Shakespeare and Platonic Beauty

Overview

Looking at some of the Shakespearean comedies, author John Vyvyan suggests they express a consistent, profoundly Christian philosophy of life based on the Platonic ideas of beauty and love. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, and All’s Well That Ends Well, the heroines bring to life the idea of love as the force that is awakened in the world by beauty which then leads the soul to perfection. Vyvyan believes that for Shakespeare, love was preeminent over human ideas of justice, that self-discovery was a supreme human experience, and that breaking faith with the ideal—as Agamemnon, Cressida, and Hector all do in Troilus and Cressida —sowed the seeds of tragedy. The author’s recognition of Shakespeare's use of allegory enables him to make sense of certain developments in these plays that seem weak or absurd from the psychological standpoint. He does not suggest that Shakespeare’s philosophy is the most important thing about his plays; it is simply one thing about them that ought to be known. The recognition of this philosophy enhances enjoyment of the plays, giving them a new dimension and richness. This edition contains a list of the author’s Shakespearean references and an enhanced index.

Reviews

“More perceptive and convincing than a great deal that has ever been written on the subject . . . close and attentive scholarship . . . shrewd and ingenious observations.”  —A. L. Rowse, Daily Telegraph

“Original and stimulating . . . Mr. Vyvyan's thesis is important and serious: serious in the sense that his reading of the plays and his supporting reading into Shakespeare's climate of ideas is deep, connected, and wide.”  —Times Literary Supplement

"The extraordinary worldwide popularity of Shakespeare today invites one to look more deeply for the magic ingredients. Shakespeare's gift of presenting timeless wisdom in captivating allegorical dramas has been explained with great clarity in three books by John Vyvyan. In Shakespeare and Platonic Beauty Vyvyan quotes and paraphrases extracts of Plato and Plotinus, later interpreted anew by Ficino, Castiglione and Spenser, and demonstrates how the Platonic ideas of beauty and love influenced Renaissance thinking and in due course, Shakespeare. From Plato: 'The most vivid and easy to recall of the divine realities is beauty; and beauty, therefore, plays a special part in the re-awakening of the soul to heavenly things." —Watkins Body Mind Spirit Magazine

"John Vyvyan's books on the spiritual philosophy of Shakespeare aroused interest when they were first published in the early sixties . . . all who seek the true wisdom of Shakespeare will welcome this first republication of his trilogy for fifty years . . .  [Vyvyan's] scholarship and dogged research in opening the doors of the Christian-Platonic philosophy of the Renaissance and uncovering the vastness of Shakespeare's spiritual universe pronounce him an intrepid pioneer in Shakespearean scholarship, whose work should now receive wider recognition." —Jill Line, Temenos Academy Review

Author Biography

John Vyvyan, a British Shakespearen scholar, was offered a visiting lectureship at the State University of New York. He is the author of Shakespeare and the Rose of Love and The Shakespearean Ethic.