Shakespeare’s Knowledge of Imagination

Abstract

In this essay, the various lines of Shakespeare that involve philosophical and “pre-scientific” notions about imagination are analysed, showing how often the technical knowledge and theoretical features of specialized issues underlie his words in a more diverse and sophisticated way than frequently supposed. Certainly, some of those ancient learned opinions on fantasy were previously assimilated into European and English poetic tradition that in turn are taken up and transfigured by the Bard. This matter has multiple facets and covers medical, philosophical, and theological speculations, and many passages in Shakespeare’s works display a plausible acquaintance with those concepts that are studied in this article: the problem of the organic location of imagination, its relations with the eyes and other organs (brain, heart, and liver) in psychophysiological processes, active fantasy’s ability to change one’s own body and another’s body, altered states of consciousness which were attributed to a physical disorder or a supernatural agency, the mental representation of the self and the other; also an analysis of Duke Theseus’s famous speech on the lover, the madman, and the poet is included, along with other references to the inner senses and the artistic creation. All these topics are presented to show the wide and subtle knowledge of this subject possessed by one of the finest imaginations in history.