Line, Jill

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Line, Jill

PERSONAL:

Education: University of London, B.Ed.; Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, England, M.A.

ADDRESSES:

Home—England.

CAREER:

Educator, lecturer, and writer. Taught in the drama department of the University of Surrey (now University of Roehampton), Roehampton, England; lectures on Shakespeare for organizations, including Temenos, the Prince of Wales' Summer School for Teachers, part of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the Francis Bacon Research Trust (FBRT); co-leads Wisdom of Shakespeare summer school, Warwickshire, England, 2004—.

WRITINGS:

Shakespeare and the Fire of Love, Shepheard-Walwyn (London, England), 2004, published as Shakespeare and the Ideal of Love, Inner Traditions (Rochester, VT), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Jill Line is an educator and lecturer whose areas of expertise include drama, Platonic and Renaissance philosophy, and William Shakespeare. In addition to teaching drama at the University of Surrey (now the University of Roehampton) in England, the author has also lectured widely on Shakespeare for a number of organizations, including Temenos, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the Francis Bacon Research Trust (FBRT). Since 2004, she has also co-led the Wisdom of Shakespeare summer school in Warwickshire, England. The five-day Wisdom of Shakespeare program provides students with the opportunity to investigate more deeply the wisdom embodied in Shakespeare's plays and understand them as a major part of and vehicle for the Western Wisdom tradition.

In her book Shakespeare and the Ideal of Love, published in England as Shakespeare and the Fire of Love, the author writes about influences on Shakespeare's plays and how Shakespeare shared a philosophy with a long line of philosophers and teachers such as Pythagoras, Plato, and Plotinus. Of special interest to the author is the influence that a fifteenth-century Italian priest, scholar, and mystic named Marsilio Ficino had on Shakespeare. In relation to Ficino, Line relates that the Neoplatonic philosophy of love is central to the inner meanings of some of Shakespeare's plays.

Ficino (1433-1499) was a Florentine who had a profound influence on European society via his writings and his Platonic Academy of Florence, which stressed the writings of Plato and his followers as holding the key to the most crucial knowledge that a person can have, that is, knowledge of God and the immortal principles God gave to humans. Most of the major thinkers and artists of his time were in touch with Ficino, who inspired such artists as Botticelli, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Furthermore, Ficino's De Amore, a commentary on Plato's views of love in the form of Christian Platonism, was translated into English, thus influencing a generation of English dramatists and other writers.

In Ficino's philosophy, love was a vital force responsible for the creation of everything, from the mind to the soul to the material world. He also believed that it was only through love that these worlds expand and intersect with each other. In her book, Line presents her interpretation of how Shakespeare's plays, based on much of Ficino's thinking, are more than mere poetic literary constructs. Rather, the author's examination of the plays' inner meanings have led her to believe that they represent mirrors of the progress of the soul in a variety of conditions and situations as humans, knowingly or unknowingly, strive to return to the divine unity.

Line examines a host of Shakespeare's plays, from Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet to A Midsummer Night's Dream and Love's Labours Lost. In the process, the author goes beyond the reputation of romantic comedic plays, such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, as witty entertainment to reveal a subtext of how winning one's true love was, in the Platonic sense, an act of achieving perfections within oneself and recognizing the true God-like nature of the one they love. One example the author presents is in the play As You Like It, in which Rosalind is sought after by Orlando for her beauty but it is only when Rosalind disguises herself as a man that Orlando recognizes that it is her inner beauty that he loves, and that he is beginning to see the true nature of both his own and Rosalind's souls.

Writing on the Renaissance Magazine Web site, K. Filan also noted that, in addition to Shakespeare's comedies, the author's "Platonic interpretations of major Shakespearean works such as Hamlet … are sensible and thought-provoking." Filan also commented that readers of Line's exploration of meaning in Shakespeare's plays will be able "to spot glimpses of the eternal and timeless in Shakespeare's work." A California Bookwatch contributor noted the author's "fine blend of literary criticism and spiritual interpretation."