Reveals the influence of the Renaissance scholar-priest Marsilio Ficino on Shakespeare and how the Neoplatonic philosophy of love shaped the inner meaning of his workIn Love’s Labours Lost, Shakespeare talks of the true Promethean fire that is lit by the doctrine he reads in women’s eyes.
What is this doctrine and what is this Promethean fire to which it gives birth? In Shakespeare and the Ideal of Love, Jill Line shows that Shakespeare shared the perennial philosophy of a long line of teachers, including Hermes Tristmegistus, Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus, and especially the Florentine scholar and mystic Marsilio Ficino.
The answer to these questions, Line claims, lies in Ficino’s Christian-Platonic philosophy of love, from which all Shakespeare’s plays have their genesis.
Jill Line earned a master’s degree from the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, and taught in the drama department of the University of Surrey, Roehampton.
She lectures on Shakespeare for many organizations, including the Prince of Wales’ Summer School for Teachers, part of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
She lives in England.
