OXFORD’S NEO-PLATONISM AND HIS BIBLE
I am not as I seem to be
For when I smile I am not glad
A thrall although you count me free,
When most in mirth, most pensive sad.
--Edward de Vere
Each of three prominent ideas
of Renaissance neo-Platonism
represented in Shakespeare are also
marked in the text or notes of de
Vere's Geneva Bible: belief in the
ethical and aesthetic superiority of
an inner invisible substance
contrasted to the outward world of
fallen appearances (I Samuel 16.7; I
Corinthians 6.19-21; II Corinthians
4.16-18), belief in the ontological
and aesthetic primacy of certain
things or events which form the
"pattern" or "precedent" for all
other subsequent happenings which
represent mere recapitulations of
Figure Twenty-Five: The Emblem "Homo Microcosmus" from Minerva
Britanna (1612).
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