William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( b. April 26, 1564 - d, April 23, 1616) was a English playwright, poet, and dramatist.
Biography
Influence on H. P. Blavatsky
H. P. Blavatsky held Shakespeare in highest regard. The Introductory of The Secret Doctrine begins with his words from Henry V, "Gently to hear, kindly to judge."[1] She further states that "Shakespeare, was and will ever remain the intellectual "Sphinx" of the ages"[2]
Blavatsky also makes numerous references to verses from Shakespeare's work in the Theosophical Magazine, Lucifer.
Perchance, in their unsophisticated wisdom, the philosophers of old were nearer truth than are our modern wiseacres, when they endowed man with a tutelar deity, a Spirit whom they called genius. The substance of this entity, to say nothing of its essence—observe the distinction, reader,—and the presence of both manifests itself according to the organism of the person it informs. As Shakespeare says of the genius of great men—what we perceive of his substance “is not here”—“For what you see is but the smallest part And least proportion of humanity: I tell you, madam, were the whole frame here, It is of such a spacious lofty pitch, Your roof were not sufficient to contain it.”* This is precisely what the Esoteric philosophy teaches.[3]
Shakespeare in the Mahatma Letters
As Shakespeare is also mentioned within the Mahatma letters. In one of his letters, Mahatma K. H. wrote, "My good friend — Shakespeare said truly that “our doubts are traitors.” Why should you doubt or create in your mind ever growing monsters?A little more knowledge in occult laws would have set your mind at rest long ago, avoided many a tear to your gentle lady and pang to yourself."[4]
Influence on C. Jinarājadāsa
But there is a different vision possible and every cultured man and woman knows
something of it, for it is given to us by the great poets. For what makes a poet is a larger vision and especially is the larger vision of man a characteristic of the great poets. The great poet stands apart from mankind; you find that Shakespeare, who looks at all men as if from a Mount Olympus, notes their foibles and foolishnesses, and yet smiles on them all. There is the spirit of the divine vision when he makes one of his characters say about another, " God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man." You will note that, wherever Shakespeare deals with a villain, he has no kind of antipathy to him, whether it is to Cassio or Iago; he makes his villain live his life and expound himself, for Shakespeare has no resentment of the evil in the villain. Even in the case of Falstaff, full of coarseness and trickery, Shakespeare sees the man as he is, and there is no condemnatory judgement. A poet observes men as they are; therefore we find in the poets a larger vision than that of which the ordinary
man is capable.[5]
Interpretations by William Quan Judge
The words of the immortal Shakespeare - "The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interrèd with their bones," receive a striking exemplification under this doctrine. For, as the evil thoughts and deeds are the more material and therefore more firmly impacted into the Astral Light, while the good, being spiritual, easily fade out, we are in effect at the mercy of the evil done. And the Adepts assert that Shakespeare was, unconsciously to himself, inspired by one of their own number.[6]
Shakespeare was right in saying that life is a play, for the great life of the soul is a drama, and each new life and rebirth another act in which we assume another part and put on a new dress, but all through it we are the self-same person. So instead of its being unjust, it is perfect justice, and in no other manner could justice be preserved.
(Judge, Ocean of Theosophy)
Division of Seven
It is not Shakespeare only who divided the ages of man into a series of seven, but Nature herself.[7]
By what prophetic instinct Shakespeare pitched upon seven as the number which
suited his fantastic classification of the ages of man, is a question with which we need not be much concerned; but certain it is that he could not have made a more felicitous choice. In periods of sevens the evolution of the races of man may be traced, and the actual number of the objective worlds which constitute
our system, and of which the earth is one, is seven also.[8]
The life of man he divided into seven ages (Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7, l. 143), for "As the moon changes her phases every seven days, this number influences all sublunary beings," and even the Earth, as we know. With the child, it is the teeth that appear in the seventh month and he sheds them at seven years; at twice seven puberty begins, at three times seven all our mental and vital powers are developed, at four times seven he is in his full strength, at five times seven his passions are most developed.[9]
Notes
- ↑ Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna. The Secret Doctrine Vol. I (Adyar, Madras: Theosophical Publishing House, 1978), xvii
- ↑ Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna. The Secret Doctrine Vol. II (Adyar, Madras: Theosophical Publishing House, 1979), 419.
- ↑ Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna. Collected Writings Vol. XII (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1980), 14.
- ↑ Chin, Vicente Hao, Jr. The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett in Chronological Sequence (Quezon City, Philippines: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 116.
- ↑ Jinarājadāsa, Curuppumullage. Divine Vision (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1973), 4-5.
- ↑ Judge, William Quan. Echoes of the Orient Vol. II (San Diego, CA: Point Loma Publications, 1987), 7.
- ↑ Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna. The Secret Doctrine Vol. II (Adyar, Madras: Theosophical Publishing House, 1979), 117.
- ↑ Sinnett, Alfred Percy. Esoteric Buddhism (London: Theosophical Publishing House, 1972), 43.
- ↑ Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna. The Secret Doctrine Vol. II (Adyar, Madras: Theosophical Publishing House, 1979), fn. 312