The Science of Shakespeare (62 page)

†
For a more thorough look at the “problem of Easter,” leading to the Gregorian calendar reform, see Chapter 2 of my earlier book
In Search of Time
.

*
The question of whether Copernicus should be considered German or Polish is a nonstarter, as the concept of “nationality” as we know it today did not exist in the sixteenth century. He likely would have considered himself a “Prussian.” (See Sobel, p. 5; Davies, p. 20.)

†
The meaning of “humanist” has evolved over the centuries—today we think of “secular humanism,” but in the sixteenth century it referred to an engagement with civic life, devotion to learning, and the quest to live a virtuous life; the art and literature of antiquity were held up as models of what could be achieved. It is from this usage that we refer to certain streams of higher education as “the humanities.”

*
In an occultation, the moon appears to pass in front of a star, causing the star to disappear for up to several hours.

*
For an interesting analysis of why it took fourteen hundred years for anyone (beyond a handful of ancient Greek thinkers) to take this simple step, see Margolis, pp. 91–102.

*
This idea is often associated with the medieval English monk William of Ockham (or Occam), and is known as “Ockham's razor.” In his own words, “Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.” (quoted in I. Bernard Cohen,
Birth of a New Physics
, p. 127)

*
You can see this effect without leaving your chair: With your arm outstretched and your thumb raised, close one eye. Now switch to the other eye. Note how the background, behind your thumb, seems to shift. That's parallax.

*
For a useful discussion, see Dennis Danielson's essay in
Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion
(ed. Ronald L. Numbers, 2009).

*
These remarks—which may be little more than hearsay—are discussed in Dava Sobel's wonderful biography of Copernicus,
A More Perfect Heaven
(2011); see also Daniel Boorstin's
The Discoverers
, p. 302. Note that Luther (1483–1546) was an almost exact contemporary of Copernicus.

*
However, historians caution against reading these condemnations as flowing from “the Church.” They are more accurately seen as indicative of local conflicts; in this case, the condemnation was issued by a local bishop. (See Michael J. Shank's essay in
Galileo Goes to Jail
.)

*
Stellar parallax was eventually detected—but not until the 1830s.

*
“Nearly unthinkable,” but not completely so: The idea of a purely naturalistic universe has ancient roots, notably in the writing of the Greek atomists and their followers, as we will see in Chapters 13 and 14.

*
As we will see, however, it is
possible
that English astronomers had something like a primitive telescope in the second half of the sixteenth century.

*
Confusingly, the star has more than one name. 3C10 refers to its catalog designation from the 1950s, when remnants of the star were first identified using radio telescopes. Astronomers eventually concluded that this had indeed been the star that Tycho and others had observed in 1572. Astronomers sometimes call it “SN 1572” (SN for supernova; 1572 for the year it was first observed). It is often simply called “Tycho's star” in the popular literature, or, in reference to its current appearance, “Tycho's supernova remnant.” (Also, there is more than one model for the physics behind this type of supernova; a merger of two white dwarfs might also produce such events.)

*
There's a significant margin of error in the distance to 3C10, and therefore also in the estimate of how long it took the light to reach Earth. If it were
exactly
nine thousand light-years distant, then we could say that it exploded more than 9,440 years ago (9,000 years for the light to reach Earth, plus the 440-plus years that have passed since Tycho observed it).

*
The technical term is
diurnal parallax
.

*
Today we usually think of letters as private—but in those days it was common to publish a letter if its contents were thought to be of interest to a larger audience beyond the named recipient. (A famous example from a half century later is Galileo's “Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina,” which was widely circulated and clearly meant to be read by educated readers besides the duchess.)

*
One might imagine that the last adherents of Tycho's system would have died several centuries ago—but not so. A handful of biblically minded Creationists, primarily in the U.S., still argue for the Tychonic system over that of Copernicus; after all, it's consistent with most observations, and manages to keep the Earth at the center of the universe. (See DeWitt, p. 139.)

*
Owen Gingerich eventually tracked down Digges's own copy of
De revolutionibus
, which is now in a library in Geneva. There aren't too many annotations, but, tellingly, Digges wrote on the title page, “
Vulgi opinio Error
” (“the common opinion errs”). Gingerich also found two copies that had been owned by Dee (Gingerich,
The Book Nobody Read
, pp. 119, 242).

*
Ephemeris tables list the positions (coordinates) of celestial objects over a given time period.

*
Note that a theory of “gravity,” as we think of it today, would remain elusive until the work of Newton more than sixty years later.

*
Times, however, have changed, and the Vatican has recently made peace with the idea of alien civilizations. In 2008, the director of the Vatican Observatory, José Gabriel Funes, told the Vatican's newspaper that the existence of intelligent aliens “doesn't contradict our faith” because such beings would still be God's creatures.” In the interview, headlined “The Extraterrestrial Is My Brother,” Funes also acknowledged that the universe was billions of years old and likely began with the big bang—although it was designed by God and is “not the result of chance.” (Ariel David, “Heavens big enough for both God and aliens, says Vatican astronomer.”
The Globe and Mail
, May 14, 2008, p. A3.)

*
While tennis was enjoyed by the nobility, football (“soccer” to North Americans) was seen as a vulgar sport suitable only for the lower classes. In
King Lear
, Kent contemptuously calls Oswald a “base football player” (1.4.74).

*
Full confession: I can't actually read Latin, beyond picking out a few key words; however, it would have been a shame to visit Oxford without taking the time to view some of these remarkable documents firsthand. This, of course, meant reciting the Bodleian Library's centuries-old oath, which includes a promise “… not to bring into the Library, or kindle therein, any fire or flame.…” If only those in charge of the ancient library at Alexandria had been as vigilant.…

*
Another such figure is Robert Fludd (1574–1637), an English philosopher, medical doctor, and alchemist. Fludd was a vocal supporter of the Copernican model—which he tied to “a mystical explanation for the formation of the universe involving an angelic hierarchy and the mutually influential macrocosm and microcosm,” as Lesley Cormack describes it (Cormack, “Science and Technology,” p. 517).

*
If not a chicken, an edible bird of some kind. The account from John Aubrey refers to it as a “fowl.”

*
Perhaps curiosity ran in the Stuart family. His great-grandfather, James IV of Scotland, wondered what language a child would speak if raised in isolation and without exposure to any specific “mother tongue.” A chronicler named Robert Lindsay reports the king's cruel but at least quasi-scientific experiment: He “caused two children to be marooned with a deaf-and-dumb nurse on the island of Inchkeith … [and] furnished them with al Necessaries … desiring to understand the Language the Bairns [children] could speak when they came of lawful age.” Unfortunately, we have no record of the result. Lindsay provides only the rumored outcome: “Some say they spak guid Hebrew. But as to myself, I know not” (quoted in Guthrie, p. 1193).

*
Even with the breathing tube, carbon dioxide would have built up within the vessel, probably to dangerous levels. It's not certain how Drebbel solved this problem. One guess is that he heated “nitre”—either potassium nitrate or sodium nitrate—in a metal pan, causing it to release oxygen; the residue would also act to absorb carbon dioxide. (A diarist noted that Drebbel used a “cheymicall liquor” that worked to “restore the troubled air.”) (
http://www.nmmc.co.uk/index.php?/collections/featured_boats/the_drebbel_submarine
)

*
Knowing that each child may not be long for this world, were parents reluctant to bond with their offspring? Historians have found no evidence to support such a notion. Jeffrey Forgeng notes the following words written by a nobleman, addressed to his newborn son: “I love thee, boy, well. I have no more, but God bless you, my sweet child, in this world forever, as I in this world find myself happy in my children. From Ludlow Castle this 28th of October, 1578.” The note is signed, “Your very loving father.” (Forgeng,
Daily Life in Elizabethan England,
p. 47)

*
And we shouldn't make too much of the fact that Shakespeare's oldest sister was baptized a Catholic, as she was born when Mary was still on the throne. William was born six years after Elizabeth's accession.

*
“Prain”? What's a prain? None of the major editions have a footnote to assist the reader, but, as Scott Maisano explained it to me, it's simply “brain” pronounced in a way that reflects Evans's Welsh accent. (The joke is that the teacher is chiding the student over his slow progress with Latin, while he himself hasn't yet mastered English.) An online search of the canon seems to back up this interpretation: Shakespeare uses “prain” a handful of times—but it is only spoken by Evans and by another Welshman, Captain Fluellen from
Henry V
. In each case the context does seem to suggest “brain.”

*
It may be a useful intellectual exercise to reach back 110 years, to the time of Albert Einstein's youth, rather than the nearly 450 years in the case of Shakespeare. Einstein, still working on his PhD, was employed as a patent clerk when he came up with the insight that led him to the first part of his theory of relativity. A miracle? No—just the outcome of an extraordinarily agile mind, a nurturing network of friends, and nerve-racking hours, days, and months of hard work.

*
We will never know if Shakespeare agreed with Francis Bacon's (horribly sexist) sentiment that having a wife and children spelled the end of one's creativity: “He that have wife and children hath given hostage to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprise, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from unmarried or childless men, which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public.” (quoted in Pritchard, pp. 28–29)

*
The Jews had been a presence in England (and especially London) since the time of William the Conqueror, but had been expelled by Edward I in 1290. While some may have remained and practiced their faith in secret, there was no active Jewish community from the expulsion until the time of Oliver Cromwell in the mid-seventeenth century (and we know from court records that a number of Jews were discovered and deported during this period).

†
The bear was tied to a post, while hungry dogs were set loose in the enclosure. While unspeakably cruel to twenty-first-century eyes, it was clearly not seen that way at the time. One contemporary observer described bear baiting as “a sport very pleasant,” as the bear tried to fight off the dogs, “with biting, with clawing, with roaring, tossing and tumbling…” (quoted in Ridley, p. 269). Henry VIII enjoyed bear baiting; his daughter Elizabeth even more so. Shakespeare alludes to the spectacle metaphorically in
Macbeth
: As the protagonist's world closes in around him, he vows that “bear-like I must fight the course” (5.7.2). Bear baiting was finally banned in 1835.

*
It is unfortunate, though perhaps not surprising, that Lanyer is better known not for her own writing but for (allegedly) being the “dark lady” of Shakespeare's sonnets. (There is no hard evidence for this theory, and the idea is not widely accepted.)

*
For whatever reason, Shakespeare chose not to pay his taxes on that occasion. As Charles Nicholl notes, “This is not remarkable—the system was chaotic, and evasion was common—but it is piquant to find that the first actual documentation of Shakespeare in London is as a tax-dodger” (Nicholl, p. 41).

*
Shakespeare had become something of a celebrity by this time. A remarkable booklet by a man named Francis Meres, dated 1598, lists a number of his plays (and is thus invaluable for deducing their chronology), and compares the playwright to the greatest of the ancients: “As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the Latins; so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage…” (quoted in Chute, p. 179).

*
Although still the subject of some controversy, a manuscript for the play
Sir Thomas More
, now in the collection of the British Library, may contain a longer sample of Shakespeare's handwriting. The play was a collaborative effort, and a three-page section is widely believed to be in the playwright's hand.

†
And yet it can be done: The best of the no-nonsense biographies is
Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life
by Samuel Schoenbaum (1987).

*
Of Shakepseare's 154 sonnets, 126 appear to be addressed to a young man (referred to as a “fair youth”), including sonnet 18 (“Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate…”). The sonnets hardly constitute proof of homosexuality, as men routinely spoke of “loving” other men in Shakesepare's time, whether there was a sexual component or not. Even so, a number of candidates for the playwright's possible gay lover(s) have been put forward, including his early patrons, Henry Wriothesley, the Third Earl of Southampton, and William Herbert, the Third Earl of Pembroke.