ABSTRACT
Half a century after the death of Shakespeare, a truism of literary criticism appeared in the pages of John Dryden's An Essay of Dramatick Poesie. In the dialogue, poet-critics convene to assess the merits and influences of English poetry as embodied by "moderns" like Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont, and Fletcher. Like his contemporaries, Shakespeare's imagination was fired by access to these cosmological theories, even as his plays suggest, on the surface, his unfamiliarity with or indifference to the classical figures who authored them. Shakespeare's reticence with regard to ancient sources does not reflect the considerable depth of knowledge he absorbed from these prevalent cosmological traditions. Shakespeare's access to the rich philosophical traditions arrived not through a university curriculum rooted in Aristotle or Plato but, ironically, through his grammar school primer. The plays bear an Ovidian imprint in their understanding of humankind as extending and enveloping a lively, animate world: one that often seems rather human in its passions and drives.
