ASTROLOGY

The references in various plays to astrology are interesting not only to the student of the occult but also as showing how commonly astrological expressions were employed in Shakespeare's day.

In Scene II, Act V, Much Ado About Nothing, Benedick says of his inability to write well:

I was not born under a riming planet,
Nor I cannot woo in festival terms.

Don John, in that play, remonstrates with Conrade for his lack of a philosophical view of human nature and his failure to understand why he, Don John, is sad without present cause for it:

I wonder that thou, being-as thou say'st thou art-born under Saturn, goest about to apply a moral medicine to a mortifying mischief. I cannot hide what I am.

When the Duke in Twelfth Night sends Viola on the courting mission to Olivia he remarks:

I know thy constellation is right apt

For this affair.

In that distressing scene in The Winter's Tale in which the king gives way to blind rage on account of his groundless jealousy and orders the queen to prison, she protests her innocence and then adds with patient resignation:

There's some ill planet reigns:

I must be patient till the heavens look
With an aspect more favourable.

When Richard the Third is proposing to Queen Elizabeth, widow of his brother Edward, that her daughter Elizabeth marry him and is hypocritically swearing that he loves her daughter, he says:

Heaven and fortune bar me happy hours!

Day, yield me not thy light; nor, night, thy rest!
Be opposite all planets of good luck

To my proceeding, if, with pure heart's love,
Immaculate devotion, holy thoughts,

I tender not thy beauteous princely daughter!

Reminded that he is the murderer of her brothers, he excuses himself with

Lo! at their births good stars were opposite!

In Scene II, Act I, Julius Caesar, Cassius says:

Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Warwick says to King Henry, Scene VI, Act IV, Third Part of King Henry VI:

Your Grace hath still been famed for virtuous;
And now may seem as wise as virtuous,

By spying and avoiding Fortune's malice;
For few men rightly temper with the stars:
Yet in this one thing let me blame your Grace,
For choosing me when Clarence is in place.

To which the duke replies:

No, Warwick, thou art worthy of the sway,
To whom the heavens, in thy nativity
Adjudg'd an olive branch and laurel crown,
As likely to be blessed in peace, and war.

A speech by Ulysses in Scene III, Act I, Troilus and Cressida, contains the following:

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this

centre

Observe degree, priority, and place,

Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office and custom, in all line of order:
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol
In noble eminence enthron'd and spher'd
Amidst the other; whose med'cinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
And posts, like the commandment of a king,
Sans check, to good and bad: but when the
planets

In evil mixture to disorder wander,

What plagues, and what portents, what mutiny,
What raging of the sea, shaking of earth,

Commotion in the winds, frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixture!

The first words spoken in the First Part of King Henry VI are by the Duke of Bedford:

Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to
night!

Comets, importing change of times and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,

And with them scourge the bad revolting stars,
That have consented unto Henry's death!

In the same scene the Duke of Exeter exclaims:

What! shall we curse the planets of mishap
That plotted thus our glory's overthrow?

Prospero, the adept, in Scene II, Act I, The Tempest, speaks thus:

By accident most strange, bountiful Fortune,
Now my dear lady, hath mine enemies

Brought to this shore; and by my prescience
I find my zenith doth depend upon

A most auspicious star, whose influence

If now I court not but omit, my fortunes

Will ever after droop.

Just before the two Talbots were slain in the First Part of King Henry VI, Lord Talbot says to his son in Scene V, Act IV:

O young John Talbot! I did send for thee
To tutor thee in strategems of war,
That Talbot's name might be in thee reviv'd
When sapless age, and weak unable limbs
Should bring thy father to his drooping chair.
But,-O malignant and ill-boding stars!
Now thou art come unto a feast of death,