Posthumus sleeps in prison, expecting death. To solemn music, his dead father, mother and two brothers appear and circle him. They appeal to Jupiter, who descends on an eagle amid thunder and lightning. The god promises that Posthumus’s suffering will end and leaves a tablet foretelling his good fortune.1
This spectacle belongs to the moment when Galileo’s telescope had revealed four moons circling Jupiter. The Starry Messenger announced the discovery in March 1610; Cymbeline is generally dated to about 1610, and Simon Forman’s account of seeing the play is generally assigned to 1611. John Pitcher and Scott Maisano have proposed that the new astronomy helped shape the scene.234
Jupiter and the four ghosts
The stage direction makes the grouping and movement explicit:
[Solemn music. Enter, as in an apparition, Sicilius
Leonatus, father to Posthumus, an old man attired like
a warrior; leading in his hand an ancient matron, his
wife and mother to Posthumus, with music before
them. Then, after other music, follows the two young
Leonati, brothers to Posthumus, with wounds as they
died in the wars. They circle Posthumus round as he
lies sleeping.]
— Cymbeline, 5.4.1
The ghosts circle Posthumus; Jupiter descends afterwards. The astronomical reading connects the four circling figures with the god who answers them. Pitcher thought “it was no accident” that this combination appeared just as Galileo was describing Jupiter and its four attendant moons.4
Jupiter’s speech gives the comparison a second point of contact:
JUPITER […]
Our Jovial star reigned at his birth, and in
Our temple was he married. Rise, and fade.
He shall be lord of Lady Imogen,
And happier much by his affliction made.
— Cymbeline, 5.4.1
Here the god names his planet and claims its influence over Posthumus from birth. Galileo’s dedication to Cosimo II de’ Medici likewise associates Jupiter’s position at his patron’s birth with his character and good fortune. Pitcher and Maisano draw attention to this correspondence. The proposed allusion joins a celestial spectacle to a story of family and benevolent protection.4
“My honorable kynsman”
One of Neville’s correspondents had seen the new moons for himself. Sir William Lower was a Cornish gentleman living at Trefenty in Carmarthenshire, a correspondent of the astronomer Thomas Harriot and a cousin of Neville’s wife, Anne Killigrew.5 His wife, Penelope Perrot, was the stepdaughter of Harriot’s patron, the Earl of Northumberland.67
On 30 July 1608 Lower addressed a letter to Neville:
To my honorable kynsman
S[i]r Henry Nevill
knighte att Billingbeare
in Berkeshyre
He closed it:
Your verie assured frend and kinsman
to command
Willm Lower7
The letter concerns the Trelawny estate and the interests of a ward, matters in which Neville was actively involved. Lower reported negotiations, discussed the protection of the estate’s woods and proposed bringing the dispute before the master of the Court of Wards. In a further letter of 6 November, he asked Neville to continue in his existing trust. Their kinship language accompanied shared responsibilities for an estate and its heirs.
Their association also appears in parliamentary business. The Commons Journal for 2 April 1604 lists “Sir Henry Nevill” immediately before “Sir Wm. Lowre” among the committee appointed to consider Southampton’s restitution.8
A man who had seen the moons
Lower’s astronomical correspondence shows how closely he followed the discoveries as they unfolded. In a letter dated “the longest day” of 1610, he asked Harriot for the book announcing them:
Send me also one of Galileus bookes if anie yet be come ouer and you can get them.9
By December 1610, according to Bryn Jones’s historical account, Lower had observed Jupiter’s satellites with Harriot at Syon House. Writing to Harriot on 4 March 1611, Lower explained that his own instrument would not show the moons, though he had seen them with Harriot’s:6
[…] when wee, I say, have often diligentlie observed Jupiter, wee could never see anie thinge; I impute it to the dullnesse of my lighte, for onlie with your greate glasse I could se them in London.10
The letter goes beyond the excitement of seeing them. Lower was following Harriot’s efforts to determine their orbital periods:
That you have made so manie exellent observations of them I am most glad of, for you have gotten the starte of all in limitinge ther periods.10
Notes and sources
William Shakespeare, Cymbeline, 5.4, Folger Shakespeare Library. Bold emphasis added. All play quotations in this chapter follow this text.↩︎
Maisano, “Shakespeare’s Last Act,” pp. 402–407 and 420, notes 3 and 51; Martin Butler, ed., Cymbeline (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 6, quoted in Maisano’s note 3. Composition and any Christmas 1610–1611 performance are scholarly reconstructions; Forman’s account is undated, within his notes conventionally assigned to 1611; see the manuscript description and images.↩︎
For the astronomical interpretation, Scott Maisano, “Shakespeare’s Last Act: The Starry Messenger and the Galilean Book in Cymbeline,” Configurations 12.3 (2004), pp. 401–434, especially pp. 402–406 and 416–417, DOI. The article appeared on Project MUSE in 2007. Lower’s observation and Neville correspondence are documented separately below.↩︎
John Pitcher, ed., Cymbeline (Penguin, 2005), introduction, p. lxxiii, quoted and discussed in Maisano, p. 406; Peter Usher, “Jupiter and Cymbeline,” Shakespeare Newsletter 53 (2003), pp. 4–10, especially p. 8, discussed there. Pitcher’s and Usher’s positions are cited through Maisano’s published account. Maisano, pp. 416–417, including note 43 citing Pitcher’s commentary, pp. 288–289; his source is Galileo Galilei, Sidereus Nuncius or The Sidereal Messenger, trans. Albert Van Helden (University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 31–32. These are interpretations of Shakespeare’s imagery, not endorsements of a Neville attribution. The Folger stage direction specifies Posthumus as the centre of the circling movement. Maisano describes the spirits dancing “about the descending god” (p. 402; cf. p. 433); that is his account of the astronomical analogy, rather than the wording of the stage direction. For a dissenting assessment of the astronomical interpretation and discussion of the scene’s religious and dramatic functions, see C. R. A. Eager, Theophany on the Shakespearean Stage (PhD thesis, University of Leeds, 2020), pp. 131–132, White Rose repository. The play’s tablet is not named as Galileo’s book.↩︎
J. L. Vivian, ed., The Visitations of the County of Cornwall (Exeter, 1887), pp. 268, 299–300 and 459, Killigrew, Lower and Treffry pedigrees; public digitization. These pedigrees make Anne Killigrew and William Lower second cousins once removed, both descended from John Killigrew (d. 1536) and Jane Petit. Anne descends through their son John and his son Sir Henry; William through their daughter Elizabeth, her daughter Agnes Treffry, and Agnes’s son Thomas Lower. This is the relationship supplied by the printed pedigrees, alongside the contemporary letter’s own kinship language.↩︎
Bryn Jones, “Despite the Clouds: A History of Wales and Astronomy,” The Antiquarian Astronomer 8 (2014), pp. 66–86, especially pp. 68–69, journal issue. The December 1610/Syon House placement comes from the historical account; Lower’s March letter itself specifies London and Harriot’s telescope.↩︎
William Lower to Henry Neville, St Winnow, 30 July and 6 November 1608, Royal Berkshire Archives, D/EN/F7, public catalogue. The July letter’s address and closing both use kinship language. The file concerns the execution of Sir Jonathan Trelawny’s will and the wardship of his sons. The quoted passages and address image are from the original July letter; the two letters concern estate business, not astronomy.↩︎
Journals of the House of Commons, vol. 1, 2 April 1604, second scribe, “Restitution of Southampton.” The entry records appointment to the committee, not proof of attendance at its meeting.↩︎
William Lower to Thomas Harriot, 21 June 1610, printed from the holograph in Henry Stevens, Thomas Hariot, the Mathematician, the Philosopher and the Scholar (London, 1900), pp. 116–118, quotation p. 118; public text. Stevens dates the letter 21 June; Lower’s own dateline reads “the longest day of, 1610.” The quotation has been checked against the printed page image. Anna Cetera-Włodarczyk, Jonathan Hope and Jarosław Włodarczyk, “Unsphered, Disorbed, Decentred: Shakespeare’s Astronomical Imagination,” Shakespeare 17.4 (2021), pp. 400–427, especially the section “Shakespeare, Ptolemy, Copernicus and Beyond” and notes 37–38, DOI. Their discussion of Lower cites his letter to Harriot of 21 June 1610; it is separate from the March 1611 observation letter quoted above.↩︎
William Lower to Thomas Harriot, 4 March 1611, printed from British Library, Add. MS 6789, in J. O. Halliwell, ed., A Collection of Letters Illustrative of the Progress of Science in England (London: Historical Society of Science, 1841), pp. 38–40, quotation and image p. 40. Original printed spelling retained; emphasis added. This is a facsimile of the printed edition, not the manuscript.↩︎