Shakespeare and religio mentis

Jane Everingham Nelson, B.A. (Syd), M.Ed. (Flinders), M.A., Ph.D. (2019) (University of Adelaide). Her master’s thesis, What Doctrine Call You This? An Inquiry into Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus and Hermetic Thought 1583-1593, published online in 2012, paved the way for her research into religious Hermetism and the dangerous politico-religious climate in which Shakespeare wrote.

• AcknowledgementsList of FiguresA Note on the TextsA Note on Hermetism and HermeticismPrologueIntroductionLove's Labour's Lost - King Lear - Othello - The Tempest1 Nostalgia for Catholic Tradition in Shakespeare's Audience2 Shakespeare's Religious Sympathies3 Hermes Trismegistus Enters the Platonic Academy in Quattrocento Florence4 Religious Hermetism in the Twentieth Century5 Hermes finds a New Home in the Academy in the Twenty-first Century6 Towards a Definition of Western Esotericism7 More about Religious Hermetism8 Before the Recovery of Pymander - Hermes Trismegistus in Medieval Times9 The Reception and Transmission of the Hermetic Texts in Fifteenth Century Italy, in Sixteenth Century France and in England - Hermes Trismegistus in the RenaissancePART 1Introduction to Part 11 How Hermes Trismegistus became Hermes Christianus1 From Jesus of Nazareth to Nicholas of Cusa1.1 The First Christians1.2 About the Hermetic Theosophy1.3 Hermes and the Church Fathers1.4 Hermes and Plato (429-347 BCE) on God, the Soul and the Mind1.5 Hermes and Philo of Alexandria (20 BCE-50 CE)1.6 The Chaldean Oracles1.7 Hermes and Gn1.8 Hermes and a Neoplatonist: Plotinus (c.205-270)1.9 Iamblichus (c.245-c.325)1.10 The Early Christian Church1.11 Pseudo-dionysius the Areopagite (c.500)1.12 The Division of East and West1.13 Hermes, Plato and Christianity in the Middle Ages1.14 Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464)2 Christian Hermetism in the Renaissance: The Corpus Hermeticum and Some Early Translators2.1 About the Corpus Hermeticum2.2 Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499)2.3 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494)2.4 Francesco Giorgio (1466-1540)2.5 Lodovico Lazzarelli (1447-1500): The Corpus Hermeticum and his Commentary - Crater Hermetis2 The Transmission and Reception of Christian Hermetism in France and England in the Long Sixteenth Century: 'L'âge d'or de L'hermétisme Religieux' (Jean Dagens)1 Introduction2 John Colet (c.1466-1519)3 Thomas More (1478-1535)4 Erasmus (1466/9-1536)5 Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535)6 Hermes in France: Translation, Transmission and Reception by Court and Episcopate7 Hermes in Late Tudor England: The Transmission and Reception of the Hermetic Texts8 The Family of Love in England9 Familism and Hermetism Compared10 Philippe du Plessis Mornay (1549-1623)11 Giordano Bruno (1548-1600)12 John Dee (1527-1608)PART 23 Love's Labour's Lost: The Path to Self-knowledge Deferred1 Dating the Play2 France 1572-1579-1585 - An Experiment in Religious Toleration: From the Marriage to the Reunion to the Final Separation3 Hermetic thought and Hermes Himself in the Play4 Hermes Trismegistus in the Discourse of the Day5 England and France 1589-1598 - The Political Landscape: From the Accession of Henri IV to the Edict of Nantes6 Characters Drawn from Literature and from Life7 Love's Labour's Lost and Old Comedy8 An Unsatisfactory Conclusion4 King Lear: The Path to Self-knowledge and Spiritual Regeneration1 The Critical Debate and Sources of King Lear2 The Transformation of Lear3 Lear's Essential Spirituality Contrasted with Gloucester's Materiality4 Three Kinds of Madness: Tom o'Bedlam, Lear, the Fool5 The Characterisation of Goneril and Regan in Hermetic Terms6 How Many Texts7 From Quarto to Folio: toward a Hermetic Exegesis of King Lear5 Othello: The Path to Self-knowledge Reversed1 Othello: The Date and Source of the Play2 Othello and King Lear Compared and Contrasted3 Othello's Descent4 Free Will and Choice, Destiny and the Origin of Evil5 Iago: The Mind Reader6 The Tempest: The Path to Immortality1 The Play in Performance and Print2 A Literal Reading3 A Metaphorical Reading: The Storm as Allegory, the Structure of the Play as Alchemical4 A Metaphysical Reading: The Immortal Soul5 Prospero as Hierophant6 Prospero as Christian and Hermetist: Shakespeare's Apotheosis7 Shakespeare and the Path to Salvation1 Shakespeare's Religious Sympathies - Christian or Pagan2 Hermes in the Plays - Audi, Vide, Tace!3 A Religion of the Mind4 A Way Forward5 Shakespeare and the Reading Groups6 A Religion of the World7 An Age with SecretsEpilogue: Hidden in Plain Sight. The Hermeneutics of SuspicionPost ScriptAppendix 1: From Hermes to Hermes TrismegistusAppendix 2: More about the Hermetic TheosophyAppendix 3: From the Mémoires of Marguerite de ValoisAppendix 4: The Family of Love, or Domus CharitatisReferencesIndex