Renaissance Magic and Hermeticism in the Shakespeare Sonnets : Like Prayers Divine

This study seeks to show how the magical language and occult methods of the Italian Renaissance are the key to understanding the mysteries of the Shakespeare sonnets, both as a cycle and as individual poems.

The book explores how the influence of Giordano Bruno's "Heroic Enthusiasms", Plato's "Symposium", Trismegistus' "Corpus Hermiticum", emblem books, and Italian "magic" in its various overlapping forms provided the foundation and content of Shakespeare's sonnets.

It provides convincing evidence that Bruno's code, so carefully explained in his commentaries, was commonly imitated in the London of the Shakespeare's time.

It provides a concise history of the 200-year detective search to locate historical persons to match the unnamed beloveds of Shakespeare's sonnets.

Mention is made of the various methods of criticism applied to the sonnets.