"We cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from... Therefore there is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements"
About this Quote
A strangely Lucretian bit of cosmology to pin on Shakespeare, but it lands because it sounds like the era thinking out loud: the world as a stage built from stubborn stuff, not miracles. The “seed” image is the key move. It sneaks a homely, bodily metaphor into an abstract claim about matter, making philosophy feel like common sense. Nothing comes from nothing; nothing simply disappears. What we call endings are rearrangements.
The subtext is less physics than mood. Shakespeare’s drama is crowded with apparent annihilations: reputations ruined, kingdoms toppled, lovers “dead” to each other, bodies actually dead. This line pressures that theatrical finality. It insists that loss is never clean, that consequences don’t vanish on cue. Guilt, desire, and political violence may “dissolve,” but they persist in new forms, circulating through families and states like elements in a closed system. That’s why the sentence turns from creation to return: it’s not comforting so much as unsparing.
Contextually, it fits an early modern world in tension between Christian creation ex nihilo and revived classical atomism. The phrasing argues with the supernatural without naming it, offering a materialist logic that can sit inside a culture still officially metaphysical. Coming from a dramatist, the intent isn’t to publish a scientific thesis; it’s to give audiences a bracing framework for tragedy: the curtain falls, but nothing is truly over.
The subtext is less physics than mood. Shakespeare’s drama is crowded with apparent annihilations: reputations ruined, kingdoms toppled, lovers “dead” to each other, bodies actually dead. This line pressures that theatrical finality. It insists that loss is never clean, that consequences don’t vanish on cue. Guilt, desire, and political violence may “dissolve,” but they persist in new forms, circulating through families and states like elements in a closed system. That’s why the sentence turns from creation to return: it’s not comforting so much as unsparing.
Contextually, it fits an early modern world in tension between Christian creation ex nihilo and revived classical atomism. The phrasing argues with the supernatural without naming it, offering a materialist logic that can sit inside a culture still officially metaphysical. Coming from a dramatist, the intent isn’t to publish a scientific thesis; it’s to give audiences a bracing framework for tragedy: the curtain falls, but nothing is truly over.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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