Lucretius and Shakespeare on the Nature of Things maps large, new vistas for understanding the relationship between De rerum natura and Shakespeare’s works. In chapters on six important plays across the canon (King Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream), it demonstrates that Shakespeare articulates his erotics of being, his “great creating nature” (The Winter’s Tale), by drawing on imagery he learned from Ovid and other classical poets, but especially from Lucretius, in his powerful epic that celebrates Venus and her endless creativity. Responding to Lucretius’s widely admired Latinity in his exposition of the life of man in nature, Shakespeare emerges as an early modern materialist who writes poetry that is effectively “atomic,” marked (as we might say today) by fission (hendiadys, for example) and fusion (synoeciosis, for example), joining and splitting, splitting and joining language and character as no other poet has ever done – To give away yourself keeps yourself still; My grave is like to be my wedding bed; I begin/To doubt the equivocation of the fiend/That lies like truth. Readers of Shoaf’s book will encounter anew, through both fresh evidence and close reading, Shakespeare’s universally acknowledged commitment to the art of nature and the nature of art. With Lucretius’s poetry as inspiration, Shakespeare becomes the poet of the material, both in art and in nature, immensely creative with his dædala lingua like dædala natura – his wonder-crafting tongue like wonder-working nature.

Book IV of Lucretius' great philosophical poem deals mainly with the psychology of sensation and thought. The heart of this book is a new text, incorporating the latest scholarship on the text of Lucretius, with a clear prose facing translation. The commentary concentrates on the thought of the text (relating it to other philosophers beside Epicurus) and the poetry of the Latin, placing the text in relation to Roman literature in general, and attempting to demonstrate the poetic genius of Lucretius. The introduction deals with the didactic tradition in ancient literature and Lucretius' place in it, the structure of De Rerum Natura, the salient features of the philosophy of Epicurus and the transmission of the text.

One of the world's most celebrated scholars, Greenblatt has crafted both an innovative work of history and a thrilling story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it.

"The Atomic Theory of Lucretius" is a scientific essay written by Fleeming Jenkin which deals with principles of atomic theory covering the theory of matter and a postulate by Lucretius. Atomic theory is the scientific theory that matter is composed of particles called atoms. Atomic theory traces its origins to an ancient philosophical tradition known as atomism, elaborated by Roman philosopher Lucretius. According to this idea, if one were to take a lump of matter and cut it into ever smaller pieces, one would eventually reach a point where the pieces could not be further cut into anything smaller.

The Rape of Lucrece - William Shakespeare - The Rape of Lucrece (1594) is a narrative poem by William Shakespeare about the legendary Roman noblewoman Lucretia. In his previous narrative poem, Venus and Adonis (1593), Shakespeare had included a dedicatory letter to his patron, the Earl of Southampton, in which he promised to compose a "graver labour". Accordingly, The Rape of Lucrece has a serious tone throughout. The poem begins with a prose dedication addressed directly to the Earl of Southampton, which begins, "The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end." It refers to the poem as a pamphlet, which describes the form of its original publication of 1594.The dedication is followed by "The Argument", a prose paragraph that summarizes the historical context of the poem, which begins in medias res. The poem contains 1,855 lines, divided into 265 stanzas of seven lines each. The meter of each line is iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme for each stanza is ABABBCC, a format known as "rhyme royal", which has been used by Geoffrey Chaucer, John Milton and John Masefield. One evening, at the town of Ardea, where a battle is being fought, two leading Roman soldiers, Tarquin and Collatine, are talking. Collatine describes his wife, Lucrece, in glowing terms—she is beautiful and chaste. The following morning, Tarquin travels to Collatine's home. Lucrece welcomes him. Tarquin entertains her with stories of her husband's deeds on the battlefield.Tarquin spends the night, and is torn by his desire for Lucrece. His desire overcomes him, and he goes to Lucrece's chamber, where she is asleep. He reaches out and touches her breast, which wakes her up. She is afraid. He tells her that she must give in to him, or else he will kill her. He also threatens to cause her dishonor by murdering a slave and placing the two bodies in each other's arms, and then he would claim that he killed her because he discovered them in this embrace. If she would give in to him, Tarquin promises to keep it all secret. Lucrece pleads with him to no avail. He rapes her. Full of shame and guilt, Tarquin sneaks away. Lucrece is devastated, furious and suicidal. She writes a letter to her husband, asking him to come home. When Collatine gets home, Lucrece tells him the whole story, but doesn't say who did it. Collatine demands to know. Before she tells him, Lucrece gets the soldiers, who are also there, to promise to avenge this crime. She then tells her husband who did it, and she immediately pulls out a knife, stabs herself and dies. Collatine's grief is great—he wants to kill himself, as well. His friend, Brutus, suggests that revenge is a better choice. The soldiers carry Lucrece's body through the streets of Rome. The citizens, angered, banish Tarquin and his family.

This volume offers authoritative discussions of all aspects of the philosophy of Epicurus (340-271 BCE) and then traces Epicurean influences throughout the Western tradition. It is an unmatched resource for those wishing to deepen their knowledge of Epicureanism's powerful arguments about death, happiness, and the nature of the material world.

William Shakespeare lived at a remarkable time—a period we now recognize as the first phase of the Scientific Revolution. New ideas were transforming Western thought, the medieval was giving way to the modern, and the work of a few key figures hinted at the brave new world to come: the methodical and rational Galileo, the skeptical Montaigne, and—as Falk convincingly argues—Shakespeare, who observed human nature just as intently as the astronomers who studied the night sky. In The Science of Shakespeare, we meet a colorful cast of Renaissance thinkers, including Thomas Digges, who published the first English account of the "new astronomy" and lived in the same neighborhood as Shakespeare; Thomas Harriot—"England's Galileo"—who aimed a telescope at the night sky months ahead of his Italian counterpart; and Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, whose observatory-castle stood within sight of Elsinore, chosen by Shakespeare as the setting for Hamlet—and whose family crest happened to include the names "Rosencrans" and "Guildensteren." And then there's Galileo himself: As Falk shows, his telescopic observations may have influenced one of Shakespeare's final works. Dan Falk's The Science of Shakespeare explores the connections between the famous playwright and the beginnings of the Scientific Revolution—and how, together, they changed the world forever.