Influence of Marsilio Ficino (1433-1494) on Elizabethan Literature- Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare (2 Book Set)

“…the work of Marsilio Ficino has lit a fire in Tom that burns brightly to this day. The outcome of his passion is the current volume in which Tom takes us on a journey starting in Fifteenth century Italy. He traces the influence of the esoteric tradition that Ficino set in motion and how it influenced two of the greatest playwrights of Elizabethan England…the reader has the privilege to share the burning passion of the author’s scholarship and vision.”
-Robert Levine,
Writer and Scholar

Acknowledgment
Introduction
Volume I
Chapter One:
Ancient Egypt Meets Renaissance Florence
Chapter Two:
The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus
Chapter Three:
The Hermetica
Chapter Four:
Ficino and Plato’s Symposium
Chapter Five:
Ficino and Plato’s Phaedrus
Chapter Six:
Ficino’s Major Astrology
Chapter Seven:
Ficino’s Minor Astrology
Chapter Eight:
Book of the Sun
Chapter Nine:
Ficino – Five Questions on the Mind
Chapter Ten:
Ficino’s Greatest Work: His Collected Letters
Chapter Eleven:
Aratus, Astrologer From the Ancient World
Chapter Twelve:
Lucretius, Ancient Poet of the Atom
Chapter Thirteen:
Manilius, the Most Devoted of Ancient Astrologers
Chapter Fourteen:
Pythagoras, First Magus of the Ancient World
Chapter Fifteen:
Macrobius, the Ultimate Commentator
Chapter Sixteen:
Plotinus, the Greatest Platonist Since Plato
Chapter Seventeen:
Proclus, Philosopher of the Endless Sentences
Chapter Eighteen:
Iamblichus, Master of Theurgy
Chapter Nineteen:
The Angelic Hierarchies of Pseudo-Dionysius
Chapter Twenty:
Boethius, the Philosopher of Lasting Values
Chapter Twenty-one:
Julianus, the Unsung Mystic
Chapter Twenty-two:
The Egyptian Hieroglyphics of Horapollo
Chapter Twenty-three:
The Meaning of Words in Nicholas of Cusa
Chapter Twenty-four:
The Wondrous Achievement of Pico della Mirandola
Chapter Twenty-five:
The Many Sides of Cornelius Agrippa
Chapter Twenty-six:
The Pathbreaking Life of Paracelsus
Chapter Twenty-seven
William Adlington, Translator of Elizabethan Times
Chapter Twenty-eight
Thomas Norton, Poet Laureate of Alchemy
Chapter Twenty-nine
Jacob Boehme, the Shoemaker Turned Mystic
Chapter Thirty:
Giordano Bruno, Two Almost Forgotten Works
Chapter Thirty-two:
The Extraordinary Life of Tomasso Campanella
Chapter Thirty-three:
Arthur Dee, Jacobean Magus and Son of John Dee
Chapter Thirty-four:
Johann Reuchlin, the Far-reaching Influence of His Kabbalah
Chapter Thirty-five:
Basil Valentinè Master Alchemist
Chapter Thirty-six:
Jean of Spain, Master Alchemist
Chapter Thirty-seven:
Six Alchemical Treatises on the Philosopher’s Stone
Chapter Thirty-eight:
Robert Fludd, the Magus Who Opposed Kepler
Volume II
Chapter Thirty-nine:
Marlowe and Shakespeare’s Narrative Poems
Chapter Forty:
Marlowe’s Minor Plays
Chapter Forty-one:
Marlowe’s Tamurlaine, Parts One and Two
Chapter Forty-two:
Shakespeare’s Earliest History – King John
Chapter Forty-three:
Shakespeare’s Early Gothic Melodramas - Titus Andronicus and Timon of Athens
Chapter Forty-four:
W.H. Auden Connects Ficino and Shakespeare
Chapter Forty-five:
The Magic of Ancient Egypt – Antony and Cleopatra
Chapter Forty-six:
The Doomed Talkers - Richard II, Faustus and Hamlet
Chapter Forty-seven:
The Villain of Villains – Richard III
Chapter Forty-eight:
The World’s Greatest Love Story - Romeo and Juliet
Chapter Forty nine:
Magical Structures in Three Comedies
Chapter Fifty:
The Alchemy in Portia’s Venice
Chapter Fifty-one:
Eloquent Monsters at Large - Othello and Measure for Measure
Chapter Fifty-two:
The Making of a King – the Three Plays of the Henriad
Chapter Fifty-three:
The Structure of the Cosmos
Troilus and Cressida
Chapter Fifty-four:
King Lear
Chapter Fifty-five:
Two Roman History Plays – Julius Caesar and Coriolanus
Chapter Fifty-six:
Magic in Comedy, Romance, and Tragedy
Chapter Fifty-seven:
Three Final Romances
Chapter Fifty-eight
Ben Johnson’s Comic Masterpiece - The Alchemist
Chapter Fifty-nine:
Isaac Newton and the Emerald Tablet – Looking Forward
Descriptive Bibliography:
Section One – The Ancient World
Section Two – Ficino and His Age
Section Three – Primary Texts of Renaissance Magic
Section Four – Alchemy
Section Five – Kabbalah
Section Six – Medieval and Renaissance Magic
Section Seven – Medieval and Renaissance History of Science
Section Eight – Shakespeare and His Age
Index