If we are to examine Shakespeare’s use of, and relationship with magic, we must first attempt to understand, as he did, the society to which he belonged. Whether magic was humorous, revered, demonised, or conspiratorial, it was deeply imbedded in a society that for thousands of years had been pagan, and therefore assumed authentic. Queen Elizabeth had ‘a profound sense of the cosmos acting upon her’ and was said to have healing hands, her touch being thought of as ‘vindication’ of her place on the throne and ‘proof that the Pope’s attempt to excommunicate her had been vetoed by God.’ Belief in magic was so fervent it was thought to be a factor in ‘affairs of state’. Elizabeth’s government were so concerned about a ‘crude’ image of the queen which had been was discovered, that they ‘called in John Dee, the master of occult law, to prescribe protective measures.’ Thomas refers to a ‘search being carried out for sorcerers’ after the ‘discovery of a wax doll’ resembling a monarch ‘with pins stuck in it’ such was the momentousness of magic. The understanding of the occult was such that, instead of being the dichotomy by which we have come to understand them, magic and science were synonymous with one another. Paracelsus was a significant influence on Elizabethan occult beliefs. A mathematician, astrologer, alchemist, and doctor, he displayed a steadfast conviction in what currently might seem frivolous:

"You know that if a wax image of another person is buried and weighted with stones, then that person will suffer pain in the places where the stones lie and will not recover until the image is unburdened."
(Paracelsus, c. 1520, Volumaen Medicinae Paramirim)

A genius, although also arguably a perfectionist madman, it is no surprise that Paracelsus would have treated such concepts as unambiguous. This was due not to his madness, but to the period in which he lived, and also, that years of practice had proved the theory correct.

Paracelsus was the first ‘isolated and lonely figure’ in a select number of those thought to be ‘Renaissance Magi’. Giordano Bruno, who took the ‘bolder course of maintaining that the magical Egyptian religion of the world was not only the most ancient but also the only true religion, which both Judaism and Christianity had obscured and corrupted’, may well have been correct, but was not allowed time enough to provide evidence being burned as a heretic for his boldness. The aforementioned John Dee, a mathematic genius, ‘enjoyed the favour of Queen Elizabeth’ as we already appreciate, but his ‘anguish’ at the ‘destruction of the monastic libraries’ and his attempt to ‘rescue as much of their contents as possible’, left him labelled a ‘conjuror’ and a sympathiser of the ‘Papist past’ in a Protestant England. These were the foremost Renaissance Magi, men known for magic and science. This juxtaposition of the two, along with the strong belief in magic’s existence
is as much a part of Elizabethan society, as Elizabeth herself.