As this book has argued, Shakespeare’s relationship to “nature” goes beyond pastoral nostalgia for a lost green world. Shakespeare’s theater of nature responds to shifting relations between science, religion, and forms of representation in early modern Europe, developing new modes of mimesis whose ambitious scope is captured by the name of the theater in which many of his plays were performed: the Globe. Early modern nature was increasingly understood as a highly mediated structure of representation that was also divinely created. Like Lorraine Daston’s description of Wunderkammer as a “glorious hodge-podgery” of nature, Shakespeare’s nature is complex and capricious, drawing on traditions of natural philosophy and theology without being confined by them or trying to parallel them as claims to truth. His theater of nature also produce forms of indirect theology that set him apart from many of his contemporaries, including Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson. Drawing on Charles Taylor’s complex definition of secularism, I ultimately argue that his plays are “secular” in a way that appropriates early modern modes of science, religion, and representation.

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Epilogue

  • Aaron Kitch

摘要

As this book has argued, Shakespeare’s relationship to “nature” goes beyond pastoral nostalgia for a lost green world. Shakespeare’s theater of nature responds to shifting relations between science, religion, and forms of representation in early modern Europe, developing new modes of mimesis whose ambitious scope is captured by the name of the theater in which many of his plays were performed: the Globe. Early modern nature was increasingly understood as a highly mediated structure of representation that was also divinely created. Like Lorraine Daston’s description of Wunderkammer as a “glorious hodge-podgery” of nature, Shakespeare’s nature is complex and capricious, drawing on traditions of natural philosophy and theology without being confined by them or trying to parallel them as claims to truth. His theater of nature also produce forms of indirect theology that set him apart from many of his contemporaries, including Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson. Drawing on Charles Taylor’s complex definition of secularism, I ultimately argue that his plays are “secular” in a way that appropriates early modern modes of science, religion, and representation.