Did Shakespeare play tarot?

Bat Chicken

Amleth - I may be wrong - but is your name not proof of the sources of Shakespeare to be far and wide?

I seem to remember a book of Nordic myths that was said to be the source/inspiration for the play, Hamlet.... I believe the character's name was indeed "Amleth"...?

I remember a book in the Robarts library at UofToronto from many years ago..... Shakespeare classes.... loved 'em. ;)
 

Sophie

Amleth said:
Just a quick thought, could it merely be because the Pope card was unacceptable in Elizabethan England? Or does that seem too simplistic?
Ah, not simplistic...but remember that in other places where the Pope and Papess became unacceptable cards, they were simply replaced by others - Jupiter and Juno, Baccus and Fracasse, etc. Card formats varied considerably across Europe for a long time - it's only relatively recently that ordinary playing cards and tarot playing cards became more or less standardised.
 

Cerulean

Chaucer, Shakespeare and Italian links, oh my!

What a blissful thread to happen upon...I keep reading my treasured book "A Golden Ring: English poets in Florence from 1373 to the present day" and it mentions Chaucer with Dante treasures (Divina Commedia) and perhaps Boccaccio poems sailing out of Florence in April of 1373.

..Perhaps poets in Italian city states and their closeness to Shakespeare..

Then the next mentions are brief: Sir Thomas Wyatt going to Venice in 1527, captured by Spaniards, escaped or released, to Rome; Philip Sidney in 1574, but no influence of Italianate feeling in poetry; Henry Wotton in 1592 and 1602; and the next is John Milton in 1638.

A Shakespeare timeline:

http://shakespeare.palomar.edu/timeline/timeline.htm

I'll continue to explore this rich thread....thinking of playing cards and tarocchi in a new light...

Cerulean


I found some works in full online that might be helpful for reference, including Shakespeare's:

http://www.bl.uk/treasures/treasuresinfull.html
 

HearthCricket

Considering Shakespeare spent a great deal of time with the commoners and in taverns, it would not, in the least, surprise me if a tarot deck came his way. On the other hand, I don't believe the word tarot or any form of it ever entered in any of his works. (And of course there is the constant debate of who wrote what and where...) That being said, much of what he refers to coincides with the pictures and titles of the older tarot decks and I think this just reinforces the history of tarot, in general. The tarot decks represented the world, at that time. Kings, Queens, Knights and Pages (interesting there are no Lady's in Waiting cards!), Hermits and Heirophants, various virtues of Temperance and Strength, Fools (who were the only ones allowed to jest with the monarch and not get in trouble!) Personifications of Towers and Devils, Astrology playing into things with the Sun, Moon, World, etc. I have a feeling, while I study the Ship of Fools (a deck I could see Shakespeare reading with) that phrases like "The Wheel of Fortune" was quite common. Now, we would probably call it Fate or Karma. It really makes you want to study classic literature alongside the historical decks.

It makes you wonder if tarot started, for the first time, NOW, what would the cards be titled as? Student for Fool? Dreamer? God, Goddess, President, Priest/ess, Galaxy, Karma, Transporter, Moderation, etc. Fun to think about!
 

Amleth

Bat Chicken said:
Amleth - ... is your name not proof of the sources of Shakespeare to be far and wide?

Yes, indeed it is. If Shakespeare had stuck to English history, I'd be here under a different name. There's an old Danish story of "Amleth" that was recorded by a fellow called Saxo Grammaticus, who wrote a Danish history, in nine volumes, in the 13th century. The story of Amleth is in books 3 and 4.

The story of Amleth provides a basic sketch for Hamlet, and even includes some of the juicy details that Shakespeare incorporated into his play. The Amleth story got to England in the form of a French translation (from Saxo's Latin) done by François de Belleforest. The French version was available in England from about 1570. It isn't known exactly how the Amleth story then became an English stage play, but it's easy to see why.

There's a known reason for Denmark to attract special English attention in the 1590s. James VI of Scotland (later James I of England) married Princess Anne of Denmark. Indeed, he married her three times! James first married Anne by proxy in 1589, then when he could make the trip, he married her in person in Oslo (Sweden, Norway, and Denmark were more-or-less united at that time) and then James married Anne again in person at Kronborg Castle, Denmark, in 1590, as he returned from Oslo with his new bride. Kronborg Castle is the model for Elsinore Castle in Hamlet.

Queen Elizabeth I was getting old, and many focused on James as her possible successor, as it did eventually turn out. So, the interest the English had for Denmark is easy to see, especially from 1589 onward, as they examined the prospect of the next English Queen being from Denmark. It'd be surprising if we didn't have a significant English play set in Denmark in that era. Shakespeare got a-hold of all that history and current events, and turned it into Hamlet.
 

jmd

Another possible source that I personally think deserves far more investigation and attention, and possibly relevent to this thread, is the travels to England in the late 1500s by Giordano Bruno.

As 'inheritor' of and promulgator of the art of memory, one aspect I have at times wondered about is whether he was not in some ways instrumental in considerations behind the design of the Globe theatre - not directly, but rather by bringing to mind the important concepts in regards memory (and acting) of the more classical and Camillo's 'Theatre'.

Though I am still looking for more direct possible influence of Tarot's development in France from the after-effects of Bruno's travels, publications and presence, it may be that here was another source of knowledge of tarot (or 'Triumphs') by the English Bard.
 

baba-prague

Yes, Bruno is very important of course. Then again, it would be interesting to know what was in John Dee's library at Mortlake as that connection with Shakespeare - via Bacon - is much more easily traced. There is, to begin with, the probable reference in the character of Prospero.
 

Ross G Caldwell

baba-prague said:
Yes, Bruno is very important of course. Then again, it would be interesting to know what was in John Dee's library at Mortlake as that connection with Shakespeare - via Bacon - is much more easily traced. There is, to begin with, the probable reference in the character of Prospero.

If Dee had played tarot, it should be easy to find out since his diaries of the angelic workings contain many quotidian references. As far as I know, there isn't a reference to tarot, or any card games. But they are a small segment of his life.

Whether he knew *about* tarot cards - especially given his travels on the continent - would be harder to ascertain. I would imagine his taste in games (pure speculation here) was more on the Chess or Rithmomachia (Pythagorean - Philosopher's Game) side. A character like Edward Kelley makes one suspect that card-playing wasn't too far from Dee's sight, however.
 

Amleth

Bruno definitely deserves attention. He was acquainted with Philip Sidney, and also with John Dee. Bruno was in England from 1583-85, working for the French ambassador. He was unsuccessful at getting a teaching position at Oxford, but he did lecture there. Some time after he left England, Bruno obtained a teaching position at Wittenberg, where he lectured on Aristotle. Wittenberg is explicitly mentioned in Hamlet, and Hamlet's speech in the Closet Scene alludes to Aristotle. Only coincidence? One has to wonder. It makes it sound almost as if Bruno was Hamlet's teacher at Wittenberg! :)

I don't know about the design of the Globe, but it seems to me that Bruno's writings about memory would have been of intense interest to professional stage actors, who must memorize hours of lines. A person would think the London actors had to be interested in methods to improve their memories, and Bruno was the "guru" on that subject.

It's also known that Bruno and Florio were friends, which is not surprising.
 

John Meador

For the works in Dee's library see:
John Dee's Library Catalogue, edited by Julian Roberts and Andrew G Watson, The London Bibliographical Society, 1990
and the online article:
http://www.ampltd.co.uk/collections_az/RenMan-1-4/description.aspx

Henri III appointed Bruno professor extraordinaire at the University of Paris in 1581 and in 1582 Bruno dedicated De Umbris Idearum to Henri III and left for England armed with a royal letter of recommendation from 1583-5 where he lived as a gentleman attached to the French Embassy.

" Bruno in England 1583-5, publishes Spaccio della bestia trionfante,
dedicated to Sidney, on hermeticism, praising Henri III (“Blessed are the
peacemakers,” i.e. like Henri (who perhaps sent Bruno to promote middle ground between Protestantism and Spanish Catholicism--acc. to F. Yates)."

"Pierre de la Primaudaye's The French Academy (1577), now trans. by Thomas
Bowes, many editions; took form of discussion among four noblement of Anjou, centering on Greek ideal of self-knowledge; source for Love's Labour's Lost."
http://www.bc.edu/publications/relarts/meta-elements/pdf/shakes1.pdf.

"The history of La Primaudaye's book is very complicated... Suite de l'Acadimie Francoise, en laquelle il est traicte de l'homme, Paris, 1580. (Other editions, Paris, 1580, 1588; Lyons, 1591; Geneva, 1598; Paris, 1610. Contains a very curious address to La Primaudaye by Guillaume Postel which is not reprinted in the collected editions.)"
-Frances Yates: The French Academies of the Sixteenth Century, 1947

In 1579 Richard Field began six years apprenticeship with the Huguenot printer, Thomas Vautrollier. In 1587 he married Vautrollier's widow, Jacqueline.
April 18th, 1592 Field entered Venus and Adonis on the Stationers' Register & consequently printed. In 1594 Field printed the first edition of The Rape of Lucrece. Love's Martyr, or Rosalin's Complaint… by Robert Chester; published in 1601, has appended Shakespeare's poem, The Phoenix and the Turtle.
Thomas Vautrollier printed On the Shadow of Reason and Judgement by Bruno's disciple, Alexander Dicson in 1585, dedicated to the Earl of Leicester and inspired by Bruno's De umbris idearum.

see in general:
http://www.levity.com/alchemy/h_shake.html

"...two especial uses, I have often exercised this art for the better help of my own memory, and the same as yet has never failed me. Although I have heard some of Master Dickson, his schollers, that have prooved such cunning Cardplayers hereby, that they could tell the course of all the Cards and what every gamester had in his hand. So ready we are to turn an honest and commendable invention into craft and cousenage."
-Hugh Platt: The Jewell House of Art and Nature 1594

"As a kinsman and friend of John Dee...Platt recognized that Dickson (like Dee) had to be cautious in his teaching in order to avoid accusations of magical practice lamented that such charges were used to prevent advances in natural sciences, for Cardano, Baptista Porta, and "the rest of that magical crew" are used as bogeymen to instill "terror unto all new professors of rare and profitable inventions."

"That Platt was possibly initiated into a masonic guild is further suggested by his description of the secret method of communication by finger signs and positions of parts of the body that were considered a special masonic practice. Platt complained that his early publication of inventions and experiments met a hostile reception in England- a point that was probably communicated by Dickson to the Scottish court. Eventually, it would be the Stuart king, James VI and I, who knighted Platt for his contributions to natural science and the public welfare (in 1605)."
-Marsha Schuchard: Restoring the Temple of Vision, 2002

"That [Richard] Field and Dr Matthew Gwinne were friends is highly probable. Gwinne was the associate of John Florio, Giordano Bruno and Robert Fludd."
-ibid

Gwinne (Gwynne) & Shakespeare:
http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/sibyls/intro.html
http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/Nero/intronotes.html

Gwynne, Florio, Dee
BRUNO IN ENGLAND (1583-85)
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/bruno02.htm

-John