Shakespeare on Astrology


Edmund ‘This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune,—often the surfeit of our own behaviour,—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical pre-dominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! My father compounded with my mother under the dragon’s tail, and my nativity was under ursa major; so that it follows I am rough and lecherous.—Tut!’

– Reed International Books Ltd. 1992. The Illustrated Stratford Shakespeare London, Great Britain: Chancellor Press (1996) p. 836

1 thought on “Shakespeare on Astrology

  1. “I don’t believe in astrology; I’m a Sagittarius and we’re skeptical.”
    – Arthur C. Clarke

    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.

    – William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (Act I, Scene II)

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