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Dan Falk writes in Scientific American that in the last few years, scholars have begun to look more closely at William Shakespeare's interest in the scientific discoveries of his time-asking what he knew, when he knew it, and how that knowledge might be reflected in his work. Astronomer Peter Usher argues that examples of the playwright's scientific knowledge can be found in works spanning his entire career and has taken a particular interest in Hamlet, which he sees as an allegory about competing cosmological worldviews. "According to Usher, the play references not only Copernicus, but also Ptolemy, as well as Tycho Brahe (PDF), who pushed for a hybrid model of the solar system (a compromise that preserved elements of the ancient Ptolemaic system as well as the new Copernican model). Digges, too, is central to Usher's theory. When Hamlet envisions himself as "a king of infinite space," could he be alluding to the new, infinite universe described-for the first time-by his countryman Thomas Digges?" Usher's proposal may sound far-fetched-but even skeptics do a double take when they look at Tycho Brahe's coat of arms, noticing that two of Tycho's relatives were named "Rosencrans" and "Guildensteren."
According to Falk, Shakespeare's characters were connected to the cosmos in a way that seems quite foreign to the modern reader. Whether crying for joy or shedding tears of anguish, they look to the heavens for confirmation, calling out to "Jupiter" or "the gods" or "the heavens" as they struggle to make sense of their lives. "[Shakespeare] lived in an age of belief, yet a streak of skepticism runs through his work, especially toward the end of his career; in King Lear it reaches an almost euphoric nihilism. His characters often call upon the gods to help them, but their desperate pleas are rarely answered. Was Shakespeare a closet atheist, like his colleague Christopher Marlowe?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 24 2014, @02:49PM
Instead, one can find the actual coat of arms and a relevant summary at http://www.numericana.com/arms/brahe.htm [numericana.com]
"The two names of Rosenkrans and Gyldenstern stand out because of the pair of Shakespearean characters (Rosencrantz & Guildenstern) in the Tragedy of Hamlet, prince of Denmark, which William Shakespeare (1564-1616) wrote around 1601 (the year Brahe died). The relevant ancestors of Tycho Brahe (ahnentafels #22 and #23) are Erik Rosenkrantz (1427-1503) and Sophie Gyldenstierne (+1477), parents of Kirstine Rosenkrantz (+1509), the maternal grandmother of Tycho Brahe's mother, Beate Bille (1526-1605). It seems most likely that the two famous Shakespearean characters were modeled after an inseparable pair of vocal students from the University of Wittenberg (founded 1502), Knud Gyldenstierne and Frederick Rosenkrantz, who visited England and Scotland in 1592, as part of the Danish legation. Both, like Tycho Brahe himself, were from the close-knit Danish nobility. Not surprisingly, the three men were relatives. Frederick Rosenkrantz is presented as a third cousin of Tycho Brahe's. Incidentally, Rosenkrantz returned to London in 1600 just as Hamlet was being written (he had just visted Tycho Brahe in Prague, traveling with Johannes Kepler). This piece of trivia keeps popping up on the Internet, with various speculations next to elements of the above explanation"
Also, Brahe's Wikipedia entry notes "In 1998, Sky & Telescope magazine published an article by Donald W. Olson, Marilynn S. Olson and Russell L. Doescher arguing, in part, that Tycho's supernova was also the same "star that's westward from the pole" in Shakespeare's Hamlet."