemis, whereas the source material, Plautus’ The Menaechmi, was set in Epidamnus.
In particular, the three festive comedies written around 1600 (the year when Bruno was executed),(As You Like It,
Twelfth Night, and Much Ado about Nothing) have some elements which point to Shakespeare’s poignant and special
efforts made around this time to express strong and heartfelt support for Bruno. In Much Ado about Nothing, a character
named Hero is falsely accused,“dies” and then is reborn as Shakespeare must have hoped that Bruno’s ideas would be
validated one day. In Twelfth Night, Malvolio is tormented by a harsh and cruel parody of a religious inquisition. (Bruno
faced a realinquisition of course.) In As You Like It, Jaques,a melancholy and philosophical character,a gentleman from
the Continent, watches a sobbing and friendless stag (an allusion to Actaeon) who has been gravely injured in a hunt. At
the end of this play, though Duke Senior asks him to stay, Jaques goes off to an “abandon’d cave” (V.iv.195), echoing the
fate of Bruno’s Heroic Lover: “he lives like a god under the protection of the woods in the unpretentious rooms of the
cavernous mountains, where he contemplates the sources of the great rivers, vigorous as a plant, intact and pure, free of
ordinary lusts, and converses most freely with the divinity, to which so many men have aspired…….12
This phrase “converses with the divinity” (which echoes Boyet’s line “an angel thou shalt see/yet fear not thou, but
speak audaciously”) exactly expresses how Shakespeare saw his own work: a spiritual practice where he was in touch
with the Goddess. Shakespeare’s plays put audiences spiritually directly in touch with this female divinity and this may be
the main reason for Shakespeare’s tremendous and lasting appeal.
References
Bruno, Giordano. The Heroic Enthusiasts.London:BernardQuaritch. 1889 (Translatedby L.Williams). ReissuedbyNabuPublic
Domain Reprints.
Evans,G. Blakemore. TheRiversideShakespeare.1974.Boston:Houghton Mifflin. (Allline numbersin Shakespeare’splaysrefertothis
edition.)
Gatti, Hilary. Essays on Giordano Bruno. Princeton,N.J:PrincetonUniversity Press. 2011.
Michel, Paul. The Cosmology of Giordano Bruno. Translated by Dr. R.E.W. Maddisson. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press. 1962. (La Cosmologie du Giordano Bruno). First English translation in 1973.
Yates,Frances. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. Oxon,U.K.:Routledge. Reprinted 2010.
12 http://esotericarchives.com/bruno/furori.htm