20th May 2016
There's a completely fabulous exhibition on John Dee on now in London at the Royal College of Physicians – 'Scholar, courtier, magician: the lost library of John Dee'. It runs until the 29th July, and entry is free. Dee was such a fascinating figure – a student of both science and what we would call magic at Elizabeth I's court. He exemplifies the interesting tension between religion and the belief in the occult at the time – in The Queen's Fool he made the perfect historical character to guide the fictional Hannah in her use of the Sight. This is Hannah's first impression of him:
This was an older man, near thirty years of age, with the pale skin of a scholar, and dark deep-set eyes. I had seen his sort before. He was one of those who visited my father’s bookshop in Aragon, who came to us in Paris and who would be one of my father’s customers and friends here in London. He was a scholar, I could see it in the stoop of his neck and the rounded shoulders. He was a writer, I saw the permanent stain of ink on the third finger of his right hand; and he was something greater even than these: a thinker, a man prepared to seek out what was hidden. He was a dangerous man: a man not afraid of heresies, not afraid of questions, always wanting to know more; a man who would seek the truth behind the truth.
https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/events/scholar-courtier-magician-lost-library-john-dee
Images: John Dee, c.1594, Ashmolean Museum; John Dee performing an experiment before Queen Elizabeth I, by Henry Gillard Glindoni (1852–1913), Wellcome Library no. 47369i. Both on loan to the RCP exhibition.