Shakespeare's Clocks
PFStreitz
BRUTUS: Peace! Count the clock.
CASSIUS: The clock hath stricken three.
paul streitz
David Kathman
Alan Jones
"David Kathman" <dj...@popd.ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:3B5663C4...@popd.ix.netcom.com...
> PFStreitz wrote:
> >
> > Did Shakespeare make a mistake?
> >
> > BRUTUS: Peace! Count the clock.
> > CASSIUS: The clock hath stricken three.
> >
> > paul streitz
>
> Yes.
Well, at least he's consistent: "Julius Caesar" also includes
references to a "doublet" and to "hats". The setting of the play is
not ancient Rome but the stage of the Globe Theatre, where clocks
could strike and most of the audience were wearing doublets and hats.
I'm sure Shakespeare and most of his audience knew full well that
ancient Rome had no striking clocks or doublets or Elizabethan hats.
This isn't a mistake; it's a deliberate theatrical effect. You might
as well say that Veronese, in his huge and gorgeous painting of "The
Family of Darius before Alexander" (National Gallery, London)
made a mistake when he clothed the figures in sumptuous Renaissance
garb, including some deeply inauthentic "classical" armour.
Alan Jones
Mark Steese
that wrote news:SNv57.3733$Ii1.5...@news1.cableinet.net, on the day of 19
Jul 2001:
> "David Kathman" <dj...@popd.ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
> news:3B5663C4...@popd.ix.netcom.com...
>> PFStreitz wrote:
>> >
>> > Did Shakespeare make a mistake?
>> >
>> > BRUTUS: Peace! Count the clock.
>> > CASSIUS: The clock hath stricken three.
>> >
>> > paul streitz
>>
>> Yes.
>
> Well, at least he's consistent: "Julius Caesar" also includes
> references to a "doublet" and to "hats". The setting of the play is
> not ancient Rome but the stage of the Globe Theatre, where clocks
> could strike and most of the audience were wearing doublets and hats.
>
> I'm sure Shakespeare and most of his audience knew full well that
> ancient Rome had no striking clocks or doublets or Elizabethan hats.
I'll grant you the costumes, but what makes you so sure about the clocks?
If you assume the production actually involved a striking clock, then
Cassius's line makes little sense - presumably both Shakespeare and the
audience were capable of counting three. (Presumably Brutus was, as well;
Cassius's line mainly serves to tell the audience what time the scene is
taking place.)
> This isn't a mistake; it's a deliberate theatrical effect. [snip]
Your certainty in this regard is a bit puzzling. Are you under the
impression that Shakespeare was incapable of error?
Yours,
Mark Steese
--
Ye monsters of the bubbling deep,
Your Maker's praises shout,
Up from the sands, ye codlings, leap
And wag your tails about. -Unknown Boston Hymnodist
Paul Crowley
> "David Kathman" <dj...@popd.ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
> news:3B5663C4...@popd.ix.netcom.com...
> > PFStreitz wrote:
> > >
> > > Did Shakespeare make a mistake?
> > >
> > > BRUTUS: Peace! Count the clock.
> > > CASSIUS: The clock hath stricken three.
> > >
> > > paul streitz
> >
> > Yes.
>
> Well, at least he's consistent: "Julius Caesar" also includes
> references to a "doublet" and to "hats". The setting of the play is
> not ancient Rome but the stage of the Globe Theatre, where clocks
> could strike and most of the audience were wearing doublets and hats.
>
> I'm sure Shakespeare and most of his audience knew full well that
> ancient Rome had no striking clocks or doublets or Elizabethan hats.
The great majority of any audience would have missed
these things. When you're focussing on the action small
things like this can slip by unnoticed.
> This isn't a mistake; it's a deliberate theatrical effect.
No. It's not a theatrical effect. The text could be altered
to excluded these matters and there would be no
change to the action or the drama.
They are mistakes -- but they are deliberate mistakes.
The playwright was having a bit of private fun -- seeing
how much, or how little, audiences would pick the
'mistakes' up. I suspect that there were a few pedants
who had no feeling at all for the drama, but DID pick up
these mistakes -- the David Webb type -- and he loved
annoying them by putting such 'mistakes' in.
Of course, this argument is lost on the vast majority
of Americans -- their culture lacks the more subtle
forms of speech; for most 'irony' is something to do
with shirts. Older stagers around here will remember
when Dave Kathman told us that he knew all about the
UK hobby of 'trainspotting'. He'd seen the film.
Paul
--
Email: pebj...@ubgznvy.pbz (apply ROT13)
Alan Jones
"Paul Crowley" <pebj...@ubgznvy.pbz (apply ROT13)> wrote in message
news:hBI57.17980$Fk7.1...@news.indigo.ie...
> Alan Jones <a...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message
news:SNv57.3733$Ii1.5...@news1.cableinet.net...
> > This isn't a mistake; it's a deliberate theatrical effect.
>
> No. It's not a theatrical effect. The text could be altered
> to excluded these matters and there would be no
> change to the action or the drama.
Having directed this play several times, I must disagree. The "clock"
is in an extremely tense scene which is suddenly interrupted by a
bell-stroke. This is at the point where Brutus has tried to lighten
the mood after he has defied the others by insisting that Antony be
spared. His next word "Peace!" indicates to me that someone - perhaps
Cassius - is trying once more to raise the matter of killing Antony.
"Peace! Count the clock," means that there is then silence for the
space of three further bell strokes (they have to wait for the fourth
_not_ to sound before Cassius can say "The clock hath stricken
three"). This long pause, punctuated by bell-strokes, is theatrically
most effective. It freezes the unknown objector, it focuses attention
on the critical decision Brutus has just made for the conspirators,
and the doom-laden sound of the bell is chilling. Shakespeare rather
rarely requires sound effects, but when he does so, they seem always
to me deeply significant. I won't now take up space in justifying the
hats and the doublet, but again I think that much is lost if the
director negates them by using Roman dress.
> They are mistakes -- but they are deliberate mistakes.
> The playwright was having a bit of private fun -- seeing
> how much, or how little, audiences would pick the
> 'mistakes' up. >
Deliberate, yes; fun, no. This is a serious play, with contemporary
resonances for the audience in its treatment of personalities and
politics. It has aspirations to a kind of formal literary splendour (I
seem to remember that it has less prose than any other of the
tragedies). Its little jokes in the opening scene are soon silenced,
with only sour wit to be found later. Its structural plan is as
rigidly symmetrical as a classical temple. Fun? I don't think so.
Alan Jones
Bob Grumman
> The playwright was having a bit of private fun -- seeing
> how much, or how little, audiences would pick the
> 'mistakes' up. I suspect that there were a few pedants
> who had no feeling at all for the drama, but DID pick up
> these mistakes -- the David Webb type -- and he loved
> annoying them by putting such 'mistakes' in.
To what Paul has just said, I would like to add that Shakespeare
especially loved putting such "mistakes" in when he was writing
at Count Monarcho's country estate in South Hampton, with his favorite
cocker spaniel, Agnes, asleep in his lap, and the queen at his
side, humming "A Bugger Blue was Jack MacGrew"--with Hank
Wriosthley accompanying her on the drums.
--Bob G.
Paul Crowley
> Having directed this play several times, I must disagree. The "clock"
> is in an extremely tense scene which is suddenly interrupted by a
> bell-stroke. This is at the point where Brutus has tried to lighten
> the mood after he has defied the others by insisting that Antony be
> spared. His next word "Peace!" indicates to me that someone - perhaps
> Cassius - is trying once more to raise the matter of killing Antony.
> "Peace! Count the clock," means that there is then silence for the
> space of three further bell strokes (they have to wait for the fourth
> _not_ to sound before Cassius can say "The clock hath stricken
> three"). This long pause, punctuated by bell-strokes, is theatrically
> most effective. It freezes the unknown objector, it focuses attention
> on the critical decision Brutus has just made for the conspirators,
> and the doom-laden sound of the bell is chilling. Shakespeare rather
> rarely requires sound effects, but when he does so, they seem always
> to me deeply significant.
Sure, there is a supreme dramatist at work. But why
make a clock an important, even central, feature in
a play set in a time when, as everyone knows, there
were no clocks? I see the play as having taken some
time to reach its present form -- with many revisions
over many years. The clocks started as a simple, if
largely private joke ("how many of those dumbos are
going to spot this?") which gradually became more
integral to the drama.
> Deliberate, yes; fun, no.
Not 'fun' in the sense that the audience was supposed
to laugh (nor was anyone was supposed to laugh).
Just a little touch of ironic humour.
> This is a serious play, with contemporary
> resonances for the audience in its treatment of personalities and
> politics. It has aspirations to a kind of formal literary splendour (I
> seem to remember that it has less prose than any other of the
> tragedies). Its little jokes in the opening scene are soon silenced,
> with only sour wit to be found later. Its structural plan is as
> rigidly symmetrical as a classical temple. Fun? I don't think so.
There are more references (and more pointed references)
to clocks in this play than in all (or nearly all) others. That
is hardly a coincidence.
Act 2, Sc 1
TREBONIUS There is no fear in him; let him not die;
For he will live, and laugh at this hereafter.
[Clock strikes]
BRUTUS Peace! count the clock.
CASSIUS The clock hath stricken three.
TREBONIUS 'Tis time to part.
Act 2, Sc 2
CAESAR Welcome, Publius.
What, Brutus, are you stirr'd so early too?
Good morrow, Casca. Caius Ligarius,
Caesar was ne'er so much your enemy
As that same ague which hath made you lean.
What is 't o'clock?
BRUTUS Caesar, 'tis strucken eight.
CAESAR I thank you for your pains and courtesy.
Act 2, Sc 4
PORTIA What is't o'clock?
Soothsayer About the ninth hour, lady.
PORTIA Is Caesar yet gone to the Capitol?
Act 5, Sc 3
BRUTUS Are yet two Romans living such as these?
[..]
Labeo and Flavius, set our battles on:
'Tis three o'clock; and, Romans, yet ere night
We shall try fortune in a second fight.
Paul.
Alan Jones
"Mark Steese" <mst...@home.com> wrote in message
news:Xns90E380064199...@24.7.143.114...
About as fallible as Bach or Rembrandt, I suppose ...
Your point about the conspirators being able to count to three is one
naturally raised with a director by the actor playing Cassius - "Why
do I say this?" Surely the answer, within the fiction, is that he is
implying "We've been discussing this long enough - I'm tired and I'm
going home to bed", and that's effectively what Trebonius at once
says: " 'Tis time to part". This makes sense, especially given
Cassius' annoyance and alarm at Brutus' refusal to consider killing
Antony. Your suggestion that it's to inform the audience would be more
plausible if it came earlier in the scene, perhaps in the conversation
between Portia and Brutus.
Another reason is as one element in suggesting the speed with which
events are developing: the first half of the play observes an internal
unity of time sufficient to satisfy Aristotle, though historically the
conspiracy took some years to organise. One might compare the time
references (less numerically exact) in "Othello" which help to create
that play's appalling sense of headlong inevitability, or those in
"Hamlet" which do the opposite, giving substance to Hamlet's
self-accusation of delay. If you then look at the time references in
the second part, after the "hinge" scene of the triumvirs' meeting,
you find the same sense of events hurtling to disaster: it seems that
only a day elapses between Cassius' arrival at Brutus' camp and their
deaths, though really there was a protracted campaign across half the
Balkans before Antony and Octavian eventually gained control.
Alan Jones
Nicholas Whyte
> Hwæt! We have heard of the glory of "Alan Jones" <a...@blueyonder.co.uk>
> that wrote news:SNv57.3733$Ii1.5...@news1.cableinet.net, on the day of 19
> Jul 2001:
> > "David Kathman" <dj...@popd.ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
> > news:3B5663C4...@popd.ix.netcom.com...
> >> PFStreitz wrote:
> >> > Did Shakespeare make a mistake?
> >> >
> >> > BRUTUS: Peace! Count the clock.
> >> > CASSIUS: The clock hath stricken three.
> >> >
> >> > paul streitz
> >>
> >> Yes.
> >
> > Well, at least he's consistent: "Julius Caesar" also includes
> > references to a "doublet" and to "hats". The setting of the play is
> > not ancient Rome but the stage of the Globe Theatre, where clocks
> > could strike and most of the audience were wearing doublets and hats.
> >
> > I'm sure Shakespeare and most of his audience knew full well that
> > ancient Rome had no striking clocks or doublets or Elizabethan hats.
>
> I'll grant you the costumes, but what makes you so sure about the clocks?
Having been tempted into this newsgroup by Art Neuendorffer's quotes
from my web-site, I would like to offer the following observations:
1) Striking water-clocks were certainly developed in Roman times, and
are described by Vitruvius. They were however not widespread and were
more often used as alarms. A water-clock set up to strike every hour,
including three and four, would have been not impossible but unusual,
and the sound of three bell strikes would probably not have been
capable of an obvious interpretation by the average Roman in the same
way that it would have been by the average Elizabethan.
2) In my humble opinion, Shakespeare was writing a play, which is a
work of fiction, which contains things that are not true. He was
certainly well-read in all these matters but he was a dramatist, not a
researcher of the history of Roman technology, and "Julius Caesar" is
a play, not a lecture. So while this may be an interesting digression
on the history of chronology it has almost no relevance to
Shakespeare.
3) I'm rather shocked by the amount of vitriol and personal invective
on this newsgroup.
Nicholas Whyte
http://explorers.whyte.com/hos.htm
Neuendorffer
> > >> > Did Shakespeare make a mistake?
> > >> >
> > >> > BRUTUS: Peace! Count the clock.
> > >> > CASSIUS: The clock hath stricken three.
> "Alan Jones" <a...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> > > Well, at least he's consistent: "Julius Caesar" also includes
> > > references to a "doublet" and to "hats". The setting of the play is
> > > not ancient Rome but the stage of the Globe Theatre, where clocks
> > > could strike and most of the audience were wearing doublets and hats.
> > >
> > > I'm sure Shakespeare and most of his audience knew full well that
> > > ancient Rome had no striking clocks or doublets or Elizabethan hats.
> >
> > I'll grant you the costumes, but what makes you so sure about the clocks?
Nicholas Whyte wrote:
> Having been tempted into this newsgroup by Art Neuendorffer's quotes
> from my web-site, I would like to offer the following observations:
>
> 1) Striking water-clocks were certainly developed in Roman times, and
> are described by Vitruvius. They were however not widespread and were
> more often used as alarms. A water-clock set up to strike every hour,
> including three and four, would have been not impossible but unusual,
> and the sound of three bell strikes would probably not have been
> capable of an obvious interpretation by the average Roman in the same
> way that it would have been by the average Elizabethan.
Do you think that Elizabethans might have been aware of the existence
of striking Roman water-clocks or is this a fairly recent discovery?
> 2) In my humble opinion, Shakespeare was writing a play, which is a
> work of fiction, which contains things that are not true. He was
> certainly well-read in all these matters but he was a dramatist, not a
> researcher of the history of Roman technology, and "Julius Caesar" is
> a play, not a lecture. So while this may be an interesting digression
> on the history of chronology it has almost no relevance to
> Shakespeare.
The issue here is whether this represents ignorance or playfullness on
Shakespeare's part.
> 3) I'm rather shocked by the amount of vitriol and personal invective
> on this newsgroup.
It is mostly to scare away newbies; the old timers are relatively
immune to it.
Thanks for your valuable imput, Nicholas.
Art Neuendorffer
Sabyha
>Nicholas Whyte wrote:
>> 3) I'm rather shocked by the amount of vitriol and personal invective
>> on this newsgroup.
>
> It is mostly to scare away newbies; the old timers are relatively
>immune to it.
>
> Thanks for your valuable imput, Nicholas.
I have to agree with you, Art, to a certain degree, but in the past two days I
have been less than impressed with some of the personal attacks on people.
OK, Dr Kathman calling Richard Kennedy a *poophead* (I believe that is the
term) was a little bemusing.
Paul Crowley referring to Bob as having a *nervous breakdown* I found utterly
offensive.
And the usual suspects having a go at you, has me *rather* annoyed. (I am
trying to be polite, for once). I have always enjoyed your posts.
If there were no dissenting views, there would be no need for a public forum to
discuss things. We would just accept the status quo. I like how people
interpret things differently. But I am getting old and too tired to have a run
in with the HLAS stirrers, so I very rarely post. I just lurk around and hope
Ann sees a great article in the Guardian or goes to a Shakespeare marathon. Or
Geralyn has a review, etc. Rather sad state of affairs.
Jodie - Australia
http://members.aol.com/powtied/power1.html
Power of Will
Tom Reedy
news:aef59d20.0107...@posting.google.com...
<snip>
>
> 3) I'm rather shocked by the amount of vitriol and personal invective
> on this newsgroup.
>
> Nicholas Whyte
> http://explorers.whyte.com/hos.htm
>
Yes, it is shocking, isn't it? We've tried to raise the general level of
discourse here, but for some reason it never works on those idiots and
morons such as Streitz and Kennedy.
TR
Neuendorffer
King Henry VI, Part ii Act 4, Scene 2
SIR HUMPHREY O gross and miserable IGNORANCE!
------------------------------------------------------
King Richard III Act 3, Scene 7
GLOUCESTER I do suspect I have done some offence
That seems disgracious in the city's eyes,
And that you come to reprehend my IGNORANCE.
------------------------------------------------------
King Richard II Act 1, Scene 3
THOMAS MOWBRAY And dull unfeeling barren IGNORANCE
Is made my gaoler to attend on me.
------------------------------------------------------
King Henry IV, Part i Act 3, Scene 1
MORTIMER O, I am IGNORANCE itself in this!
------------------------------------------------------
Love's Labour's Lost Act 2, Scene 1
PRINCESS Were my lord so, his IGNORANCE were wise,
Where now his knowledge must prove IGNORANCE.
Act 4, Scene 2
HOLOFERNES Twice-sod simplicity, his coctus!
O thou monster IGNORANCE, how deformed dost thou look!
------------------------------------------------------
The Merry Wives of Windsor Act 1, Scene 1
SIR HUGH EVANS It is his five senses: fie, what the IGNORANCE is!
Act 5, Scene 5
FALSTAFF IGNORANCE itself is a plummet o'er me:
use me as you will.
------------------------------------------------------
Twelfth Night Act 4, Scene 2
Clown Madman, thou errest: I say, there is no darkness
but IGNORANCE; in which thou art more puzzled than
the Egyptians in their fog.
MALVOLIO I say, this house is as dark as IGNORANCE, though
IGNORANCE were as dark as hell; and I say, there
was never man thus abused. I am no more mad than you
are: make the trial of it in any constant question.
------------------------------------------------------
Troilus and Cressida Act 2, Scene 3
THERSITES The common
curse of mankind, folly and IGNORANCE, be thine in
great revenue! heaven bless thee from a tutor, and
discipline come not near thee!
Act 3, Scene 3
THERSITES I had rather be a
tick in a sheep than such a valiant IGNORANCE.
------------------------------------------------------
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Act 1, Scene 4
HAMLET Let me not burst in IGNORANCE;
Act 5, Scene 2
HAMLET I'll be your foil, Laertes: in mine IGNORANCE
Your skill shall, like a star i' the darkest night,
Stick fiery off indeed.
------------------------------------------------------
Othello, The Moor of Venice Act 2, Scene 1
DESDEMONA O heavy IGNORANCE! thou praisest the worst best.
------------------------------------------------------
Coriolanus Act 3, Scene 1
CORIOLANUS Then vail your IGNORANCE;
------------------------------------------------------
Sonnet 78
Thine eyes that taught the dumb on high to sing
And heavy IGNORANCE aloft to fly
Have added feathers to the learned's wing
And given grace a double majesty.
Yet be most proud of that which I compile,
Whose influence is thine and born of thee:
In others' works thou dost but mend the style,
And arts with thy sweet graces graced be;
But thou art all my art and dost advance
As high as learning my rude IGNORANCE.
------------------------------------------------------
> In article <3B5B1844...@erols.com>, ph...@erols.com wrote:
>
> >> > 2) In my humble opinion, Shakespeare was writing a play, which is a
> > > work of fiction, which contains things that are not true. He was
> > > certainly well-read in all these matters but he was a dramatist, not a
> > > researcher of the history of Roman technology, and "Julius Caesar" is
> > > a play, not a lecture. So while this may be an interesting digression
> > > on the history of chronology it has almost no relevance to
> > > Shakespeare.
> >
> > The issue here is whether this represents IGNORANCE or playfullness on
> > Shakespeare's part.
Janice Miller wrote:
>
> Ignorance. I think he wasn't enough interested in the history to have
> discovered such matters for himself. Why would he have been?
The man wrote ~ dozen history plays and wasn't interested in history?
> It was very
> remote and time had converted everything "personal" about it to an
> abstract mythology.
Are we talking about Elizabethan Stratford?
> That's a guess, of course -- it's not like I went back in time and gave
> him a polygraph.
Maybe he'll just go & take his own polygraph like Condit.
Art N.
Bob Grumman
> Paul Crowley referring to Bob as having a *nervous breakdown* I
> found utterly offensive.
Oops, I have to defend Paul here, Jody: he was only referring to an
earlier attempt of mine to be funny in which a persona of mine,
Agnes W. H. Agob, claimed that I had had a nervous breakdown due
to the return to HLAS of Richard Kennedy and Paul Streitz. (So
far as I know, we psychotics can't have nervous breakdowns.) I am
a little disheartened, however, that you weren't offended by Paul's
calling me an idiot!
Seriously, I find it sad that many people who like varied views of
the world, have trouble with varied styles of expressing those
varied views. Words are only words.
--Bob G.
Neuendorffer
>
> >> 3) I'm rather shocked by the amount of vitriol and personal invective
> >> on this newsgroup.
>Neuendorffer wrote:
> > It is mostly to scare away newbies; the old timers are relatively
> >immune to it.
> >
> > Thanks for your valuable input, Nicholas.
Sabyha wrote:
>
> I have to agree with you, Art, to a certain degree, but in the past two days I
> have been less than impressed with some of the personal attacks on people.
>
> OK, Dr Kathman calling Richard Kennedy a *poophead* (I believe that is the
> term) was a little bemusing.
>
> Paul Crowley referring to Bob as having a *nervous breakdown* I found utterly
> offensive.
Offensive to Bob or to those who actual suffer a *nervous
breakdown*?
> And the usual suspects having a go at you, has me *rather* annoyed. (I am
> trying to be polite, for once). I have always enjoyed your posts.
Though I prefer intelligent arguments (such as Tom Larque has
recently contributed) I am appreciative of *any* feedback including
insults.
> If there were no dissenting views, there would be no need for a public forum to
> discuss things. We would just accept the status quo.
One can have a productive forum where people contribute their ideas
& knowledge which in turn stimulates others to contribute their ideas &
knowledge without dissent but one should not ban dissent as they have
done on the moderated SHAKSPER group.
> I like how people
> interpret things differently. But I am getting old and too tired to have a run
> in with the HLAS stirrers, so I very rarely post.
----------------------------------------------------
King Henry IV, Part ii Act 3, Scene 2
SHALLOW Come on, come on, come on, sir; give me your hand,
sir, give me your hand, sir: an early stirrer, by
the rood! And how doth my good cousin Silence?
----------------------------------------------------
> I just lurk around and hope
> Ann sees a great article in the Guardian or goes to a Shakespeare marathon. Or
> Geralyn has a review, etc. Rather sad state of affairs.
No one has come up with a good group name for lurks. . .any ideas?
Art Neuendorffer
Neuendorffer
>
> > Paul Crowley referring to Bob as having a *nervous breakdown* I
> > found utterly offensive.
Bob Grumman wrote:
>
> Oops, I have to defend Paul here, Jody: he was only referring to an
> earlier attempt of mine to be funny in which a persona of mine,
> Agnes W. H. Agob, claimed that I had had a nervous breakdown due
> to the return to HLAS of Richard Kennedy and Paul Streitz. (So
> far as I know, we psychotics can't have nervous breakdowns.) I am
> a little disheartened, however, that you weren't offended by Paul's
> calling me an idiot!
-------------------------------------------------------
From: Bob Grumman (bobgr...@nut-n-but.net)
Subject: Re: "...discovered last year in the library of Castle Howard
in North Yorkshire..."
Newsgroups: humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare
Date: 2001-07-17 04:39:23 PST
To Prof. Kathman and Mr. Grumman's other colleagues at The Trust:
<<I must apologize for Mr. Grumman's recent post concerning the
Shakespeare manuscripts he discovered in Triple-Professor Supremus
John Baker's
toilet while carrying out a routine psychiatric evaluation of Prof.
Baker's intellect. As you know, Mr. Grumman has been recovering from
the nervous breakdown he suffered last week due to the return of
Messrs. Kennedy and Streitz to HLAS. He was also distraught at
not being allowed to reveal the manuscripts to the world-at-large,
intent as he is on finally winning the Foster Award for Shakespearean
Scholarship so long held by Professor Streitz. He sincerely regrets
his misdeed, and hopes that his return to the asylum, and the new
prescription, will prevent any further such misdeeds.
(Ms.) Agnes W. H. Agog, Mr. Grumman's Significant Other>>
-------------------------------------------------------
Agog, a. & adv. [Date: 1559 Middle French en gogues in mirth] In eager
desire; eager; astir.
-------------------------------------------------------
JOYCE: Ulysses, Sirens
-- Is that her? asked Miss Kennedy.
Miss Douce said yes, sitting with his ex, pearl grey and eau de Nil .
-- Exquisite contrast, Miss Kennedy said.
When all agog Miss Douce said eagerly:
-- Look at the fellow in the tall silk.
BLOOM I want to tell you a little secret about how I came to be here.
But you must never tell. Not even Molly. I have a most particular
reason.
MRS BREEN ( All agog .) O, not for worlds.
-------------------------------------------------------
> Seriously, I find it sad that many people who like varied views of
> the world, have trouble with varied styles of expressing those
> varied views. Words are only words.
-------------------------------------------------------
Art N. ( All agog .) O, not for words.
Nicholas Whyte
> Nicholas Whyte wrote:
>
> > Having been tempted into this newsgroup by Art Neuendorffer's quotes
> > from my web-site, I would like to offer the following observations:
> >
> > 1) Striking water-clocks were certainly developed in Roman times, and
> > are described by Vitruvius. They were however not widespread and were
> > more often used as alarms. A water-clock set up to strike every hour,
> > including three and four, would have been not impossible but unusual,
> > and the sound of three bell strikes would probably not have been
> > capable of an obvious interpretation by the average Roman in the same
> > way that it would have been by the average Elizabethan.
>
> Do you think that Elizabethans might have been aware of the existence
> of striking Roman water-clocks or is this a fairly recent discovery?
Vitruvius' Architecture was in print from at least 1511 (there's a
copy of the 1513 edition advertised on alibris.com for a mere $5625).
However the passages on timekeeping are not the most widely read. I
should be surprised to learn that knowledge of the history of
timekeeping was so widespread in Elizabethan times that Shakespeare
could be expecetd to know this rather obscure detail, let alone expect
his audience to know. But - the eternal historian's excuse - it's not
my period.
> > 2) In my humble opinion, Shakespeare was writing a play, which is a
> > work of fiction, which contains things that are not true. He was
> > certainly well-read in all these matters but he was a dramatist, not a
> > researcher of the history of Roman technology, and "Julius Caesar" is
> > a play, not a lecture. So while this may be an interesting digression
> > on the history of chronology it has almost no relevance to
> > Shakespeare.
>
> The issue here is whether this represents ignorance or playfullness on
> Shakespeare's part.
I think ignorance is a harsh term, but probably closer to the truth!
Why should we impose our standards of historical acuracy on
Shakespeare? I mean, it's not as if the average playgoer at "Julius
Caesar" today reacts to the scene where the clock strikes by thinking
"gosh, were there striking clocks in Roman times?"
> > 3) I'm rather shocked by the amount of vitriol and personal invective
> > on this newsgroup.
>
> It is mostly to scare away newbies; the old timers are relatively
> immune to it.
Will take your word for it.
Nicholas
Sabyha
>sab...@aol.com (Sabyha) wrote in message
>
>> Paul Crowley referring to Bob as having a *nervous breakdown* I
>> found utterly offensive.
>
>Oops, I have to defend Paul here, Jody: he was only referring to an
>earlier attempt of mine to be funny in which a persona of mine,
>Agnes W. H. Agob, claimed that I had had a nervous breakdown due
>to the return to HLAS of Richard Kennedy and Paul Streitz. (So
>far as I know, we psychotics can't have nervous breakdowns.) I am
>a little disheartened, however, that you weren't offended by Paul's
>calling me an idiot!
I wasn't defending *you* per se. I find it offensive that anyone could joke
about *nervous breakdowns*. After having seen the devastation these cause, I ,
personally, am rather sensitive.
>Seriously, I find it sad that many people who like varied views of
>the world, have trouble with varied styles of expressing those
>varied views. Words are only words.
Words are not *only* words. If* words were only words*, why would we spend
time debating words that were written and performed 400 years ago. Why would
Stratfordians and Oxfordians and Baconians and Marlovians get all up in arms
about the author of these *words*, if words are only words?
Humanity and compassion and a little understanding go a long way.
Mark Steese
22 Jul 2001:
[snip]
>> > I'm sure Shakespeare and most of his audience knew full well that
>> > ancient Rome had no striking clocks or doublets or Elizabethan hats.
>>
>> I'll grant you the costumes, but what makes you so sure about the
>> clocks? If you assume the production actually involved a striking
>> clock, then Cassius's line makes little sense - presumably both
>> Shakespeare and the audience were capable of counting three.
>> (Presumably Brutus was, as well; Cassius's line mainly serves to tell
>> the audience what time the scene is taking place.)
>>
>> > This isn't a mistake; it's a deliberate theatrical effect. [snip]
>>
>> Your certainty in this regard is a bit puzzling. Are you under the
>> impression that Shakespeare was incapable of error?
>
> About as fallible as Bach or Rembrandt, I suppose...
Much more so, in my opinion. Shakespeare's one attempt at writing a fugue
was laughable, and I'm not even going to *mention* his drafting skills.
> Your point about the conspirators being able to count to three is one
> naturally raised with a director by the actor playing Cassius - "Why
> do I say this?" Surely the answer, within the fiction, is that he is
> implying "We've been discussing this long enough - I'm tired and I'm
> going home to bed", and that's effectively what Trebonius at once
> says: " 'Tis time to part". This makes sense, especially given
> Cassius' annoyance and alarm at Brutus' refusal to consider killing
> Antony. Your suggestion that it's to inform the audience would be more
> plausible if it came earlier in the scene, perhaps in the conversation
> between Portia and Brutus.
You missed my point, dear fellow. You argued that there was an actual
striking clock in the production. Now, if the audience could hear the
clock, *why* would they need anyone on stage to tell them what hour had
struck? Shakespeare could easily have gone from Brutus's line to
Trebonius's, no?
[Snip a paragraph of further argument against a point I didn't make.]
Mark Steese
that wrote news:aef59d20.01072...@posting.google.com, on the
day of 22 Jul 2001:
[snip]
>> The issue here is whether this represents ignorance or playfullness
>> on Shakespeare's part.
>
> I think ignorance is a harsh term, but probably closer to the truth!
> Why should we impose our standards of historical acuracy on
> Shakespeare? I mean, it's not as if the average playgoer at "Julius
> Caesar" today reacts to the scene where the clock strikes by thinking
> "gosh, were there striking clocks in Roman times?"
I agree with you on this; it's not as though it hurts the play.
Shakespeare's anachronisms are generally of this character - I did a slight
double-take the first time I encountered Gloucester's reference to
spectacles (King Lear, I:ii), but Shakespeare wasn't trying to create a
realistic look at life in pre-Christian Britain.
>> > 3) I'm rather shocked by the amount of vitriol and personal
>> > invective on this newsgroup.
>>
>> It is mostly to scare away newbies; the old timers are relatively
>> immune to it.
>
> Will take your word for it.
I think Art's teasing you just a bit. In my opinion, the amount of vitriol
and personal invective stems mostly from the fact that so many of the
people on the group have been arguing fruitlessly with so many of the other
people on the group for so long; the level of frustration builds to the
point where insulting the other person becomes almost mandatory. I don't
think many of the regulars take into account how this looks to the
uninitiated.
john_baker
wrote:
>mst...@home.com (Mark Steese) wrote in message news:<Xns90E380064199...@24.7.143.114>...
>> Hwæt! We have heard of the glory of "Alan Jones" <a...@blueyonder.co.uk>
>> that wrote news:SNv57.3733$Ii1.5...@news1.cableinet.net, on the day of 19
>> Jul 2001:
>> > "David Kathman" <dj...@popd.ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
>> > news:3B5663C4...@popd.ix.netcom.com...
>> >> PFStreitz wrote:
>> >> > Did Shakespeare make a mistake?
>> >> >
>> >> > BRUTUS: Peace! Count the clock.
>> >> > CASSIUS: The clock hath stricken three.
>> >> >
>> >> > paul streitz
>> >>
>> >> Yes.
>> >
>> > Well, at least he's consistent: "Julius Caesar" also includes
>> > references to a "doublet" and to "hats". The setting of the play is
>> > not ancient Rome but the stage of the Globe Theatre, where clocks
>> > could strike and most of the audience were wearing doublets and hats.
>> >
>> > I'm sure Shakespeare and most of his audience knew full well that
>> > ancient Rome had no striking clocks or doublets or Elizabethan hats.
>>
>> I'll grant you the costumes, but what makes you so sure about the clocks?
>
>Having been tempted into this newsgroup by Art Neuendorffer's quotes
>from my web-site, I would like to offer the following observations:
>
>1) Striking water-clocks were certainly developed in Roman times, and
>are described by Vitruvius.
Of course they were. And there is that very clock-like device pulled
up from the hole of a Greek galleon...suggestive. In any case you can
chime the hours with an hourglass...if you keep an eye on it.
>They were however not widespread and were
>more often used as alarms. A water-clock set up to strike every hour,
>including three and four, would have been not impossible but unusual,
>and the sound of three bell strikes would probably not have been
>capable of an obvious interpretation by the average Roman in the same
>way that it would have been by the average Elizabethan.
This is also true, but the notion that time was moving and the hours
changing is an old one, much older than a "clock." So the Greek
playmakers could have used similar expressions, right?
"Time is running out for you...the moment of your death draws near..."
When Socrates is to take the Hemlock Crito and his friends attempt to
postpone it for a time...and tell him it is not yet dark...
In R&J the lovers keep track of time by the lark....
but there is no question that this allusions was designed to appeal to
a audience that did keep time by the chiming of the clock. Heck
I remember when I was kid and didn't have a watch, that we tracked the
hours by the steam whistle...
>
>2) In my humble opinion, Shakespeare was writing a play, which is a
>work of fiction, which contains things that are not true. He was
>certainly well-read in all these matters but he was a dramatist, not a
>researcher of the history of Roman technology, and "Julius Caesar" is
>a play, not a lecture. So while this may be an interesting digression
>on the history of chronology it has almost no relevance to
>Shakespeare.
here, here
>
>3) I'm rather shocked by the amount of vitriol and personal invective
>on this newsgroup.
nothing like a conflict of paradigms to bring out the worse it
folks...remember what it was like during the Inquisition?
john
>
>Nicholas Whyte
>http://explorers.whyte.com/hos.htm
John Baker
Visit my Webpage:
http://www2.localaccess.com/marlowe
"Chance favors the prepared mind." Louis Pasteur
Neuendorffer
VERITABLE VITRUVIUS By James L. Sieber
http://www.yorkrite.com/RAM/8.HTM
<<London's Globe Theater, where Shakespeare originally presented his
works, was an example of Jones using
Vitruvius' designs.>> :-)
---------------------------------------------------
Clocke strikes.
Bru. Peace, count the Clocke.
Cas. The Clocke hath stricken three.
Treb. 'Tis time to part.
Cass. But it is doubtfull yet,
Whether Caesar will come forth to day, or no:
-----------------------------------------------------------
> > Nicholas Whyte wrote:
> >
> > > Having been tempted into this newsgroup by Art Neuendorffer's quotes
> > > from my web-site, I would like to offer the following observations:
> > >
> > > 1) Striking water-clocks were certainly developed in Roman times, and
> > > are described by Vitruvius. They were however not widespread and were
> > > more often used as alarms. A water-clock set up to strike every hour,
> > > including three and four, would have been not impossible but unusual,
> > > and the sound of three bell strikes would probably not have been
> > > capable of an obvious interpretation by the average Roman in the same
> > > way that it would have been by the average Elizabethan.
> Neuendorffer <ph...@erols.com> wrote:
> > Do you think that Elizabethans might have been aware of the existence
> > of striking Roman water-clocks or is this a fairly recent discovery?
Nicholas Whyte wrote:
> Vitruvius' Architecture was in print from at least 1511 (there's a
> copy of the 1513 edition advertised on alibris.com for a mere $5625).
> However the passages on timekeeping are not the most widely read. I
> should be surprised to learn that knowledge of the history of
> timekeeping was so widespread in Elizabethan times that Shakespeare
> could be expecetd to know this rather obscure detail, let alone expect
> his audience to know. But - the eternal historian's excuse - it's not
> my period.
------------------------------------------------------------
Vitruvius' Architecture was well read by some! :-)
------------------------------------------------------------
The Columbia Encyclopedia
(Marcus Vitruvius Pollio) (vtr´vs) (KEY) , fl. late 1st cent. B.C. and
early 1st cent. A.D., Roman writer, engineer, and architect for the
Emperor Augustus. In his one extant work, De architectura (c.40 B.C.,
tr. 1914), he discussed in 10 encyclopedic chapters aspects of Roman
architecture, engineering, and city planning. Vitruvius also included a
section on human proportions. Because it is the only antique treatise on
architecture to have survived, De architectura has been an invaluable
source of information for scholars. The rediscovery of Vitruvius during
the Renaissance greatly fueled the revival of classicism during that and
subsequent periods. Numerous architectural treatises were based in part
or inspired by Vitruvius, beginning with Leon Battista Alberti’s De re
aedificatoria (1485).
------------------------------------------------------------
VERITABLE VITRUVIUS By James L. Sieber
http://www.yorkrite.com/RAM/8.HTM
<<Mathematics is a landmark of Freemasonry. To attempt to understand,
why Mathematics holds this exalted position, requires returning to
Freemasonry's early days. Freemasonry was a product of the Renaissance
and the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment permitted man to open his eyes
and view the world in new ways. The Renaissance was a revival of
classical knowledge where ancient knowledge, especially Greek and Roman,
was greatly valued. Few classical scholars had more influence on the
early Masonic fraternity than Pythagoras and Vitruvius. Pythagoras is
credited as a founder of philosophy and mathematics where his philosophy
included "all is number." The ritual of the Pythagorean school served as
a model for much of the fraternity system. Pythagoreans studied
mathematics mainly for its pure beauty and for the symbolic meanings of
the numbers. In contrast, Marcus Vitruvius Pollis was a practical
mathematician who used his knowledge and skills for practical and
education purposes. He was a first century engineer and architect who
served as a military engineer for Julius Caesar. In 27 BC, he earned his
place in history by writing ten short books on architecture which are
still studied today.
It has been said that the three greatest inventions of humanity are the
writ ten word, the printing press, and electronic information.1 With the
Renaissance's revival of ancient knowledge and with printing making
scholarship available to the public, Vitruvius' writ ings were
rediscovered and he became a prophet to the Renaissance's architects,
masons, and educated men. Inigo Jones, King James' architect and one of
the forerunners of Masonry in England. designed and built public
buildings using Vitruvius' 1500 year old plans.
London's Globe Theater, where Shakespeare originally presented his
works, was an example of Jones using
Vitruvius' designs. Although the original Globe was destroyed, it was
recently rebuilt in London and another
reproduction of it has just opened in Prague.
Vitruvius' treatise had inspired the revival of architecture that
started the Renaissance.2 His contribution to Masonic philosophy is even
greater.3 In Book I, he states that an architect: "be educated, skillful
with the pencil, instructed in geometry, know much history, have
followed the philosophers with attention, understand music, have some
knowledge of medicine, know the opinions of jurists and be acquaint ed
with astronomy and the theory of the heavens."4 He justifies each of
these Arts and Sciences skills. Astronomy is needed for laying out
buildings. Buildings need to be oriented that they benefit from natural
lighting and the prevailing winds. Religious and culture requirements
demanded they face in the certain direction much as today Muslin
buildings must face Mecca. An understanding of medical sciences is
required to understand the benefits of air flow in buildings and to
enable the architect/mason to avoid unhealthy building sites. Vitruvius
describes cities built at unhealthy locations or where the water is of
poor quality as examples of where not to build and discusses the
illnesses resulting. The architect is to be knowledgeable in the
opinions of jurists as the builder, even then, needed to know government
regulations to assure their constructions satisfy all the requirements.
Vitruvius's emphasis on the education of the architect/mason in the
liberal arts and, especially in mathematics, contributed to the
scientific and mathematical orientation of the operative fraternity as
well as the current non-operative fraternity. In the days when the
fraternity was started, the educated population held mathematics in very
high esteem.
The liberal arts, mathematical theory and street layouts are discussed
in Book I. Book IV discusses the symmetry of temples and there
relationship to the symmetry of the human body. The value of learning is
discussed in Book VI where he states that a man of learning is
recognized as a citizen of the world and accepted worldwide. Since
operative masons traveled from country to country, they needed a
knowledge that earned their acceptance in the new country. Similarly,
the early English Enlightenment society, that was the forefathers of the
Royal Society and the English fraternity, expected their young men to
travel widely throughout the continent as part of their education.
These, so trained young men, later became the scholars and leaders of
their nation. Having traveled though out the culture centers of Europe,
they knew and were known by the intellectuals independent of their home
country. Surveying and the instruments needed are discussed in Book
VIII. He proposed two leveling instruments one of which was a long
trough of water. When the trough was level full of water and not
overflowing at either end, it indicated that it was level and a survey
or could sight over the ends to ensure what he sighted was at the same
height. Sundials are briefly included in Book IX. Since the theory
needed to orient buildings was similar to the theory needed to design
sundials, most of the major sundials in Scotland were designed and built
by well-known master masons. These detailed sundials5 were called
Masonic Dials. With his military background, Vitruvius included the
architecture and design of fortifications and machines of war in Book X.
Throughout the books are discussions of applied mathematical formulas
and techniques known and used by him.
Vitruvius' work was widely known and accepted as early as the first
century AD as Pliny6 referred to it in his Natural History. Throughout
the ancient revival of the Renaissance, the classical phase of the
Baroque, and in the Neo classical period, Vitruvius' work was the chief
authority on classical architecture and knowledge.7 It became the chief
foundation stone for the use of mathematics and architecture in the
ritual of the operative and non-operative mason.>>
--------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer
Neuendorffer
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Academy/8389/globe.html
<<We know from Alberti and Vitruvius writing about the Roman
amphitheatres, as well as our own experience from the reconstructed
Globe, that round or polygonal theatres were designed in this way for
their acoustic qualities. At the same time, with minimal or no settings,
as at the Globe, the presence of the actor’s physical being, how he is
seen, remains very important. The De Witt sketch of the Swan gives a
clear impression of the actor’s presence on and around a bench. Indeed,
it might be said that the actor’s expressive gestures are the real focus
for a drawing so often used only to given controversial information
about the structures of a theatre interior.>>
----------------------------------------------------
Mark Steese
news:3b5b6098...@News.localaccess.com, on the day of 22 Jul 2001:
[snip]
>>3) I'm rather shocked by the amount of vitriol and personal invective
>>on this newsgroup.
>
> nothing like a conflict of paradigms to bring out the worse it
> folks...remember what it was like during the Inquisition?
I've forgotten. I eagerly await your eyewitness account. Which particular
Inquisition did you live through?
Neuendorffer
> > > > or playfullness on Shakespeare's part.
> >
> > Janice Miller wrote:
> > >
> > > Ignorance. I think he wasn't enough interested in the history to have
> > > discovered such matters for himself. Why would he have been?
> > ph...@erols.com wrote:
> > The man wrote ~ dozen history plays and wasn't interested in history?
Janice Miller wrote:
> He seems, simply, to have copied from books somebody else had already
> written. History plays must have sold quite well, as there must have been
> quite a demand to learn the dirty little secrets of the current regime and
> its predecessors.
Getting involved in "the dirty little secrets of the current regime"
probably would have involved more risk for the Stratman than out & out
burglery. (Arbitrarily putting words in the mouths of former monarches
was risky enough.)
> And as Aristotle says, history is universal, fiction
> merely particular. Anyway, his view of history seems to be
> nothing more than adolescent war games.
Bull shit!
------------------------------------------------------
HAMLET How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a BEAST, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial OBLIVION, OR SOME CRAVEN SCRUPLE
OF THINKING too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward, I do not know
Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do;'
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!
-----------------------------------------------------------
> I don't see that he had much interest in
> history in the large, questions of world-historical guilt or innocence --
> at most, in personal honor and comradely responsibility, in the small, the
> most immediate sense -- though he'd probably put some of that in if he
> thought there was a demand for it.
Bull shit!
> > > It was very
> > > remote and time had converted everything "personal" about it to an
> > > abstract mythology.
> >
> > Are we talking about Elizabethan Stratford?
>
> I thought we were talking about Julius Caesar.
No, we are talking about Caesar's chief architect and engineer:
----------------------------------------------------
VERITABLE VITRUVIUS By James L. Sieber
http://www.yorkrite.com/RAM/8.HTM
<<London's Globe Theater, where Shakespeare originally presented
his works, was an example of Jones using Vitruvius' designs.>>
---------------------------------------------------------------
<<In the years just before Christ was born, the chief engineer of the
civilized world was a man named Vitruvius. Vitruvius began as an
architect and engineer under Julius Caesar. Later he took charge of the
first Augustus's siege engines. When Augustus died, Vitruvius retired.
Then, under Octavian's patronage, he wrote a ten-volume account of known
technology.
Here we see how much more than a mere armorer he was. But we also see
the weakness of Roman technology. Vitruvius's scope is astonishing.
Historians call him the great Roman architect. Most of his books do deal
with buildings. But look more closely:
He talks about city planning, building materials, and acoustics. He has
a lot to say about timekeeping. He explains water clocks and sundials.
He describes all kinds of pumps. Before he's done, he's written about
astronomy, medicine, music, the arts -- even contract law.
We have problems with Vitruvius, though. His books came down through
medieval copyists. Medieval engineers saw them as a living handbook, not
documents to be preserved. We have to separate his work from the stuff
people
added to it.
Yet Vitruvius himself was looking back. He was conservative. He was an
historian as much as an engineer. His books look longingly to a time
before imperial Rome.
They look back to classical Greece. They also celebrate the high tide of
invention in Alexandria. Vitruvius remembers the post-classical world
that sprang up after Alexander the Great. For a while, after 300 BC,
North Africa teemed with free-wheeling invention in both arts and
machinery.
Vitruvius quotes the Egyptian engineer Ctsebios. He devotes two pages to
Ctsebios's water organ. It's fun, but I wouldn't try to build anything
from his colorful specs:
Close to these openings are bronze dolphins . . .
from which hang cymbal-shaped valves.
Still, Vitruvius loves these older machines. He has little to say about
his own specialty -- about modern Roman war engines. He only mentions
them at the end of Book Ten.
Vitruvius had an encyclopaedic grasp of known technologies. But he
didn't add much to that knowledge. Rome didn't add much to what a freer
people had created.>>
------------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer
Neuendorffer
http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~saul/history/time.html
100 - 500 B.C. <<Mechanized water clocks were developed by Greek and
Roman horologists and astronomers. The added complexity was aimed at
making the flow more constant by regulating the pressure, and at
providing fancier displays of the passage of time. Some water clocks
rang bells and gongs, others opened doors and windows to show little
figures of people, or moved pointers, dials, and astrological models of
the universe.>>
<<The Greek Andronikos built the Tower of the Winds in Athens in 100 BC
with 8 sophisticated sundials and water clocks as backups if the sky was
cloudy>>
---------------------------------------------------
Clocke strikes.
Bru. Peace, count the Clocke.
Cas. The Clocke hath stricken three.
Treb. 'Tis time to part.
Cass. But it is doubtfull yet,
Whether Caesar will come forth to day, or no:
-----------------------------------------------------------
> > Nicholas Whyte wrote:
> >
> > > 1) Striking water-clocks were certainly developed in Roman times, and
> > > are described by Vitruvius. They were however not widespread and were
> > > more often used as alarms. A water-clock set up to strike every hour,
> > > including three and four, would have been not impossible but unusual,
> > > and the sound of three bell strikes would probably not have been
> > > capable of an obvious interpretation by the average Roman in the
> > > same way that it would have been by the average Elizabethan.
Nicholas Whyte wrote:
> Vitruvius' Architecture was in print from at least 1511 (there's a
> copy of the 1513 edition advertised on alibris.com for a mere $5625).
> However the passages on timekeeping are not the most widely read. I
> should be surprised to learn that knowledge of the history of
> timekeeping was so widespread in Elizabethan times that Shakespeare
> could be expecetd to know this rather obscure detail, let alone expect
> his audience to know. But - the eternal historian's excuse - it's not
> my period.
> ----------------------------------------------------
> VERITABLE VITRUVIUS By James L. Sieber
> http://www.yorkrite.com/RAM/8.HTM
>
> <<London's Globe Theater, where Shakespeare originally presented
> his works, was an example of Jones using Vitruvius' designs.>>
---------------------------------------------------------------
http://myron.sjsu.edu/romeweb/ENGINEER/republican_roman_construction.htm
<<"I found Rome a city of mud bricks, and left her clothed in marble."
Perhaps the report of Augustus' (33 BCE - 14 CE) boast is accurate, but
the Roman ruins and the remaining structures we see today are not like
the enduring mud-brick pueblos of the Navajo Indians, nor are they often
marble, if they are as old as the Republic. What happened to those
marble buildings? What were Roman buildings really like before the
Empire?
Temples and public buildings from the Republic and the early empire,
aside from those that have been incorporated into Christian Churches and
so preserved, are often identified by only a column or two. Others are
masses of crumbling stone blocks, like a giant's building blocks, their
featureless faces mysteriously
pockmarked. What happened to them? And what of the thousands of other
structures that were home to the early Romans?
Augustus' reign is called "the principiate" and marks the juncture of
the Roman Republic and the Empire, so we're looking for what buildings
were like at that time. Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, who served as an
engineer with Augustus' uncle Julius Caesar, wrote a treatise on
architecture during the principiate. Vitruvius quoted earlier authors
and defined his ideal in architecture and building, though most
buildings of the time fail to meet his standards. Vitruvius' work and
modern archaeological discoveries give us a starting place for our
search.>>
---------------------------------------------------------------
ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA
Vitruvius [fl. 1st century BC] in full MARCUS VITRUVIUS POLLIO, Roman
architect, engineer, and author of the celebrated treatise De
architectura (On Architecture), a handbook for Roman architects.
<<Little is known of Vitruvius' life, except what can be gathered from
his writings, which are somewhat obscure on the subject. Although he
nowhere identifies the emperor to whom his work is dedicated, it is
likely that the first Augustus is meant and that the treatise was
conceived after 27 BC. Since Vitruvius describes himself as an old man,
it may be inferred that he was also active during the time of Julius
Caesar. Vitruvius himself tells of a basilica he built at Fanum (now
Fano).
De architectura was based on his own experience, as well as on
theoretical works by famous Greek architects such as Hermogenes. The
treatise covers almost every aspect of architecture, but it is limited,
since it is based primarily on Greek models, from which Roman
architecture was soon decisively to depart in order to serve the new
needs of proclaiming a world empire. De architectura is divided into 10
books dealing with city planning and architecture in general; building
materials; temple construction and the use of the Greek orders; public
buildings (theatres, baths); private buildings; floors and stucco
decoration; hydraulics; clocks, mensuration, and astronomy; and civil
and military engines. Vitruvius' outlook is essentially Hellenistic. His
wish was to preserve the classical tradition in the design of temples
and public buildings, and his prefaces to the separate books of his
treatise contain many pessimistic remarks about the contemporary
architecture. Most of what Pliny says in his Natural History about Roman
construction methods and wall painting was taken from Vitruvius, though
unacknowledged. Vitruvius' expressed desire that his name be honoured by
posterity was realized. Throughout the antique revival of the
Renaissance, the classical phase of the Baroque, and in the Neoclassical
period, his work was the chief authority on ancient classical
architecture.>>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi580.htm
john_baker
wrote:
None of them. I was always burnt in the first wave.
john
Mark Steese
> On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 01:09:25 GMT, mst...@home.com (Mark Steese)
> wrote:
>
>>Hwæt! We have heard of the glory of john baker that wrote
>>news:3b5b6098...@News.localaccess.com, on the day of 22 Jul 2001:
>>
>>[snip]
>>>>3) I'm rather shocked by the amount of vitriol and personal invective
>>>>on this newsgroup.
>>>
>>> nothing like a conflict of paradigms to bring out the worse it
>>> folks...remember what it was like during the Inquisition?
>>
>>I've forgotten. I eagerly await your eyewitness account. Which
>>particular Inquisition did you live through?
>
> None of them. I was always burnt in the first wave.
I suppose that explains why you always make an ash of yourself when you
post here.
-Mark Steese
Greg Reynolds
Neuendorffer wrote:
> Sabyha wrote:
> > I just lurk around and hope Ann sees a great
> > article in the Guardian or goes to a Shakespeare
> > marathon. Or Geralyn has a review, etc.
> > Rather sad state of affairs.
>
> No one has come up with a good group name for lurks. . .any ideas?
>
> Art Neuendorffer
Some of the successful naming systems are based
on feminine names so continuing on the theme of
usenet profiling by feminine nomenclature {see
Emily Posters} I suggest:
Sabyhas
Sabyha
My cat, Sabyha, which is a feral cat, my students gave me, would be very
impressed. He was four weeks old, abandoned and starving. The students
rescued him and found the *softest touch* at school to give him to... me. They
knew I was a sucker for a hard luck case.
Alan Jones
"Mark Steese" <mst...@home.com> wrote in message
news:Xns90E6A01A62E4...@24.7.143.114...
> Shakespeare's anachronisms are generally of this character - I did a
slight
> double-take the first time I encountered Gloucester's reference to
> spectacles (King Lear, I:ii), but Shakespeare wasn't trying to
create a
> realistic look at life in pre-Christian Britain.
It's a Britain where they worship the Roman gods and yet are expected
to eat fish on Fridays, and where the laws of succession are Jacobean.
The route from Gloster's castle to Dover is unrelated to any Britain I
recognise. Shakespeare is writing about a fantasy country, a kingdom
of the mind, as it were in the "Europe" where Bohemia has a sea-coast
and Vienna is ruled by an Italian Duke and Caesar wears a doublet.
Even the plays based on relatively recent English history have a
chronology much "telescoped" from the real sequence of events,
omitting generations in the interest of a compelling narrative thrust.
I'm not sure that we ought to use the term "anachronism" about his
plays: there's no "chron-" to be "ana-", if you see what I mean.
Alan Jones
Alan Jones
> Hwæt! We have heard of the glory of "Alan Jones"
<a...@blueyonder.co.uk>
> that wrote news:3CB67.12806$_i3.9...@news1.cableinet.net, on the
day of
> 22 Jul 2001:
>
> [snip]
>
I've already described the dramatic effect of the pause while they
"count the clock". This isn't a matter of telling the audience, or
(within the fiction) of stating the obvious. It's a structural device
for arresting the argument about Antony's fate, and a characterisation
device by which Cassius is able to draw a line under his humiliatingly
ineffective plea to Brutus. I take Trebonius' comment to show his
unease about an incipient quarrel among the conspirators. As always in
drama, one has to seek the sub-text if the performance - on stage or
in one's head - is to have any depth, and Shakespeare is unusually
adept at suggesting the sub-text without hammering a point home.
Alan Jones
Mark Steese
23 Jul 2001:
>> [snip]
>>
>> > Your point about the conspirators being able to count to three is
>> > one naturally raised with a director by the actor playing Cassius -
>> > "Why do I say this?" Surely the answer, within the fiction, is that
>> > he is implying "We've been discussing this long enough - I'm tired
>> > and I'm going home to bed", and that's effectively what Trebonius at
>> > once says: " 'Tis time to part". This makes sense, especially given
>> > Cassius' annoyance and alarm at Brutus' refusal to consider killing
>> > Antony. Your suggestion that it's to inform the audience would be
>> > more plausible if it came earlier in the scene, perhaps in the
>> > conversation between Portia and Brutus.
>>
>> You missed my point, dear fellow. You argued that there was an actual
>> striking clock in the production. Now, if the audience could hear the
>> clock, *why* would they need anyone on stage to tell them what hour
>> had struck? Shakespeare could easily have gone from Brutus's line to
>> Trebonius's, no?
>
> I've already described the dramatic effect of the pause while they
> "count the clock".
Yes. You missed my point, as I noted. You just missed it again. Here,
I'll try to make it easy for you to understand. I have *no problem* with
the conspirators discussing the time. I understand the dramatic effect of
the scene perfectly well. You, however, suggested that the original
performances would have used the sound of an actual striking clock ("the
stage of the Globe Theatre, where clocks could strike"). I pointed out
that Cassius's line makes no sense *if the audience heard an actual clock
striking*. If Brutus says "Peace! Count the clock," they listen to the
three strokes in silence, Trebonius says "'Tis time to part," and Cassius
follows up with "But it is doubtful yet," etc., the impact of the scene is
in no way diminished. Given that they line *is* in the play, my guess is
that there was *no* sound of a clock striking, therefore Cassius is obliged
to say what time it is. You've somehow missed this very minor point of
mine and composed two extensive refutations of something I neither wrote
nor believe.
And just to refresh your memory, the original question was whether
Shakespeare made a mistake in putting a striking clock in ancient Rome. My
belief is that he did. It was a minor mistake, and not one either he or
his audience was likely to care about; not one a modern audience is likely
to care about either; but a mistake nonetheless. Not a *dramatic* mistake;
an anachronism.
You still haven't explained why you're "sure Shakespeare and most of his
audience knew full well that ancient Rome had no striking clocks."
Yours,
Mark Steese
23 Jul 2001:
> "Mark Steese" <mst...@home.com> wrote in message
I think Shakespeare might be highly amused by the excuses you make for his
ignorance. You sound just a bit like our own Paul Crowley, who thinks the
Earl of Oxford wrote the plays and intentionally filled them with mistakes
to make the audience laugh. I gather you can't imagine that Shakespeare
could have been as ignorant as he was; you share that flaw with many of the
anti-Shakespearean fantasists on this newsgroup, I'm afraid. He was a man
of his time, not very well-educated as such men went, and it shows in his
writing. So far as I am aware, he never pretended to be better-educated
than he was, but his latter-day worshippers will not allow his
imperfections; not a mistake but must be explained as an intentional piece
of stage business, a wink at the audience, a modern misunderstanding of an
exceptionally subtle piece of writing - but not a mistake. This sort of
incense-burning reduces the man while seeking to magnify him. Some of us
feel that he is greater for his flaws.
Nicholas Whyte
The Antikythera mechanism, you mean. I'm inclined to feel it was more
a planetarium type of thing, effectively a calculating aid for someone
who wanted to know the phases of the moon in advance.
> >They were however not widespread and were
> >more often used as alarms. A water-clock set up to strike every hour,
> >including three and four, would have been not impossible but unusual,
> >and the sound of three bell strikes would probably not have been
> >capable of an obvious interpretation by the average Roman in the same
> >way that it would have been by the average Elizabethan.
>
> This is also true, but the notion that time was moving and the hours
> changing is an old one, much older than a "clock." So the Greek
> playmakers could have used similar expressions, right?
Certainly - but there's a big conceptual difference between on the one
hand marking particular events (sunset, noon, the moment when the
gnomon's shadow hits the hour line) and on the other assigning to
every instant a numerical identity.
> but there is no question that this allusions was designed to appeal to
> a audience that did keep time by the chiming of the clock. Heck
> I remember when I was kid and didn't have a watch, that we tracked the
> hours by the steam whistle...
Yep. Much more natural.
Neuendorffer
>
> > > > > > The issue here is whether this represents IGNORANCE
> > > > > > or playfullness on Shakespeare's part.
> > > >
> > > > Janice Miller wrote:
> > > > > It was very
> > > > > remote and time had converted everything "personal" about it to an
> > > > > abstract mythology.
> > > >
> > > > Are we talking about Elizabethan Stratford?
> > >
> > > I thought we were talking about Julius Caesar.
> ph...@erols.com wrote:
> > No, we are talking about Caesar's chief architect and engineer:
Janice Miller wrote:
>
> In Elizabethan Stratford (or London)?
>
Yes.
----------------------------------------------------
VERITABLE VITRUVIUS By James L. Sieber
http://www.yorkrite.com/RAM/8.HTM
<<Inigo Jones, King James' architect and one of the forerunners of
Masonry in England designed and built public buildings using Vitruvius'
1500 year old plans. London's Globe Theater, where Shakespeare
originally presented his works, was an example of Jones using Vitruvius'
designs.>>
----------------------------------------------------
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Academy/8389/globe.html
<<We know from Alberti and Vitruvius writing about the Roman
amphitheatres, as well as our own experience from the reconstructed
Globe, that round or polygonal theatres were designed in this way for
their acoustic qualities. At the same time, with minimal or no settings,
as at the Globe, the presence of the actor’s physical being, how he is
seen, remains very important.>>
---------------------------------------------------------------
VERITABLE VITRUVIUS By James L. Sieber
http://www.yorkrite.com/RAM/8.HTM
<<Vitruvius' treatise had inspired the revival of architecture that
started the Renaissance. His contribution to Masonic philosophy is
even greater. In Book I, he states that an architect:
"be educated,
skillful with the pencil,
instructed in geometry,
know much history,
have followed the philosophers with attention,
understand music,
have some knowledge of medicine,
know the opinions of jurists and
be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens."
He justifies each of these Arts and Sciences skills.
Astronomy is needed for laying out buildings.
Buildings need to be oriented that they benefit from natural
lighting and the prevailing winds. Religious and culture requirements
demanded they face in the certain direction much as today Muslin
buildings must face Mecca. An understanding of medical sciences is
required to understand the benefits of air flow in buildings and to
enable the architect/mason to avoid unhealthy building sites. Vitruvius
describes cities built at unhealthy locations or where the water is of
poor quality as examples of where not to build and discusses the
illnesses resulting. The architect is to be knowledgeable in the
opinions of jurists as the builder, even then, needed to know government
regulations to assure their constructions satisfy all the requirements.
Vitruvius's emphasis on the education of the architect/mason in the
liberal arts and, especially in mathematics, contributed to the
scientific and mathematical orientation of the operative fraternity
as well as the current non-operative fraternity. In the days when
the fraternity was started, the educated population held mathematics
in very high esteem.>>
----------------------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer
Neuendorffer
>
> > > I thought we were talking about Julius Caesar.
> >
> > No, we are talking about Caesar's chief architect and engineer:
Janice Miller wrote:
> And which Caesar?
---------------------------------------------------------------
ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA
Art Neuendorffer
Neuendorffer
>
> I have *no problem* with the conspirators discussing the time.
Fawkes . . . heard the bell go twelve o'clock
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Child's History of England by Charles Dickens CHAPTER XXXII
But, now, the great wickedness and danger which had been all along
at the bottom of this wicked plot, began to show itself. As the
fifth of November drew near, most of the conspirators, remembering
that they had friends and relations who would be in the House of
Lords that day, felt some natural relenting, and a wish to warn
them to keep away. They were not much comforted by Catesby's
declaring that in such a cause he would blow up his own son. LORD
MOUNTEAGLE, Tresham's brother-in-law, was certain to be in the
house; and when Tresham found that he could not prevail upon the
rest to devise any means of sparing their friends, he wrote a
mysterious letter to this lord and left it at his lodging in the
dusk, urging him to keep away from the opening of Parliament,
'since God and man had concurred to punish the wickedness of the
times.' It contained the words 'that the Parliament should receive
a terrible blow, and yet should not see who hurt them.' And it
added, 'the danger is past, as soon as you have burnt the letter.'
The ministers and courtiers made out that his Sowship, by a direct
miracle from Heaven, found out what this letter meant. The truth
is, that they were not long (as few men would be) in finding out
for themselves; and it was decided to let the conspirators alone,
until the very day before the opening of Parliament. That the
conspirators had their fears, is certain; for, Tresham himself said
before them all, that they were every one dead men; and, although
even he did not take flight, there is reason to suppose that he had
warned other persons besides Lord Mounteagle. However, they were
all firm; and Fawkes, who was a man of iron, went down every day
and night to keep watch in the cellar as usual. He was there about
two in the afternoon of the fourth, when the Lord Chamberlain and
Lord Mounteagle threw open the door and looked in. 'Who are you,
friend?' said they. 'Why,' said Fawkes, 'I am Mr. Percy's servant,
and am looking after his store of fuel here.' 'Your master has
laid in a pretty good store,' they returned, and shut the door, and
went away.
Fawkes, upon this, posted off to the other conspirators
to tell them all was quiet, and went back and shut himself
up in the dark, black cellar again, where he heard the bell
go twelve o'clock and usher in the fifth of November.
About two hours
afterwards, he slowly opened the door, and came out to look about
him, in his old prowling way. He was instantly seized and bound,
by a party of soldiers under SIR THOMAS KNEVETT. He had a watch
upon him, some touchwood, some tinder, some slow matches; and there
was a dark lantern with a candle in it, lighted, behind the door.
He had his boots and spurs on - to ride to the ship, I suppose -
and it was well for the soldiers that they took him so suddenly.
If they had left him but a moment's time to light a match, he
certainly would have tossed it in among the powder, and blown
up himself and them.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer
Neuendorffer
THE STORY OF BIG BEN
http://www.whitechapelbellfoundry.co.uk/bigben.htm
At 9'-0" diameter, 7'-6" high, and weighing in at 13 tons 10 cwts 3 qtrs
15lbs (13,760 Kg), the hour bell of the Great Clock of Westminster -
known worldwide as 'Big Ben' - is the most famous bell ever cast at
Whitechapel. Big Ben was cast on Saturday 10th April 1858, but its story
begins more than a decade earlier....
In 1844, Parliament decided that the new buildings for the Houses of
Parliament, then under construction, should incorporate a tower and
clock. The commission for this work was awarded to the architect Charles
Barry, whilst the specification for the clock was drawn up by the
Astronomer Royal, George Airy. One of his requirements was that: "the
first stroke of the hour bell should register the time, correct to
within one second per day, and furthermore that it should telegraph its
performance twice a day to Greenwich Observatory where a record would be
kept". Most clock-makers of the day considered such accuracy
unattainable for a large tower clock driving striking mechanisms and
heavy hands exposed to wind and weather. Indeed, it wasn't until 1851
that a designer was found who could fulfil this exacting specification.
This was Edmund Beckett Denison, later Sir Edmund Becket, the first
Baron Grimthorpe. The clock he designed was built by Messrs E.J. Dent &
Co., and completed in 1854. (The original clock he built for the
competition to find a clockmaker up to the task is now in use as the
church clock at St. Dunstan's, at Cranbrook in Kent.) Next came the
bells, and Denison discovered that Barry, now Sir Charles Barry, had
specified a 14 ton hour bell but had made no provision for its
production or for that of the four smaller smaller quarter chime bells.
Denison's studies of clocks had included bells and he had developed his
own ideas as to how they should be designed and made.
The largest bell ever cast in Britain up to that time had been 'Great
Peter' at York Minster. This weighed just 10¾ tons, so it is not
surprising the bellfounders were wary of bidding for the contract to
produce the new bell, particularly since Denison insisted on his own
design for the shape of the bell as well as his own recipe for the
bellmetal. In both respects his requirements varied significantly from
traditional custom and practice. Eventually, a bell was made to his
specification, albeit somewhat oversize at 16 tons, by John Warner &
Sons at Stockton-on-Tees, but this cracked irreparably while under test
in the Palace Yard at Westminster. It was then that Denison turned to
the Whitechapel foundry....
George Mears, then the master bellfounder and owner of the Whitechapel
Bell Foundry, undertook the casting. According to foundry records, Mears
originally quoted a price of £2401 for casting the bell, but this was
offset to the sum of £1829 by the metal he was able to reclaim from the
first bell so that the actual invoice tendered, on 28th May 1858, was in
the sum of £572. It took a week To break up the old bell, three furnaces
were required to melt the metal, and the mould was heated all day before
the actual casting, the first time this had been done in British
bell-founding. It took 20 minutes to fill the mould with molten metal,
and 20 days for the metal to solidify and cool. After the bell had been
tested in every way by Mears, Denison approved it before it left the
foundry.
Transporting the bell the few miles from the foundry to the Houses of
Parliament was a major event. Traffic stopped as the bell, mounted on a
trolley drawn by sixteen brightly beribboned horses, made its way over
London Bridge, along Borough Road, and over Westminster Bridge. The
streets had been decorated for the occasion and enthusiastic crowds
cheered the bell along the route.
The bells of the Great Clock of Westmister rang across London for the
first time on 31st May 1859, and Parliament had a special sitting to
decide on a suitable name for the great hour bell. During the course of
the debate, and amid the many suggestions that were made, Chief Lord of
the Woods and Forests, Sir Benjamin Hall, a large and ponderous man
known affectionately in the House as "Big Ben", rose and gave an
impressively long speech on the subject. When, at the end of this
oratorical marathon, Sir Benjamin sank back into his seat, a wag in the
chamber shouted out: "Why not call him Big Ben and have done with it?"
The house erupted in laughter; Big Ben had been named.
A mere two months after it went into service, Big Ben cracked. Once
again Denison's belief that he knew more about bells than the experts
was to blame for he had used a hammer more than twice the maximum weight
specified by George Mears. Big Ben was taken out of service and for the
next three years the hours were struck on the largest of the
quarter-bells. Eventually, a lighter hammer was fitted, a square piece
of metal chipped out of the soundbow, and the bell given an eighth of a
turn to present an undamaged section to the hammer. This is the bell as
we hear it today, the crack giving it its distinctive but
less-than-perfect tone.
Big Ben remains the largest bell ever cast at Whitechapel.>>
--------------------------------------------------------
http://www.londonnet.co.uk/ln/guide/about/gallbigb.html
<<The bell was named after a popular heavyweight boxer Benjamin Caunt.
The tower also houses Buchanan's and Hitchcock's infamous "Thirty-nine
steps".>>
BIG BEN CAUNT
The Genial Giant of Hucknall Torkard
http://www2.prestel.co.uk/renfrew/history/NTT/HucknallTorkard/bigben.html
<<Everything about Ben Caunt was big. 6 feet 2 inches in his stockings,
big bodied and barrel chested, 18 stones in weight, big voiced with a
booming laugh which carried a long way and a larger than life character
combined with honesty integrity and intelligence with an unusual agility
for so big a man. He was marked for something special. Kings and princes
knew of him and the nobles of the land backed him in the toughest of
tough careers a man could pursue, pugilism. Unknowingly to this day the
people of the United Kingdom and the world can hear the echoes of his
career booming out hourly in London.
In 1814 in a cottage near Newstead railway station the future
heavy-weight champion of barefist fighting Ben Caunt was born to Robert
and Martha Caunt nee Butler. Baptised on the 15 May 1814 in Hucknall
Torkard he grew into a strapping lad and spent his youth there
eventually becoming a blacksmith, an occupation which helped prepare him
for the toughest and most popular sport of the period, the art of bare
knuckle fighting. Not until the Marquis of Queensbury Rules introduced
in 1867 were there standard laws regulating the conduct of pugilism, but
the so called London Rules were generally agreed to prior to fights
taking place and though later interpretation could lead to argument the
actual fight was never no holds barred. Deliberate eye gouging for
instance would not be acceptable conduct.
Very few of Ben's fights seem to have been recorded so only the ones
known and remembered and recounted to someone who wrote down the
circumstances are related here.
Ben came to notice as a pugilist in his first important fight about 1835
when he defeated a member of his own family, Richard Butler at Wighay
Field Hucknall. Then around 1836 and relatively inexperienced he fought
the English champion Bendigo William Thompson of Nottingham but lost
over 22 rounds. When after losing patience with Bendigo's tactics of
constantly going down on one knee for a rest he struck Bendigo as he
rested on the knee of his second. The referee then disqualified Ben for
a foul blow. Not until 1838 was he given another chance for the title
and this time made no mistake defeating Bendigo over 76 rounds of bitter
combat. Bendigo complained that he had tripped accidently when he was
disqualified for going down without being hit. But the victory was clear
cut and the" trip" was over Ben's fists and a cross hip throw finished
the fight. A perfectly legal tactic at the time. During the next seven
years he lost the championship to Nick Ward but regained it in a re-
match.
In 1845 Big Ben and Bendigo again fought for the title and this time
Bendigo prevailed over 96 rounds with a controversial verdict given by
the referee. The tactics employed by Bendigo were brought into question
as he constantly went to ground for a rest during the fight and there
were many who declared he should have been disqualified. However the
rules, or lack of them, did not forbid such tactics and the verdict
stood. Ironically, this time, it was Big Ben who was disqualified for
going down for a rest before a blow was struck.
Ben retired aged 45 years in 1857 to become a publican and fight
promoter at the Coach and Horses Inn at St. Martins Lane London. He had
one more fight, to settle a dispute between his wife and the wife of his
one time protege, another Nottinghamshire man, Nat Langham, the current
heavy-weight champion of England and the result was a draw. Once again
despite being well past his best years Ben had shown himself a worthy
adversary.
Big Ben Caunt died aged 47 years in London and a death mask was taken of
his features which show no sign of damage from his years as a
prizefighter. His body was taken back to Hucknall, the place of his
birth, where his funeral attracted a huge throng of people and the
visitors to his grave were reported as far outnumbering those who
visited the tomb of the poet Lord Byron who is also buried there.
Hucknall seems to have forgotten its first and last champion as Ben's
iron railing enclosed grave has been in a dilapidated and neglected
state for many years.
A big man, one of the a great personalities of the times was gone, his
booming voice silenced. No more to toll the end of the time for quaffing
of the ale with the call "Time Gentlemen Please" as the great bell of
Westminster rang the hour. From this last characteristic, support of the
sporting gentry and the reminiscence of his voice coming out of his deep
barrel chest, the hour bell in Westminster takes its name of Big Ben.
Though there has been resistance to the idea of the great bell of
Westminster being named for a prizefighter it is now accepted that the
official reason for the name, that the bell was named after an obscure
Commissioner of Works, is wrong and the evidence clearly shows the
common people bestowed the name Big Ben on the hour bell in honour of
Ben Caunt.>>
-----------------------------------------------------
Big Ben
http://www.aboutbritain.com/BigBen.htm
<<Big Ben is one of London's best-known landmarks, and looks most
spectacular at night when the clock faces are illuminated. You even know
when parliament is in session, because a light shines above the clock
face.
The four dials of the clock are 23 feet square, the minute hand is 14
feet long and the figures are 2 feet high. Minutely regulated with a
stack of coins placed on the huge pendulum, Big Ben is an excellent
timekeeper, which has rarely stopped.
The name Big Ben actually refers not to the clock-tower itself , but to
the thirteen ton bell hung within. The bell was named after the first
commissioner of works, Sir Benjamin Hall. This bell came originally from
the old Palace of Westminster, it was given to the Dean of St. Paul’s by
William III. Before returning to Westminster to hang in it's present
home, it was refashioned in Whitechapel in 1858. The BBC first broadcast
the chimes on the 31st December 1923 - there is a microphone in the
turret connected to Broadcasting House.
During the second world war in 1941, an incendiary bomb destroyed the
Commons chamber of the Houses of Parliament, but the clock tower
remained intact and Big Ben continued to keep time and strike away the
hours, its unique sound was broadcast to the nation and around the
world, a welcome reassurance of hope to all who heard it.
There are even cells within the clock tower where Members of Parliament
can be imprisoned for a breach of parliamentary privilege, though this
is rare; the last recorded case was in 1880.>>
-----------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer
john_baker
wrote:
>Hwæt! We have heard of the glory of john baker that wrote
>news:3b5b8a8e...@News.localaccess.com, on the day of 22 Jul 2001:
>
>> On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 01:09:25 GMT, mst...@home.com (Mark Steese)
>> wrote:
>>
>>>Hwæt! We have heard of the glory of john baker that wrote
>>>news:3b5b6098...@News.localaccess.com, on the day of 22 Jul 2001:
>>>
>>>[snip]
>>>>>3) I'm rather shocked by the amount of vitriol and personal invective
>>>>>on this newsgroup.
>>>>
>>>> nothing like a conflict of paradigms to bring out the worse it
>>>> folks...remember what it was like during the Inquisition?
>>>
>>>I've forgotten. I eagerly await your eyewitness account. Which
>>>particular Inquisition did you live through?
>>
>> None of them. I was always burnt in the first wave.
>
>I suppose that explains why you always make an ash of yourself when you
>post here.
>
>-Mark Steese
I like that one. Do you remember Lenon Choen's song on Joan of Arc?
About how the fire married her?
lovely wasn't it.
john
>--
>Ye monsters of the bubbling deep,
>Your Maker's praises shout,
>Up from the sands, ye codlings, leap
>And wag your tails about. -Unknown Boston Hymnodist
John Baker
Alisa Beaton
> On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 01:09:25 GMT, mst...@home.com (Mark Steese)
> wrote:
>
> >Hwæt! We have heard of the glory of john baker that wrote
> >news:3b5b6098...@News.localaccess.com, on the day of 22 Jul 2001:
> >
> >[snip]
> >>>3) I'm rather shocked by the amount of vitriol and personal invective
> >>>on this newsgroup.
> >>
> >> nothing like a conflict of paradigms to bring out the worse it
> >> folks...remember what it was like during the Inquisition?
> >
> >I've forgotten. I eagerly await your eyewitness account. Which particular
> >Inquisition did you live through?
> >
> >Yours,
> >Mark Steese
> >--
> >Ye monsters of the bubbling deep,
> >Your Maker's praises shout,
> >Up from the sands, ye codlings, leap
> >And wag your tails about. -Unknown Boston Hymnodist
>
>
> None of them. I was always burnt in the first wave.
>The dissenters always get targeted for burning, sweetpea.
Paul Crowley
> Did Shakespeare make a mistake?
>
> BRUTUS: Peace! Count the clock.
> CASSIUS: The clock hath stricken three.
We can easily see whether or not Shakespeare was
making a mistake by checking the frequency of the
word 'clock' in the canonical plays.
IF he was making a mistake -- or if he was solely
concerned with theatrical issues -- then the word should
occur in the 'Roman plays' (and similar ones dated to
before the invention of clocks) at much the same frequency
as elsewhere.
What do we find?
The string 'clock' occurs 90 times over 38 canonical plays
(I've included Two Noble Knights). That's an average of
2.37 times per play. However, there are NO clocks in
Antony & Cleo, Coriolanus, King Lear, Titus and in Timon
of Athens. (Similarly, there are none in Venus & Adonis
and The Rape of Lucrece.) See below for a complete list.
So he DID know what he was doing. When he wanted to
be 'sound' he could avoid anachronisms. The absences
from those plays sends the average in the remainder up
to about 3 per play. But what about the other 'roman' or
'pre-clock' plays?
We have 6 In Cymbeline, 6 in Julius Caesar, 6 in Comedy
of Errors, one in Troilius & Cressida (and 7 in As you like it).
So when he was 'playing games', the playwright made a
point of it.
Of course, we have to study the text in all cases. A few
passing references could be oversights, whereas a
focusing of the action of a clock is likely to be deliberate.
And, as we will see, he focuses specifically on that action
in two (and only two) of the canonical plays: Cymbeline
and Julius Caesar -- both set in the 'pre-clock' era.
AYLI is not ''pre-clock' play' but it is set entirely in a forest,
a place without clocks. Since many in the audience would
miss that, the playwright makes a point of telling the us in
Act 3, Sc 1:
ROSALIND I pray you, what is't o'clock?
ORLANDO You should ask me what time o' day:
there's no clock in the forest.
But then he has Orlando 'watching the clock' in Act 4, Sc 3
ORLANDO I must attend the duke at dinner: by two o'clock
I will be with thee again.
ROSALIND
Ay, go your ways, go your ways; I knew what you
would prove: my friends told me as much, and I
thought no less: that flattering tongue of yours
won me: 'tis but one cast away, and so, come,
death! Two o'clock is your hour?
ORLANDO Ay, sweet Rosalind.
ROSALIND
By my troth, and in good earnest, and so God mend
me, and by all pretty oaths that are not dangerous,
if you break one jot of your promise or come one
minute behind your hour, I will think you the most
pathetical break-promise and the most hollow lover
and the most unworthy of her you call Rosalind that
may be chosen out of the gross band of the
unfaithful: therefore beware my censure and keep
your promise.
And in Act 4, Sc 3
ROSALIND How say you now? Is it not past two
o'clock? and here much Orlando!
Shakespeare uses a striking clock as a stage effect in
four plays: Twelfth Night, Cymbeline, Julius Caesar and
Richard III.
The use in Twelfth Night is minor and incidental:
OLIVIA Why, then, methinks 'tis time to smile again.
O, world, how apt the poor are to be proud!
If one should be a prey, how much the better
To fall before the lion than the wolf!
[Clock strikes]
The clock upbraids me with the waste of time.
Be not afraid, good youth, I will not have you:
And yet, when wit and youth is come to harvest,
Your were is alike to reap a proper man:
There lies your way, due west.
The clock in Cymbeline comes in a crucial scene where
Iachimo emerges from a trunk in Imogen's bedroom and
steals her bracelet. He counts the chimes:
IACHIMO:
To the trunk again, and shut the spring of it.
Swift, swift, you dragons of the night, that dawning
May bare the raven's eye! I lodge in fear;
Though this a heavenly angel, hell is here.
[Clock strikes]
One, two, three: time, time!
[Goes into the trunk. The scene closes]
The use in Julius Caesar is also important. This is quoted
from Alan Jones on 20th July:
> Having directed this play several times [ . . . . ]. The "clock"
> is in an extremely tense scene which is suddenly interrupted by a
> bell-stroke. This is at the point where Brutus has tried to lighten
> the mood after he has defied the others by insisting that Antony be
> spared. His next word "Peace!" indicates to me that someone - perhaps
> Cassius - is trying once more to raise the matter of killing Antony.
> "Peace! Count the clock," means that there is then silence for the
> space of three further bell strokes (they have to wait for the fourth
> _not_ to sound before Cassius can say "The clock hath stricken
> three"). This long pause, punctuated by bell-strokes, is theatrically
> most effective. It freezes the unknown objector, it focuses attention
> on the critical decision Brutus has just made for the conspirators,
> and the doom-laden sound of the bell is chilling. Shakespeare rather
> rarely requires sound effects, but when he does so, they seem always
> to me deeply significant.
The use in Richard III is curious
KING RICHARD III
He was in the right; and so indeed it is.
[Clock striketh]
Ten the clock there. Give me a calendar.
Who saw the sun to-day?
RATCLIFF Not I, my lord.
KING RICHARD III
Then he disdains to shine; for by the book
He should have braved the east an hour ago
A black day will it be to somebody.
In the monarch's tent on the field of battle, immediately before
the battle is to start we have a clock (or one very near) and we
also have a calender listing the times of sunrise!
Out of the four occasions when the playwright uses the
striking of a clock, one is modern and minor, two are
hopelessly anachronistic and the last is on a battlefield.
There can be no doubt that the playwright knew exactly
what he was doing. Shakespeare put these 'mistakes'
into plays -- performed by intelligent, literate actors in front
of audiences made up from the most cultured and most
highly educated people of the times -- including the royal
court. Even IF he had made a 'mistake', it would have
been picked up by members of those audiences.
This is a vital point in the authorship debate. No ordinary
playwright could have got away with such 'mistakes' --
only one who had the authority to insist that they remain in
the play -- production after production, year after year, right
up to the time they got printed -- so that we now see them.
Here is a complete list of the occurrence of the string
'clock', including stage directions in the plays:
2NK 1
12N 2
1H4 9
1H6 1
2H4 3
2H6 1
ADO 1
AWW 2
AYL 7
CYM 6
ERR 6
HN5 3
HN8 1
JCS 6
KJO 1
LLL 2
MAC 2
MFM 3
MOV 5
MWW 7
OTH 1
R&J 3
RI2 2
RI3 8
T&C 1
TEM 1
TGV 1
TOS 2
WIN 2
90
Paul.
--
Email: pebj...@ubgznvy.pbz (apply ROT13)
Mark Steese
>>>>[snip]
>>>>>>3) I'm rather shocked by the amount of vitriol and personal invective
>>>>>>on this newsgroup.
>>>>>
>>>>> nothing like a conflict of paradigms to bring out the worse it
>>>>> folks...remember what it was like during the Inquisition?
>>>>
>>>>I've forgotten. I eagerly await your eyewitness account. Which
>>>>particular Inquisition did you live through?
>>>
>>> None of them. I was always burnt in the first wave.
>>
>>I suppose that explains why you always make an ash of yourself when you
>>post here.
>>
>>-Mark Steese
>
> I like that one. Do you remember Lenon Choen's song on Joan of Arc?
Was that the song that Leonard Cohen plagiarized?
> About how the fire married her?
>
> lovely wasn't it.
Assuming that you're thinking of the Cohen song and not the Choen one, yes.
It is not however, actually about Joan of Arc. You don't grasp metaphor
very well, I'm afraid.
Yours,
Mark Steese
Neuendorffer
Benben: From ancient Egyptian myth,
the hill which was the first land to rise from the waters.
<<It is generally thought that the Egyptian temple of the Dynastic
Period owed most to the cult of the sun god Re at Heliopolis. The temple
of Re, however, was probably open in plan and lacked a shrine. Sun
temples were unique among cult temples; worship was centred on a cult
object, the benben, which was a squat obelisk placed in full sunlight.
Among the few temples surviving from the Old Kingdom are sun temples of
the 5th-dynasty kings at Abu Jirab (Abu Gurab). That of Neuserre reveals
the essential layout: a reception pavilion at the desert edge connected
by a covered corridor on a causeway to the open court of the temple high
on the desert, within which stood the benben of limestone and a huge
alabaster altar.>>
---------------------------------------------------------------
Benben: a squat obelisk placed in full sunlight
---------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.ancientsites.com/~Tjeti_Sobkneferu/Amun/benben.html
<<Sacred stone at Heliopolis that symbolized the Primeval mound and
perhaps also the petrified semen of the sun god Re-Atum, when he
self-copulated and brought things into being:
‘O Atum-Khoprer, you became high on the
height, you rose up as the bnbn-stone in the
Mansion of the Phoenix at On’
The stone served as the earliest prototype for the obelisk, and possibly
even the pyramid. In recognition of these connections, the gilded
cap-stone placed at the very top of each pyramid or obelisk was known as
a benbenet. The original stone at Heliopolis was believed to have been
the point at which the rays of the rising sun first fell, and its cult
appears to be dated back to the First Dynasty.>>
-------------------------------------------------------------
Bnbn-stone
Ben Jonson
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.findagrave.com/pictures/5942.html
Ben Jonson (Johnson) b. 1572. d. 1637.
Jonson, a writer/dramatist, has one of the most unusual graves
in Westminster Abbey. He once said
'Two feet by two feet will do for all I want'.
So, when he died, he was buried upright.
Westminster Abbey, London, England
Specific Interment Location: The Nave.
Surely, Jonson (Johnson) required more than 'Two feet by two feet'
even buried upright. However, if he wanted some save place
for MANUSCRIPTS then 'Two feet by two feet' would do nicely.
------------------------------------------------------------
Transfiguration(/OLD LAMMAS) Day August 6
"Nosey" Parker [Archb. of Cant.] born Aug.6, 1504
Thomas Trussell commits highway robbery Aug.6, 1585
Armada prevented from Dutch reinforcement Aug.6, 1588
Rutland released from Tower Aug.6, 1601
Anne Hathaway's death Aug.6, 1623
Ben Jonson's death Aug.6, 1637
-------------------------------------------------------------------
UNDER THE NAME OF SANDERS
-------------------------------------------------------------------
http://justus.anglican.org/resources/pc/orders/orders1.html
<<The fraudulent Nag’s Head Fable was not known until 1604 (about 45
years after the consecration and near 30 years after Parker’s death).
The fable was distinctly denied and repudiated in 1616 by the Earl of
Nottingham present at the actual consecration in 1559. Of this public
denial we have a record by the Rev. William Hampton, Rector of Worth:
"In the beginning of King James his reigne there came out a book
UNDER THE NAME OF SANDERS with the story of the Nagg’s head ordination.
This book was showed to King James and upon his reading of it
it stratled (sic) him.">>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
<<Once upon a time, a very long time ago now, about last Friday,
Winnie-the-Pooh lived in a forest all by himself
UNDER THE NAME OF SANDERS.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The original Nosey Parker, Matthew Parker, was born [in Norwich]
on Aug.6 1504. As Archbishop of Canterbury under Elizabeth I,
he supervised the revision of Cranmer's 42 doctrinal articles
to produce the definitive 39 Articles of Religion
which defined the doctrine of the Church of England.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/Coast/9150/Kaaba.html
The Kaaba is the building towards which Muslims face five times a day,
everyday, in prayer. The Kaaba's height is 39 feet, 6 inches.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
39 Articles of Religion <=> 39 Steps
----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.londonnet.co.uk/ln/guide/about/gallbigb.html
<<The tower houses Buchanan's/Hitchcock's infamous "Thirty-nine steps".
The bell was named after a popular heavyweight boxer Benjamin Caunt.>>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The new Freemason Washington Monument
with its bright shiney aluminum "BENBEN".
(atomic number 13)
Big Ben = 39/3 = 13 tons
> --------------------------------------------------------
> THE STORY OF BIG BEN
> http://www.whitechapelbellfoundry.co.uk/bigben.htm
>
> The bells of the Great Clock of Westmister rang across London for the
> first time on 31st May 1859, and Parliament had a special sitting to
> decide on a suitable name for the great hour bell. During the course of
> the debate, and amid the many suggestions that were made, Chief Lord of
> the Woods and Forests, Sir Benjamin Hall, a large and ponderous man
> known affectionately in the House as "Big Ben", rose and gave an
> impressively long speech on the subject. When, at the end of this
> oratorical marathon, Sir Benjamin sank back into his seat, a wag in the
> chamber shouted out: "Why not call him Big Ben and have done with it?"
> The house erupted in laughter; Big Ben had been named.>>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
<<Ben Dollard bulkily cachuchad towards the bar, mightily praisefed and
all big roseate, on heavyfooted feet, his gouty fingers nakkering
castagnettes in the air. Big Benaden Dollard. Big Benben. Big Benben.>>
- Ulysses
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
BIG BEN CAUNT vs. A Bendigo
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Ben came to notice as a pugilist in his first important fight about 1835
> when he defeated a member of his own family, Richard Butler at Wighay
> Field Hucknall. Then around 1836 and relatively inexperienced he fought
> the English champion Bendigo William Thompson of Nottingham but lost
> over 22 rounds. When after losing patience with Bendigo's tactics of
> constantly going down on one knee for a rest he struck Bendigo as he
> rested on the knee of his second. The referee then disqualified Ben for
> a foul blow. Not until 1838 was he given another chance for the title
> and this time made no mistake defeating Bendigo over 76 rounds of bitter
> combat.
> In 1845 Big Ben and Bendigo again fought for the title and this time
> Bendigo prevailed over 96 rounds with a controversial verdict given by
> the referee.
> Big Ben Caunt died aged 47 years in London. His body was taken back to
> Hucknall, where his funeral attracted a huge throng of people and the
> visitors to his grave were reported as far outnumbering those who
> visited the tomb of the poet Lord Byron who is also buried there.
> Hucknall seems to have forgotten its first and last champion as Ben's
> iron railing enclosed grave has been in a dilapidated and neglected
> state for many years.
> Though there has been resistance to the idea of the great bell of
> Westminster being named for a prizefighter it is now accepted that the
> official reason for the name, that the bell was named after an obscure
> Commissioner of Works, is wrong and the evidence clearly shows the
> common people bestowed the name Big Ben on the hour bell in honour
> of Ben Caunt.>>
-------------------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer
Neuendorffer
> Parliament, then under construction, should incorporate a tower and
> clock. The commission for this work was awarded to the architect
> Charles Barry, whilst the specification for the clock was drawn up
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://octopus.phy.bg.ac.yu/web_projects/giants/airy.html
<<Sir George Biddell AIRY (b. July 27, 1801, Alnwick, Northumberland,
Eng.--d. Jan. 2, 1892, Greenwich, London), versatile English scientist
and seventh Astronomer Royal (1835-81). He reorganized the Royal
Greenwich Observatory, installing new apparatus and rescuing thousands
of observations from oblivion, but his hesitation in acting on the
calculations of English astronomer John C. Adams in 1845 somewhat
delayed the discovery of Neptune. AIRY improved the theory of the
orbital motions of Venus and of the Moon.
-------------------------------------------------------------
The Merry Wives of Windsor Act 5, Scene 5
PISTOL Elves, list your names; silence, you AIRY toys.
-------------------------------------------------------------
In 1827 AIRY made the first to attempt to correct astigmatism in
the human eye (his own) by use of a cylindrical eyeglass lens. He
contributed also, in optics, to the study of interference fringes
and to the mathematical theory of rainbows.
In 1838 AIRY devised a compass-correction system for the Royal Navy.
In 1842 the Chancellor of the Exchequer abandoned the Charles Babbage's
Analytical Engine after being told it was "worthless" by AIRY. "We got
nothing for our £17,000 but Mr. Babbage's grumblings", wrote Sheepshanks
in his "Letter to the Board of Visitors of the Greenwich Royal
Observatory". "We should at least have had a clever TOY for our money".
In 1871 AIRY used a water-filled telescope to test the effect of the
Earth's motion on the aberration of light.
-------------------------------------------------------------
ROSENCRANTZ Truly, and I hold ambition of so AIRY and light a
quality that it is but a SHADOW's SHADOW.
<<The diffraction pattern of a circular aperture
is named the AIRY disk for Sir George Biddell AIRY.>>
-------------------------------------------------------------
Prospero: This AIRY charm is for, I'll break my STAFF,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I'll drown my book.
In 1854 AIRY measured gravity by swinging the same pendulum at the top
and bottom of a deep mine and thus computed the density of the Earth. He
was among the first to propose the theory that root structures of lower
density must exist under mountains to maintain isostatic equilibrium.
AIRY was knighted in 1872.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Hamilton.html
<<William Rowan Hamilton's finals examiner persuaded him to apply for
the post of Astronomer Royal at Dunsink observatory even although there
had already been six applicants, one of whom was George Biddell AIRY.
Later in 1827 the board appointed Hamilton Professor of Astronomy at
Trinity College while he was still an undergraduate aged twenty-one
years. It turned out that Hamilton had made a poor choice as he lost
interest in astronomy and spend all time on mathematics.>>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
<<So witches some enchanted WAND bestride,
And think they through the AIRY regions ride.>> - Oldham
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.umass.edu/wsp/texts/wst/c/cc1a.html
1. AIRY's taunt during a dinner at the estate of Lord Rosse induced the
sensitive William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865), then two years on the
wagon, to resume drinking, thus darkening the latter half of a career
whose first half put Hamilton in the front rank of mathematicians in
that century.
2. In 1842 the Chancellor of the Exchequer abandoned the Charles
Babbage's Analytical Engine after being told it was "worthless" by AIRY.
3. AIRY's delay in searching for Neptune in 1845 where the calculations
of John Couch Adams (1819-1892) had located it compelled Adams to cede,
and only later to share, the honor of its prediction with the Frenchman
Le the Verrier (1811-1877). The planet was discovered by the German
astronomer, Galle, using the calculations of Le Verrier. Adams had gone
to see Airy, but was turned away because Airy was at dinner (at three in
the afternoon)! Adams was offered the post of Astronomer Royal in
succession to AIRY in 1991, but declined.
4. AIRY's recommendation that James Legge (1815-1897) should use
astronomical, not historical, year names in Legge's essentially
historical work on the Chun/Chyou and other Chinese classical texts has
proved a continual snare to the unwary graduate student in ever since.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sir George Biddell AIRY
"The life of AIRY was essentially that of a hard-working business
man, and differed from that of other hard-working people only in the
quality and variety of his work. It was not an exciting life, but it was
full of interest..." Wilfred AIRY
<<Sir George Biddell AIRY (1801-1892) Astronomer Royal for 46 years. The
tenth Lucasian professor, AIRY had attended Trinity College Cambridge,
graduating in 1823 as senior wrangler and winner of the Smith's Prize.
He was elected a fellow the following year. He was sizar while at
Cambridge. In fact, were it not for the generosity of his uncle, he
would not have been able to attend Cambridge. AIRY defended his thesis
publicly in Latin, won the title of senior wrangler, and passed the
written and oral examinations of the tripos. He was well known for his
abilities in Latin and ancient Greek, in addition to his extensive
mathematical skills.
Professor William Whewell alerted AIRY in 1826 that Turton was leaving
the Lucasian Chair, suggesting strongly that he compete for it. The
salary of an assistant tutor was 150 pounds and that of the Lucasian
Chair only 99 pounds, so AIRY had to make a serious decision. Professor
George Peacock persuaded AIRY that the value of holding the position
overshadowed questions of money, so AIRY competed for the chair. There
were two other candidates, Dr. Edward French of Jesus College and
Charles Babbage. French withdrew when Babbage stated he was about to
start legal proceedings over the election. This seems to have begun the
rivalry that AIRY and Babbage continued for many years. Babbage became
Lucasian professor two years later when AIRY left the post for the
Plumian Chair.
It was an unfortunate occurrence, that AIRY had a long standing battle
with Babbage. The struggle with Babbage was typical of the temperament
of AIRY, who was known for his sarcasm and somewhat caustic personality.
AIRY had started out winning in the battles with Babbage. The problems
between the two flared again when, in 1832, there was a dispute over the
quality of a telescope built in which AIRY and Babbage were called in as
experts. They stood on opposing sides and again AIRY won and Babbage
suffered damage to his career.
Ten years later while Babbage was trying to keep financial support from
the government flowing to his projects, AIRY wrote an opinion to the
Chancellor of the Exchequer which stated that the Babbage's calculating
engine was "worthless": <<Babbage continued applying for grant money for
his Analytical Engine. Prime Minister Robert Peel recommended that
Babbage's machine be set to calculate the time at which it would be of
use. "I would like a little previous consideration", wrote Peel, "before
I move in a thin house of country gentlemen a large vote for the
creation of a wooden man to calculate tables from the formula x^2 + x +
41". The Chancellor of the Exchequer finally abandoned the project in
1842 after being told it was "worthless" by Sir George AIRY. "We got
nothing for our £17,000 but Mr. Babbage's grumblings", wrote Sheepshanks
in his "Letter to the Board of Visitors of the Greenwich Royal
Observatory". "We should at least have had a clever toy for our
money".>>
Recently, the government had failed to compensate AIRY for solving a
problem for it in which he was able to provide a mechanical tabulation
method while working on the larger problem of navigating iron ships.
AIRY took out his anger by preventing Babbage from receiving
compensation by rendering this opinion. It was probably doubly
satisfying for AIRY to shut down the source of Babbage's funds as well
as stop the government from progressing with the automation of
calculations and record keeping. Unfortunately for England and the rest
of the world, it delayed progress for an indefinite period of time.
In 1854, the conflict continued between the two during the "battle of
the gauges" in England. There was a struggle over the standards for
railroads, because two gauge sizes of track were in use, causing the
expected problems of incompatibility. AIRY championed the side of the
narrow gauge and Babbage on the wide gauge. Again AIRY won. Later, when
AIRY was Director of the Royal Observatory, in 1854, Babbage was a
member of the Board of Visitors for the Observatory. The squabble this
time was over AIRY giving money and information to a researcher, both
supplied by the British government. AIRY came out ahead as usual.
AIRY was a practical man, with his work directed at application, not
theory. The following quote is taken from a letter he wrote after
reviewing the tripos examinations for Cambridge in 1859:
"I have looked very carefully over the Examination Papers and think
them on the whole very bad. They are utterly perverted by the insane
love of Problems, and by the foolish importance given to wholly useless
parts of Algebraic Geometry. For the sake of these, every Physical
Subject and every useful application of pure mathematics are cut down or
not mentioned."
Thus, the major portion of his work was practical in nature, addressing
such tasks as determining the mass of the planet Jupiter and its period
rotation, calculating the orbits
of comets and cataloging the stars. His lifelong work covered the topics
of numerical lunar theory, the transits of the planet Venus and
eclipses. He was responsible for the
production, as well as being the keeper, of records of official
astronomical data by virtue of his position as Astronomer Royal. He even
went back in history to correct
existing records and to integrate the data into current records. He
worked on an eclipse recorded by Thales of ancient Greece and old
Chinese astronomical records.
He had made corrections to the records of the Royal Observatory while he
was the Lucasian Professor. AIRY was a stickler for detail and
correctness. One of his papers was a report on corrections to the orbit
of the moon from records dating from 1750 through 1830. Since computers
at that time were not machines, but rather people doing calculations by
hand, this effort was a tedious one. AIRY's main work was in astronomy,
but he was involved in many other areas including magnetism and
horology. In the field of magnetism he offered methods to correct for
compass readings in ships made of iron.
AIRY suffered from astigmatism, and in 1825, designed the first
eyeglasses to correct it. He published a paper called On a peculiar
Defect in the Eye, and a mode of correcting it. The problem of
astigmatism and its potential correction had been known since the time
of Isaac Barrow, but AIRY was the first to design lenses that worked.
AIRY was interested in poetry, history, theology, antiquities,
architecture, engineering, and geology. He published papers on Caesar,
including the location in Britain of his landing and departure. AIRY was
liberal in his views on religion in the sense that he was independent in
his own interpretations of scripture. During his tenure at Cambridge
there was a great deal of controversy on the issue of required religious
tests for MA degree candidates. Eventually the requirements were
dropped, and he was sympathetic to this development. AIRY was also a
member of the faculty senate that voted to allow candidates for the
medical degree to receive their degrees without professing loyalty to
the Church of England. He also took the liberal viewpoint in 1834, when
a major controversy broke out at Cambridge over the admission of
Dissenters to the university.
Another sign of AIRY's religious views emerged when Calenso, a
mathematician, and Bishop of Natal, was criticized for his writings on
the Pentateuch. AIRY wrote that he owed Calenso a debt for an
intellectual stimulus for searching out the truth, even though he did
not use it the same way as Calenso. In other words, even if he did not
agree with Calenso's writing, he did agree with the method of analysis.
Furthermore, there was the strong sense that one did not have to agree
in all instances with the religious beliefs of others.
In matters of personal devotion to religion and belief in God, AIRY was
most committed. He published numerous papers on religion. One paper,
published in 1854, argued that the great Biblical Flood was a great
flood of the Nile, not of the world. He also published several papers on
the exodus of the Israelites. In a series of letters to Cambridge in
which AIRY was making suggestions to improve mathematical instruction, a
few telling remarks revealed his attitudes toward religion. He expressed
his belief that the college had two objectives. The first was to give
religious instruction and the second to pursue science with no
connection to religion. He believed that the master of a college should
have taken holy orders.>>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Airy.html
Sir George Biddell AIRY
Born: 27 July 1801 in Alnwick, Northumberland, England
Died: 2 Jan 1892 in Greenwich, England
<<George Airy's father was William Airy while his mother was Ann
Biddell. William Airy was from Lincolnshire and Ann was the daughter of
a farmer from Suffolk. Originally William had been a farmer too, but he
had educated himself and risen to the position of tax inspector. When
George was born his parents were living in Northumberland where William
was a collector of excise, but in the following year the family moved to
Hereford when William was transferred there.
Eggen writes:- "An introverted but not shy child, Airy was, even for
the time and especially for his circumstances, a young snob.
Nevertheless, he overcame some of the dislike of his schoolmates by his
great skill and inventiveness in the construction of peashooters and
other such devices."
Before Airy left Byatt Walker's school his father had transferred again,
this time to Essex. From 1812 Airy spent his summers with his uncle,
Arthur Biddell, who had a farm near Ipswich. Clearly Airy was not too
happy at home because he asked his uncle if he could live with him
rather than with his own family. Things had taken a turn for the worse
at home since his father lost his tax collectors job in 1813 for
stealing £700 and the family were living in poverty. The fact that Airy
spent about half his time with his uncle over the next five years was
important for him. Arthur Biddell was a man of learning who had a fine
library containing books on chemistry, optics and mechanics which Airy
avidly studied, and in addition he had many leading scientists as his
friends. Their influence on the young Airy was marked and was a major
factor in his seeking an academic career.
During these five years, 1814 to 1819, Airy attended Colchester Grammar
School where he was : "... noted for his memory, repeating in one
examination 2394 lines of Latin verse."
Airy entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1819 as a sizar, meaning
that he paid a reduced fee but essentially worked as a servant to make
good the fee reduction. However it was only because his uncle provided
financial support that he was able to undertake university studies at
all. To supplement his income Airy took private pupils and this, of
course, gave him less time for his own studies.
The ruling feature of his character was order. From the time he went up
to Cambridge to the end of his life his system of order was strictly
maintained. He never destroyed a document, but devised an ingenious plan
of easy reference to the huge bulk of his papers.
In 1824 Airy met Richarda Smith while on a walking holiday. He proposed
two days after they first met but her father, Richard Smith, the vicar
of a church near Chatsworth, refused to allow the marriage on the
grounds that Airy could not support his daughter financially. This made
Airy determined to obtain a position with the financial status which
would allow him to marry.
Only three years after graduating from Cambridge, he was appointed
Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. It is rather surprising
that the Lucasian Professor only received £99 per year while Airy was
already receiving £150 as an assistant tutor. Airy wondered whether he
could afford to compete for the chair when he was advised in 1826 that
Turton was leaving, but Peacock persuaded him that the status was more
important than the money. He became one of three candidates, French and
Babbage being the other two. When Babbage stated that he was about to
start legal proceedings over the election, French withdrew. Airy
triumphed and a rivalry with Babbage which was to last for many years
began.
Airy was appointed Plumian Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge and
Director of the Cambridge Observatory. The University had complied with
his request for the salary
to be increased and the £500 per year he received was sufficient to
allow him to marry Richarda Smith , which he did on 24 March 1830.
He became Astronomer Royal in 1835 moving at that time from Cambridge to
Greenwich. There he undertook a reorganisation of the Royal Observatory
which was positive in many ways but also had some unfortunate side
effects. Since he could not tolerate his staff thinking for themselves
no young scientists were trained at the Observatory during his period as
Astronomer Royal.
Airy wrote the text On the Algebraic and Numerical Theory of Errors of
Observations and the Combinations of Observations. Although said at the
time to be: "... unreadable except by those already thoroughly
acquainted with the subject,"
His attitude to mathematics was very much as an applied mathematician
who saw no point in the study of the subject in its own right. His son
writes: "His nature was eminently practical, and his dislike of mere
theoretical problems and investigations was proportionally great.
He was continually at war with some of the Cambridge mathematicians on
this subject. Year after year he criticised the Senate House papers and
the Smith's Prize papers very severely, and conducted an interesting and
acrimonious private correspondence with Professor Cayley on the same
subject."
Airy's delay, in 1845, of searching for Neptune at the location
suggested by Adams prevented Adams obtaining full credit for his work
although in many ways he has been unfairly criticised over this episode.
Airy did, however, make many major contributions to mathematics and
astronomy. He improved the orbital theory of Venus and the Moon, studied
interference fringes in optics, made a mathematical study of the rainbow
and computed the density of the Earth by swinging a pendulum at the top
and bottom of a deep mine. We should note that the value he obtained was
too large by a fair amount.
Airy was made chairman of the Commission set up to construct Standard
Weights and Measures in 1834. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal
Society of Edinburgh in 1835, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of
London in 1836, having received the Society's Copley Medal in 1831. He
gave the Bakerian lecture to the Society entitled On the theoretical
explanation of an apparent new polarity of light in 1840. He received
the Society's Royal Medal in 1845 for a paper on the Irish tides.
The Royal Astronomical Society elected Airy to be their President in
1845. Then, in 1851, Airy was elected President of the British
Association, and in 1871 he was elected President of the Royal Society
of London holding the post for two years. The Institut de France elected
him to membership to fill the position which became vacant on the death
of John Herschel in 1872 and in the same year he accepted a knighthood
having declined it on three previous occasions on the grounds that he
could not afford the fees. Soon after this, in 1874, he organised an
expedition to observe the transit of Venus.
Outside his professional scientific interests, Airy was a man of broad
tastes. He liked poetry, history, theology, antiquities, architecture,
engineering, and geology. He even
published papers on his other interests including one which tried to
identify the exact place where Julius Caesar landed in Britain and the
exact place from which he left. In
addition he published a number of papers on religious matters.
AIRY was sarcastic and enforced a rigid discipline on his staff at the
Royal Observatory. An illustration of Airy's personality is shown from
his long running disagreements with Babbage. They had a dispute over the
quality of a telescope in 1832, he stated that Babbage's calculating
engine was "worthless" ten years later and effectively stopped
government funding of the project, and in 1854 he took the side of the
narrow gauge for railways while Babbage supported the wide gauge. In all
these disputes Airy came out the winner, but it is far from clear that
he took the "right" side in the arguments.
We should end with a few words on Airy's importance as a scientist. His
own words certainly show that he had a realistic view of himself: "...
in those parts of astronomy which ... [require] only method and
judgement, with very little science in the persons employed, we have
done much; while in those which depend exclusively on individual effort
we have done little ... our principal progress has been made in the
lower branches of astronomy while to the higher branches of science we
have not added anything."
Airy is buried at Playford Church in Suffolk together with Thomas
Clarkson, the slave trade abolitionist.>>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer
Mark Steese
(apply ROT13)> that wrote news:MZ077.18992$Fk7.1...@news.indigo.ie, on
the day of 23 Jul 2001:
>> Did Shakespeare make a mistake?
>>
>> BRUTUS: Peace! Count the clock.
>> CASSIUS: The clock hath stricken three.
>
> We can easily see whether or not Shakespeare was making a mistake by
> checking the frequency of the word 'clock' in the canonical plays.
Hark! Is that a cuckoo clock I hear?
> IF he was making a mistake -- or if he was solely concerned with
> theatrical issues -- then the word should occur in the 'Roman plays'
> (and similar ones dated to before the invention of clocks) at much the
> same frequency as elsewhere.
[snip much evidence of Mr. Crowley's lunatick disposition]
> Shakespeare uses a striking clock as a stage effect in four plays:
> Twelfth Night, Cymbeline, Julius Caesar and Richard III.
There's at least one omission from this list: "The clock gives me my cue" -
Ford, Merry Wives of Windsor, III:ii. Not that I pursue the somewhat
eccentric methods of Crowley; I acted a minor role in Merry Wives many
years ago, and we had the worst trouble getting a satisfactory 'clock'
effect -- the experience left an otherwise forgettable line embedded in my
memory.
[snip]
> The use in Julius Caesar is also important. This is quoted
> from Alan Jones on 20th July:
>
>> Having directed this play several times [ . . . . ]. The "clock"
>> is in an extremely tense scene which is suddenly interrupted by a
[etc.]
I would like to note that Mr. Crowley posted this *after* I compared Mr.
Jones's style to Mr. Crowley's. It looks as though I was right.
[more snippage]
> There can be no doubt that the playwright knew exactly
> what he was doing. Shakespeare put these 'mistakes'
> into plays -- performed by intelligent, literate actors in front
> of audiences made up from the most cultured and most
> highly educated people of the times -- including the royal
> court. Even IF he had made a 'mistake', it would have
> been picked up by members of those audiences.
Now Mr. Jones may see that I have not exaggerated the degree to which Mr.
Crowley will not allow an error to creep into the canon. I suppose the
particular disorder suffered by both Jones and Crowley could use a name,
and I propose to call it "Shakesperfectionism."
> This is a vital point in the authorship debate. No ordinary
> playwright could have got away with such 'mistakes' --
> only one who had the authority to insist that they remain in
> the play -- production after production, year after year, right
> up to the time they got printed -- so that we now see them.
I leave this paragraph as a warning to Shakesperfectionists of what awaits
them should they pursue their line of unreasoning too far.
[further madness snipped]
Neuendorffer
<<John Couch Adams was educated at St John's College, Cambridge. He
began his undergraduate course in October 1839 and graduated Senior
Wrangler four years later. On 3 July 1841 Adams wrote:
"Formed a design in the beginning of this week, of investigating, as
soon as possible after taking my degree, the irregularities of the
motion of Uranus, which are yet unaccounted for; in order to find out
whether they may be attributed to the action of an undiscovered planet
beyond it; and if possible thence to determine the elements of its
orbit, etc.. approximately, which would probably lead to its discovery."
http://www.swan.ac.uk/astra/astro/neptune.htm
In October 1843 Adams concluded that the answer to the problem was a
missing planet. . . also in 1843 he became first Smith's Prizeman and
became a Fellow of Pembroke College.>>
-----------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/or220996.htm
<<Like others interested in this episode, I'm puzzled as to why Adams
did not look for Neptune himself during these years, for he had access
to a telescope in his college in Cambridge. Patrick, the writer and
astronomer, set out not so long ago to replicate Adams' circumstances,
and was able to find Neptune in just over a fortnight, using a pair of
binoculars!>>
On Nov.11, 1843 Neptune was very close to Jupiter , , , not unlike
when it was first 'observed' by Galileo with a 18X telescope:
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Launchpad/1837/neptune.html
<<NEPTUNE the first planet predicted to exist before it was discovered
was actually seen by Galileo on December 27 1612 while he was recording
the positions of Jupiter's satellites. Gallileo noted a"star"in the same
field of view which seems to have been Neptune. A more certain
observation by Galileo was recorded in his notebook on December 28 1614
"Beyond a fixed star"a",another followed in the same straight line,which
was also observed the previous night,but then seemed further apart from
one another". Because Gallileo's telescope operated at a magnification
of only 18X and Neptune's motion was no more then 22 arc-seconds per day
it is no suprise that he failed to recognize it for what it was, had he
done so Neptune would have been discovered 170 years earlier then it
was,but then our story wouldn't have turned out to be so intresting.>>
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Le Verrier = the glass-maker
--------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.rog.nmm.ac.uk/museum/airy/C19_astro/neptune.html
<<Mathematicians John Couch Adams in England and Urbain Jean Joseph
LeVerrier in France both analysed variations in the orbit of Uranus and
concluded that there should be another yet another planet in the Solar
System. Adams contacted George Biddell Airy at the Royal Observatory to
ask him to search for this new planet. Airy was unwilling to undertake
the search, considering it unimportant and unrelated to the Royal
Observatory's work in navigation and timekeeping. He recommended that
Adams contact Challis, at Cambridge, who could search using the
Northumberland telescope. Challis studied the area of the sky predicted
by Adam's calculations but, unfortunately, missed the fact that one of
the objects in the search field showed a planetary disc. Meanwhile,
Leverrier had contacted Johann Gottfried Galle, of the Berlin
Observatory. Neptune was discovered by Galle and his student Louis
d'Arrest on 23rd September 1846.>>
--------------------------------------------------------------------
THE NEPTUNE AFFAIR by John H. Lienhard
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1006.htm
The convoluted story of Neptunen begins in 1841
when John Adams, a brilliant Cambridge student,
took an interest in the irregular movement of Uranus. Maybe
the irregularity was caused by another, yet undiscovered, planet.
In 1843, Adams went to the Cambridge astronomy professor,
James Challis, with a computational scheme. Challis got the data
Adams needed from the royal astronomer, George Airy. Adams
went to work. Two years later, he knew where to aim a
telescope to find the mystery planet. He asked Challis to look
for it. Challis didn't want to take on the job. He sent Adams to
Airy.
Airy read Adams's work and sent back a note with a minor
question. The question struck Adams as too simple. He figured
the great Airy was writing rhetorically. He didn't bother to
answer. Airy thought the young man was snubbing him. He
wrote an angry letter to Challis, and he wouldn't even to
speak to Adams.
Months later, a young French astronomer, LeVerrier, made the
same calculation Adams had. He also went to Airy. Airy heard
him out, then went to Challis and said, "Let's look for the
planet." Challis finally began looking. But so did German
astronomers. On September 23, 1846, the Berlin Observatory
found the planet we call Neptune. It lay very near the spot
both young men had predicted.
Airy wrote congratulations to LeVerrier. The French Academy
cheered a French triumph and tried to name the planet after
LeVerrier instead of naming it after yet another Roman god.
Then the great English astronomer, John Herschel, announced
that Adams had actually done the calculation first.
The French were furious at Herschel. The English Royal Society
was equally furious at Airy and Challis for dropping the
ball. They subjected them to a public humiliation from which
neither ever fully recovered. And what of Adams and
LeVerrier?
Well, those two level-headed young men became close friends.
After all, they'd discovered Neptune, hadn't they? This
nationalistic stuff wasn't their fight. But then, a few years later,
a Harvard astronomer showed that their calculations had been
incomplete. They'd both been lucky to find anything at all.
Maybe the crowning irony was the discovery, in 1980, of notes
that Galileo had made in 1612 and 1613. He'd clearly identified
Neptune, but he hadn't realized it was moving in relation to the
stars behind it. He thought it was another star.>>
-----------------------------------------------------------------
(Mr. W.H.) William Herschel in his Bath
-----------------------------------------------------------------
In December 1612 Galileo recorded the planet Neptune
without realizing it near the planet Jupiter;
at the time Uranus was located at 24 GEMINI.
Two complete Uranian cycles later (84 years X 2) on Mar. 13, 1781,
Uranus would become the first outer planet discovered
at 24 GEMINI by Sir William Herschel in Bath, England).>>
http://www.mcn.org/greatbear/neptune2.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------
<<Uranus is often brighter than 6th magnitude, which makes it just
barely visible to the unaided eye. It's a wonder that no one had
discovered it before. Although Uranus had been recorded as a star,
apparently its slow motion through the sky allowed it to go undetected
as a planet. Herschel also discovered two of the moons of Uranus, Oberon
and Titania, with his 20-foot long telescope on January 11, 1787. By
this night six years later Uranus had moved up the left "twin" to a
position to the east of Pollux.>>
http://www.skyhound.com/george.htm
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Adams, Airy and the Discovery of Neptune in 1846 by Allan Chapman
http://www.u-net.com/ph/lassell/adams-airy.htm
<<Soon after Neptune was discovered in Berlin, in September 1846, using
Le Verrier's Computed position, a furore broke out in Britain about the
priority of John Couch Adams. Though Adams's claim had not been advanced
until October 1846, when even the English astronomers were still
speaking of "Le Verrier's Planet", it came to be realised that Adams had
already arrived at a computed position for the Uranus-disturbing planet
by the autumn of 1845. Adams, via a letter of introduction from
Professor Challis in Cambridge, had applied to Professor George Biddell
Airy, the Astronomer Royal for some kind of assistance, though he failed
to secure an interview with Airy, and nothing further happened - until
the New Planet was discovered in Berlin, nearly a year later.
Popular interpretations of this incident place a great deal of
responsibility upon Airy, for not having taken the initiative to secure
a British discovery. Yet this is unjust, and
several key factors must be born in mind:
1.It was not the job of the Astronomer Royal to undertake searches.
2.As an extremely over-worked man, Airy cannot be blamed for being
unavailable when Adams chanced to call upon him without first having
made an appointment. He was abroad on the first occasion, and at dinner
with his family on the second.
3.After Adams left his figures for Neptune's place, when the Airy
family were at dinner on October 21st, 1845, Airy was prompt in writing
to Adams in Cambridge, requesting crucial pieces of mathematical
information about the basis of his computations. Adams never replied to
Airy's letter, nor supplied the requested information.
4.Why was Adams not admitted when Airy was at dinner? We should bear
in mind that at the time Mrs. Richarda Airy was within a week of giving
birth to their ninth child. Her previous pregnancies had been difficult,
and as Airy was deeply attached to his wife, he saw no reason to have
their dinner interrupted by a stranger who wished to see him on a
business matter. There is no evidence to suggest that Adams was willing
to wait until the meal was over in spite of the fact that the Airy
family dined not in the evening, but in the late afternoon.
5.Airy's voluminous surviving correspondence makes it clear that
everyone - from Cabinet Ministers and Admirals, down to servant-girls
wanting to have their fortunes told - wrote to, and occasionally
called-in upon the Astronomer Royal. A man who was so much in the public
eye had to defend his privacy.
6.While all of this was going on, the Royal Observatory was being
rocked by the disclosure of an awful incident. A senior Greenwich
Observatory Assistant, William Richardson, had just been exposed for
having committed an appalling murder. From late October 1846, onwards,
Airy and his Chief Assistant, the Revd Robert Main, made appearances
before the courts at the beginning of Richardson's trial. Airy was
acutely embarrassed by the regular appearance of his name, as
Richardson's employer, in the newspaper columns reporting the details of
a crime which hinged upon sex, incest, and the burial of a body in a
shallow grave.
7.And if this was not enough, the year 1845-1856 was probably the
busiest in Airy's professional life. For in addition to astronomy, he
was immersed in the business of the Railway Gauge Commission. As the
Scientific Commissioner, he was travelling around Britain testing trains
and interviewing engineers. It was this Commission, and Airy's
scientific advice, which settled British (and, later American) railway
gauges at the "Standard Gauge" of 4 feet 8 1/2 inches.
John Couch Adams, while a brilliant mathematician, was rather naive
socially, and was said by a senior Cambridge colleague to have behaved,
regarding Neptune, not "like a man who made a great discovery, but like
a bashful boy." In 1846, however, the "bashful boy" was 27 years old.
Urbain Le Verrier, the French co-discovery of Neptune was an older, and
much more business-like individual, and had the determination to see his
computations put to effect. Yet even he was not able to find a French
Observatory that was willing to undertake the search, and was forced to
write to colleagues in Berlin. We often forget that the French
scientific establishment let Le Verrier down no less than the British
was accused of having let down Adams. Once the Berlin sighting had been
made, however, the French were quick to turn it into a French National
discovery.
But to blame Airy for not doing what was not his job anyway - to search
for private individual's privately investigated planet - is very unjust,
especially when one considers the pressures under which Airy was
operating. And if poor Adams had bothered to make appointments before
turning up for interviews, and had also bothered to answer the letter
from the Astronomer Royal, then the discovery of Neptune might have gone
differently.
Yet the real justice of the incident was done when Adams and Le Verrier,
who were two very different types of men, met in 1847. They had the
greatest admiration for each other's work, and became good friends.>>
-----------------------------------------------------------
Galileo <=> Galle
-----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.mcn.org/greatbear/neptune2.html
<<Telescopic lenses were the latest rage in the first decade of the
1600's – particularly in their design in Holland. In early 1610, Galileo
(born Feb. 14, 1564) shocked the European world by announcing that he
had seen and discovered four moons orbiting the planet Jupiter. And then
a little less than 3 years later (Dec. 28, 1612), Galileo was observing
Jupiter when he came across an object (seemingly in alignment with
Jupiter), a celestial body that he noted was probably an 8th magnitude
star. A month later – late January 1613 – he again observed Jupiter
and found the same cosmic object. But he never followed up after that!
However, with our trusty modern ephemerides, we now know what Galileo
saw through his early-model telescope in 1612. It was Neptune – which at
the time was in a precise conjunction with Jupiter (26+ Virgo).
As a matter of fact, note this incredible scenario. On the day that
Galileo saw Neptune for the first time Neptune had stopped dead in its
tracks. It had been going direct for many months and was pausing to turn
retrograde. Thus, it was making a station – one of the most powerful
placements for Neptune in any given year!
Later in January 1613, Jupiter stationed (turning from direct to
retrograde) – also at 26+ Virgo. And later in January 1613, when Galileo
found Jupiter and this other object (Neptune) together again, both
bodies were still locked in unison at 26+ Virgo. Why is this so
fascinating? Several reasons.
When Galileo was born, his Sun in early Pisces made an almost precise
square to Neptune in Gemini. Not only did he find Neptune 233 years
before the German astronomer Johann Galle (notice the last name's
similarity to "Galileo"!) did so on Sep. 23, 1846, but then he failed to
continue his observations. Talk about being fooled and misguided by the
planet of dreams, visions, imaginings, confusion and strange mysteries.
Perhaps his natal Sun-Neptune square, so close, blinded him to the
amazing truth of his "discovery."
When Neptune was actually discovered for what it was – an outer planet
in our own solar system – Mars was located at 26 Virgo (the very place
in the zodiac where Galileo saw Neptune and Jupiter 233 years before).
Here's another extraordinary tie-in. In December 1612 when Galileo found
undiscovered Neptune by telescope, Uranus was located at 24 Gemini. Does
that position ring a bell? Two complete Uranian cycles later (84 years X
2), Uranus itself would become the first outer planet discovered (March
13, 1781 by Sir William Herschel in Bath, England). Discovery placement?
24 Gemini. Right where Uranus was in December 1612 when Galileo "saw"
Neptune conjunct Jupiter!>>
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Art Neuendorffer
Bob Grumman
find any cases of Shakespeare's knowledge of Roman time-keeping?
Actually, I expect you would find some--which he got from his
sources. All your post tells me, though, is that Shakespeare
used clocks in his plays when indicating the time was important
in some way for some character--as with the nurse's famous line
about where the bawdy hand o' the dial was in Romeo and Juliet.
I think he had no idea when clocks came in, and used them
automatically. Which is not to say that he could not therefore
have been Oxford.
As for your idea that only a noble could have gotten away with
such mistakes, we've kicked that one around enough. But I did
want to repeat that if the mistakes were intentional, there is
no sane reason to think he could not have kept them in if he wanted
to, even if he were a mere commoner since he was an actor/playwright
of the highest importance in a company with his friends and himself
making the theatrical decisions, and the theatre-owners caring as
little about what they did as such people do nowadays so long
as the plays made money. If Burbage, say, didn't like the
errors (because all those clerks, aristocrats and lawyers snickered at
them), but Shakespeare wanted them in, Burbage might have thought
to himself what a tempermental yo-yo Will was, but he would have gone
along with it.
--Bob G.
David L. Webb
(ph...@errors.comedy) wrote:
[...]
> Bull shit!
[...]
> Bull shit!
You know, Art, you could save all of us, not least yourself, a lot of
time and trouble if you offered capsule synopses of your posts like the
above. The abbreviated VERsion above contains all the substance of your
collected posts since the newsgroup's inception, and no content is lost by
the condensation. The only casualty would be some of the humor in your
posts.
David Webb
Neuendorffer
>
> > Bull shit!
> > Bull shit!
"David L. Webb" wrote:
>
> You know, Art, you could save all of us, not least yourself, a lot of
> time and trouble if you offered capsule synopses of your posts like the
> above. The abbreviated VERsion above contains all the substance of your
> collected posts since the newsgroup's inception, and no content is lost by
> the condensation. The only casualty would be some of the humor in your
> posts.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Aren't you going to discuss the significance of the
Masonic "Bible": Vitruvius' _Architecture_ in
1) building the 'acoustical' Globe &
2) defining the "Shake-speare philosophy":
"be educated,
skillful with the pencil,
instructed in geometry,
know much history,
have followed the philosophers with attention,
understand music,
have some knowledge of medicine,
know the opinions of jurists and
be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens."
Is http://www.yorkrite.com/RAM/8.HTM a nutcase Website??
----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~saul/history/time.html
100 - 500 B.C. <<Mechanized water clocks were developed by Greek and
Roman horologists and astronomers. The added complexity was aimed at
making the flow more constant by regulating the pressure, and at
providing fancier displays of the passage of time. Some water clocks
rang bells and gongs, others opened doors and windows to show little
figures of people, or moved pointers, dials, and astrological models of
the universe. The Greek Andronikos built the Tower of the Winds in
Athens in 100 BC with 8 sophisticated sundials and water clocks as
backups if the sky was cloudy>>
----------------------------------------------------------------
<<The earliest recorded weather vane honored the Greek god Triton,
and adorned the Tower of the Winds in Athens which was built by
the astronomer Andronicus in 48 B.C.
The figure, which is believed to have been 4 to 8 feet long,
had the head and torso of a man and the tail of a fish.>>
Horologion of Andronicos (Tower of the Winds)
http://www.culture.gr/2/21/211/21101n/e211an01.html
The octagonal tower (3.20 m. long on each side) stands on a base of
three steps and is built of white Pentelic marble. It has a conical
roof, a cylindrical annex on the south side, and two Corinthian porches,
one on the NE and one on the NW side. At the top of each of the eight
sides there is a relief representation of a wind, symbolized by a male
figure with the appropriate attributes and its name inscribed on the
stone. There were sundials on the external walls and an elaborate
waterclock in the interior. The tower was built in the first half of the
1st century B.C. by the astronomer Andronicos, from Kyrrhos in
Macedonia.
In the early Christian period, the Tower of the Winds was converted into
a church or a baptesterion of an adjacent church, while the area outside
the NE entrance was occupied by a Christian cemetery. In the 15th
century A.D., Cyriacus of Ancona mentions the monument as the temple
of Aeolos while an anonymous traveller refers to it as a church.>>
---------------------------------------------------
Clocke strikes.
Bru. Peace, count the Clocke.
Cas. The Clocke hath stricken three.
Treb. 'Tis time to part.
Cass. But it is doubtfull yet,
Whether Caesar will come forth to day, or no:
-----------------------------------------------------------
Nicholas Whyte wrote at hlas:
> Striking water-clocks were certainly developed in Roman times, and
> are described by Vitruvius. They were however not widespread and were
> more often used as alarms. A water-clock set up to strike every hour,
> including three and four, would have been not impossible but unusual,
> and the sound of three bell strikes would probably not have been
> capable of an obvious interpretation by the average Roman in the
> same way that it would have been by the average Elizabethan.
> Vitruvius' Architecture was in print from at least 1511 (there's a
> copy of the 1513 edition advertised on alibris.com for a mere $5625).
> However the passages on timekeeping are not the most widely read.
> I should be surprised to learn that knowledge of the history of
> timekeeping was so widespread in Elizabethan times that Shakespeare
> could be expectd to know this rather obscure detail, let alone expect
> his audience to know. But - the eternal historian's excuse - it's not
> my period.
---------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi580.htm
<<In the years just before Christ was born, the chief engineer of
the civilized world was a man named Vitruvius. Vitruvius began as an
architect and engineer under Julius Caesar. Later he took charge of the
first Augustus's siege engines. When Augustus died, Vitruvius retired.
Then, under Octavian's patronage, he wrote a ten-volume account of
known technology.>>
Neuendorffer
Paul Crowley wrote:
>
> The clock in Cymbeline comes in a crucial scene where
> Iachimo emerges from a trunk in Imogen's bedroom and
> steals her bracelet. He counts the chimes:
>
> IACHIMO:
> To the trunk again, and shut the spring of it.
> Swift, swift, you dragons of the night, that dawning
> May bare the raven's eye! I lodge in fear;
> Though this a heavenly angel, hell is here.
> [Clock strikes]
> One, two, three: time, time!
> [Goes into the trunk. The scene closes]
The last play of the First Folio: Cymbeline
is the most blatantly Masonic play in the Folio:
----------------------------------------------------
"I Lodge in fear"
---------------------------------------------------
Rushton Triangular Lodge
"One, two, three: time, time!"
---------------------------------------------------
<<Reputed meeting place of the Gunpowder plot conspirators. Through a
letter of warning written by Tresham to a peer, the plot was exposed.
Catesby was killed and the others taken prisoner when they were too weak
or badly wounded to fight any longer. All were executed on 31 st January
1606 except for Francis Tresham. He was sent to the Tower of London but
not harshly treated. When he died shortly afterwards poison was
suspected but never proved.>>
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1373/n3_v46/18099925/p2/article.jhtml?term=
http://www.theheritagetrail.co.uk/notable%20houses/rushton%20lodge.htm
<<The Triangular Lodge went up between 1593 and 1597. By this time Sir
Thomas felt increasingly victimised - his Catholicism, with the
penalties attendant on it, was a major factor in this. The Lodge is an
allegory on the Trinity and the forbidden Mass. It is built in two
different coloured limestones, to a plan based on an equilateral
triangle. Each side is 33 feet and 4 inches long (i.e. one-third
of a hundred) and the inscriptions on each side contain 33 letters.
There are three windows in each of the three floors and,
whenever appropriate, the trefoil which features in the
Tresham coat of arms comes into its own as yet another symbol of the
Trinity. in the trefoil over the door is the motto Tres testimonium dant
(There are three that bear witness) from the first Epistle of St. John.
Everywhere space was found for inscriptions and the emblems or conceits
which were so fashionable at the time. They were intended to convey a
meaning in a more or less disguised form. Where there are layers of
meaning, as in the Tresham buildings, it is likely that some of the
clues still remain unravelled. At the Lodge, Mass was symbolised by
the Lamb and Cross and the Chalice. One inscription is taken from the
preface to the canon of the Mass. Of all Sir Thomas' architectural
creations, the Lodge is the most detailed and complete.>>
--------------------------------------------------------------
<= 33 =>
TOT [H] EONLIEBEGETTEROFTHESEINSVINGS
ONN [E T] SMRWHALLHAPPINESSEANDTHATETE
RNI [T(I)E] PROMISEDBYOVREVERLIVINGPOET
WIS [H E T H] THEWELLWISHINGADVENTVRERIN
----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.greatdreams.com/washmnmt.htm
<<The aluminum metal apex, representing a small pyramid, on top
of the 3300 pound capstone. The apex was engraved with the
names of the engineers and notables who completed the monument
and on one side contained the words: LAUS DEO.>>
---------------------------------------------------------
Final words of First Folio:
CYMBELINE LAUD we the GODS;
And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils
From our blest altars. Publish we this peace
To all our subjects. Set we forward: let
A Roman and a British ensign wave
Friendly together: so through Lud's-town march:
And in the temple of great Jupiter
Our peace we'll ratify; seal it with feasts.
Set on there! Never was a war did cease,
Ere bloody hands were wash'd, with such a peace.
---------------------------------------------------------
SONNET 33
TOT [H] EONLIEBEGETTEROFTHESEINSVINGS
ONN [E T] SMRWHALLHAPPINESSEANDTHATETE
RNI [T(I)E] PROMISEDBYOVREVERLIVINGPOET
WIS [H E T H] THEWELLWISHINGADVENTVRERIN
--------------------------------------------------------
1. Full many a glorious morning have I seen
2. Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,
http://www.sirbacon.org/gallery/pyramid.html
3. Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
4. Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
5. Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
6. With ugly rack on his celestial face,
7. And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
8. Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
------------------------------------------------------------
From: A Visit to Edinburgh and Lodge Canongate Kilwinning #2.
Wor. James T. Watson, Jr.
http://www.freemason.org/scrl/monthly/edinburg.htm :
--------------------------------------------------------
<<The "Royal Mile" leads from this castle to Holyrood Castle,
home of Mary, Queen of Scots, from 1561-1567.>>
[ Webster's Biographical Dictionary and the DNB assign
Thomas Sackville as Grandmaster Freemason 1561-1567.]
<<The initiative in forming the Grand Lodge of Scotland was taken by
this Lodge. One of its members, William St. Clair of Rosslyn became
first Grand Master.
The Lodge motto, "POST NUBILE PHOEBUS" (After the clouds
the sun), refers to dawn and ancient sun worship.>>
["ancient sun worship" => obelisks => Baalbek.]
<<The Annual Festival is held on St. John the Baptist's Day, June
24th.>>
[ June 24 - Oxford's death ]
<<The present Lodge building was consecrated in December, 1736, and is
the oldest building in the world built for Masonic purposes. On entering
the Lodge room, one is instantly drawn drawn to what appear to be four
alcoves contining statues, two on the north wall and two on the south.
When approached, they are found to be cleverly executed mural paintings
of Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott on the north wall and Robert Burns
and WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE on the south. These works were completed by
an unknown artist in 1833.>>
-----------------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer
Neuendorffer
Paul Crowley wrote:
>
> The clock in Cymbeline comes in a crucial scene where
> Iachimo emerges from a trunk in Imogen's bedroom and
> steals her bracelet. He counts the chimes:
>
> IACHIMO:
> To the trunk again, and shut the spring of it.
> Swift, swift, you dragons of the night, that dawning
> May bare the raven's eye! I lodge in fear;
> Though this a heavenly angel, hell is here.
> [Clock strikes]
> One, two, three: time, time!
> [Goes into the trunk. The scene closes]
The last play of the First Folio: Cymbeline
is the most blatantly Masonic play in the Folio:
----------------------------------------------------
"I Lodge in fear"
---------------------------------------------------
Rushton Triangular Lodge
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1373/n3_v46/18099925/p2/article.jhtml?term=
http://www.theheritagetrail.co.uk/notable%20houses/rushton%20lodge.htm
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Child's History of England by Charles Dickens CHAPTER XXXII
<<Fawkes, upon this, posted off to the other conspirators
to tell them all was quiet, and went back and shut himself
up in the dark, black cellar again, where he heard the
bell go twelve o'clock and usher in the fifth of November.>>
David L. Webb
the "To," "Cc," and "Newsgroups" headers for details. ]]
In article <3B5D5717...@erols.com>, Neuendorffer <ph...@erols.com>
(ph...@errors.comedy) wrote:
> > ph...@erols.com wrote:
> >
> > > Bull shit!
> > > Bull shit!
> "David L. Webb" wrote:
> >
> > You know, Art, you could save all of us, not least yourself, a lot of
> > time and trouble if you offered capsule synopses of your posts like the
> > above. The abbreviated VERsion above contains all the substance of your
> > collected posts since the newsgroup's inception, and no content is lost by
> > the condensation. The only casualty would be some of the humor in your
> > posts.
> Aren't you going to discuss the significance of the
> Masonic "Bible": Vitruvius' _Architecture_ in
>
> 1) building the 'acoustical' Globe &
Why should I? Because you hallucinate that "significance"? This is
a Shakespeare newsgroup, not an architectural newsgroup.
> 2) defining the "Shake-speare philosophy":
Who eVER said that Vitruvius had anything whateVER to do with
"defining the 'Shake-speare philosophy'" (whateVER that is)?
> "be educated,
Shakespeare was only indifferently educated.
> skillful with the pencil,
What evidence is there that Shakespeare was "skillful with the
pencil"? I thought that you claimed that he could barely sign his
name.
> instructed in geometry,
What makes you think (if I may use the word loosely) that
Shakespeare had any expertise in geometry?
> know much history,
What makes you think that Shakespeare knew much history? Most of
his history comes straight from Holinshed.
> have followed the philosophers with attention,
> understand music,
Shakespeare exhibits no clear understanding of music. He may well
have commanded some musical skills, as would be expected of an actor,
but I see no evidence of it in the canon. At best he uses some
commonplace musical terminology at times.
> have some knowledge of medicine,
What makes you think (if I may use the word loosely) that
Shakespeare had much expertise in medicine? The fact that he bandies
about a few terms?
> know the opinions of jurists and
> be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens."
What makes you think (if I may again use the word loosely) that
Shakespeare knew much astronomy? Altschuler's farcical preprint?
> Is http://www.yorkrite.com/RAM/8.HTM a nutcase Website??
No, only to the extent that Freemasonry itself possesses nutcase
appeal. It also has no discernible connection with Shakespeare.
HoweVER, that circumstance won't prevent nutcases like yourself from
hallucinating one neVERtheless.
HoweVER, I'm pleased to see that you finally(!) -- after my only
having told you about a dozen times -- seem to be aware of the
existence of the York Rite. When (or if) you manage to count its
degrees, you'll find that the number of York Rite and Scottish Rite
degrees far exceeds 33, the number you endow with such mystical Masonic
significance.
[...]
> VERITABLE VITRUVIUS By James L. Sieber
> http://www.yorkrite.com/RAM/8.HTM
>
> <<Inigo Jones, King James' architect and one of the forerunners of
> Masonry in England
If Inigo Jones, who lived from 1573 to 1652, was indeed one of the
*forerunners* of Masonry in England, then the Craft cannot have had
anything to do with the Shakespeare canon, since the existence of the
Craft postdates Jones's career, while much of the Shakespeare canon
predates that career.
> designed and built public buildings using Vitruvius'
> 1500 year old plans. London's Globe Theater, where Shakespeare
> originally presented his works, was an example of Jones using Vitruvius'
> designs.>>
[...]
> VERITABLE VITRUVIUS By James L. Sieber
> http://www.yorkrite.com/RAM/8.HTM
>
> <<Vitruvius' treatise had inspired the revival of architecture that
> started the Renaissance. His contribution to Masonic philosophy is
> even greater. In Book I, he states that an architect:
>
> "be educated,
> skillful with the pencil,
> instructed in geometry,
> know much history,
> have followed the philosophers with attention,
> understand music,
> have some knowledge of medicine,
> know the opinions of jurists and
> be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens."
Where did you get the absurd idea that Shakespeare was an architect,
Art?
> He justifies each of these Arts and Sciences skills.
> Astronomy is needed for laying out buildings.
> Buildings need to be oriented that they benefit from natural
> lighting and the prevailing winds. Religious and culture requirements
> demanded they face in the certain direction much as today Muslin
> buildings must face Mecca.
"Muslin buildings"? They certainly don't sound VERy durable, Art,
and I would view an architect that constructed them with grave
suspicion.
I also commend to your attention the first paragraph, Art:
"Mathematics is a landmark of Freemasonry. To attempt to
understand, why Mathematics holds this exalted position,
requires returning to Freemasonry's early days. Freemasonry
was a product of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment."
If Freemasonry was a product of the Renaissance *and the
Enlightenment*, then it cannot have had anything to do with the
Shakesepare canon. (You do know that the Enlightenment transpired a
century after Shakespeare's death, don't you, Art? Well, perhaps you
don't.)
[...]
> Vitruvius's emphasis on the education of the architect/mason in the
> liberal arts and, especially in mathematics, contributed to the
> scientific and mathematical orientation of the operative fraternity
> as well as the current non-operative fraternity. In the days when
> the fraternity was started, the educated population held mathematics
> in very high esteem.>>
I certainly concur with Vitruvius's opinion that mathematics
deserves to be held in high esteem.
David Webb
Nicholas Whyte
> One of your more risible posts, Paul. Tell me, did you
> find any cases of Shakespeare's knowledge of Roman time-keeping?
Indeed, the absence of evidence of the author's knowledge of
clepsydrae leads one inevitably to conclude that:
> Shakespeare
> used clocks in his plays when indicating the time was important
> in some way for some character
and in any case it seems likely that
> he had no idea when clocks came in
and I believe the same is true of his audience. Even if a few people
had the historical knowledge that mechanical clocks were an innovation
of around 1300, they would not have allowed this to disrupt their
enjoyment of the play.
Nicholas Whyte
Nicholas Whyte
> The use in Richard III is curious
>
> KING RICHARD III
> He was in the right; and so indeed it is.
> [Clock striketh]
> Ten the clock there. Give me a calendar.
> Who saw the sun to-day?
> RATCLIFF Not I, my lord.
> KING RICHARD III
> Then he disdains to shine; for by the book
> He should have braved the east an hour ago
> A black day will it be to somebody.
>
> In the monarch's tent on the field of battle, immediately before
> the battle is to start we have a clock (or one very near) and we
> also have a calender listing the times of sunrise!
Yes, well that was (and is) part of the information you would expect
to find in any decent almanac, as owned by any well-equipped commander
in chief, right up to the present day - remember the Gulf War land
campaign in 1991, which had to wait until there was less risk of
illumination by moonlight?
Anyway it doesn't take a genius to work out that if the sun hasn't
risen by ten o'clock - in August!!! - there's something ominously
wrong, which is the point of the scene. Why does Richard think that
nine o'clock is a reasonable time to expect sunrise in August????
(Does it really matter???????)
Also the use of the clock here is not anachronistic, since striking
clocks were certainly well established by 1485 when the historical
battle took place. If anybody can be bothered to find where the
historical Richard III spent the last night of his life, they will
probably have to stick with the Croyland Chronicle's line that he
camped "near the abbey of Mirival/Merevale" (quoted in many paces on
the Web including http://www.r3.org/bosworth/chron2.html). It is
hardly remarkable that an abbey would have a striking clock, audible
to someone camped in the grounds. Not that I imagine that bothered the
playwright much.
> There can be no doubt that the playwright knew exactly
> what he was doing
And in the case of "The Tragedy of Richard III", what exactly was
that?
Nicholas Whyte
Paul Crowley
> It's a Britain where they worship the Roman gods and yet are expected
> to eat fish on Fridays, and where the laws of succession are Jacobean.
> The route from Gloster's castle to Dover is unrelated to any Britain I
> recognise. Shakespeare is writing about a fantasy country, a kingdom
> of the mind, as it were in the "Europe" where Bohemia has a sea-coast
> and Vienna is ruled by an Italian Duke and Caesar wears a doublet.
> Even the plays based on relatively recent English history have a
> chronology much "telescoped" from the real sequence of events,
> omitting generations in the interest of a compelling narrative thrust.
Yes -- and no. I can see what you mean, but Shakespeare
IMHO was always conscious of the distinction between
fantasy and reality. If he put Caesar into a doublet, or gave
Bohemia a coastline, then he knew exactly why he was
doing it. The principal reason was usually dramatic, but if
he could also puzzle and annoy a few Holofernes-type
pedants, then so much the better.
> I'm not sure that we ought to use the term "anachronism" about his
> plays: there's no "chron-" to be "ana-", if you see what I mean.
This I wholly dispute. He set his plays in definite times
and in definite places. Perhaps he could have left some
more open and vague, but he didn't. He then brings in
quite 'anachronistic' matters. He is saying, in effect,
'These things _don't_ matter. Anyone who thinks that
they do, is a fool -- it is a play, and it is about much more
important things."
Those who claim that he was ignorant in such matters
invariably forget that they have to explain the 'ignorance'
of the whole company of actors, and that of entire sets of
audiences, who included the most intelligent and best-
educated people of the day, including the royal court. In
this matter of 'clocks' they have to explain a remarkable
degree of ignorance -- because it does not concern just
one play -- but the whole canon. (Focussing on Julius
Caesar is stupid when all the others needed explaining
as well -- Cymbeline, the Comedy of Errors, the instances
in Troilius & Cressida and Two Noble Knights, and even
those in As You Like It.)
Anyhow, this is a list of poems/plays copied from another
post I'm now making, which shows that the 'mistakes'
were not random. Shakespeare either observed the
standard rules OR played his silly game. See that post
for full details.
Frequency of 'clock' in text
('p' = 'pre-clock' era)
V&A 0 p
RoL 0 p
3H6 0
A&C 0 p
COR 0 p
HAM 0 ?
KLE 0 p
MID 0 ?
PER 0 p
TIM 0 p
TIT 0 p
1H6 1
2H6 1
2NK 1 p
ADO 1
HN8 1
KJO 1
OTH 1
T&C 1 p
TEM 1
TGV 1
12N 2
AWW 2
LLL 2
MAC 2
RI2 2
SHR 2
WIN 2
2H4 3
HN5 3
MFM 3
R&J 3
MOV 5
CYM 6 p
ERR 6 p
JCS 6 p
AYL 7 p+
MWW 7
RI3 8
1H4 9
Paul Crowley
> I think he had no idea when clocks came in, and used them
> automatically.
IF that was so, Bob, then the distribution of words like
'clock' would be randomly spread across the canonical
plays and poems. They are anything but.
> But I did
> want to repeat that if the mistakes were intentional, there is
> no sane reason to think he could not have kept them in if he wanted
> to, even if he were a mere commoner since he was an actor/playwright
> of the highest importance in a company with his friends and himself
> making the theatrical decisions, and the theatre-owners caring as
> little about what they did as such people do nowadays so long
> as the plays made money.
Think about what you are writing. Suppose there were
similar 'mistakes' in a modern play or commercial film
-- let's say that at some point Russell Crowe in 'Gladiator'
checked his watch -- can't you hear the critics laugh?
David Webb would wet his pants. Or imagine someone
in 'Titanic' using a biro. Nothing like that is normally
permissible when authors intend their works to be taken
seriously.
Above all else, Shakespeare's company did not want to
be thought of as 'a bunch of rude mechanicals' like Bottom,
Peter Quince et al in MSND. They would have avoided
anything where they _might_ have made a mistake. Any
new play that was going to be performed at court would
have been checked minutely for errors of that nature.
> If Burbage, say, didn't like the
> errors (because all those clerks, aristocrats and lawyers snickered at
> them), but Shakespeare wanted them in, Burbage might have thought
> to himself what a tempermental yo-yo Will was, but he would have gone
> along with it.
He would not have put up with such an 'error' for one
second. It would have been a resigning issue --as it would
have been for the whole of the company. It does not happen
today for similar reasons. The pressure then (with the great
class differences and the prevalence of illiteracy among the
lower classes) would have been much more intense. The
only reason that they went along with it (if, and insofar as
they did) was that 'authority' was granted by one of the
highest of nobles.
Anyhow, this gives me the opportunity to re-present my
list of plays, but now corrected and shown in order of
frequency. I've added in the poems, since they were
Roman or classical. While we might not expect a clock in
V&A, with its pastoral setting, we should certainly have
some in 'The Rape of Lucrece' (applying your 'rules').
That was set in Rome, and had the poet simply trans-
located the scene from London, the sound of church
clocks throughout the night would have pervaded the action.
(Can you conceive of such an error? I suggest that it is
virtually unthinkable. Why then do doltish Strats believe
the same author could make the same mistake in his
plays?)
I've put a 'p' against plays/poems set in 'pre-clock' times
and a 'p+' for AYLI for its setting in a forest.
As you will see, the distribution is far from random. The
author either observed the rules Or played his silly game.
The only exceptions are Two Noble Knights (which is, I
think a casual slip in a metaphor) and Troilius & Cressida
with a single use of 'clock' in the mouth of Thersites. I
reckon he was getting a bit bored with it by that point, but
still could not resist the odd 'slip'.
john_baker
wrote:
>"Paul Crowley" <pebj...@ubgznvy.pbz (apply ROT13)> wrote in message news:<MZ077.18992$Fk7.1...@news.indigo.ie>...
I think it does matter and unless this was a joke, it must be a
misprint. Perhaps the manuscript read "'tend the clock there."
and it got "corrected" to "ten".
baker
>
>Also the use of the clock here is not anachronistic, since striking
>clocks were certainly well established by 1485 when the historical
>battle took place. If anybody can be bothered to find where the
>historical Richard III spent the last night of his life, they will
>probably have to stick with the Croyland Chronicle's line that he
>camped "near the abbey of Mirival/Merevale" (quoted in many paces on
>the Web including http://www.r3.org/bosworth/chron2.html). It is
>hardly remarkable that an abbey would have a striking clock, audible
>to someone camped in the grounds. Not that I imagine that bothered the
>playwright much.
>
>> There can be no doubt that the playwright knew exactly
>> what he was doing
>
>And in the case of "The Tragedy of Richard III", what exactly was
>that?
>
>Nicholas Whyte
John Baker
Neuendorffer
> > Aren't you going to discuss the significance of the
> > Masonic "Bible": Vitruvius' _Architecture_ in
> >
> > 1) building the 'acoustical' Globe &
"David L. Webb" wrote:
> Why should I? Because you hallucinate that "significance"?
> This is a Shakespeare newsgroup, not an architectural newsgroup.
Discussing the Globe theatre is inappropriate for hlas?
> > 2) defining the "Shake-speare philosophy":
>
> Who eVER said that Vitruvius had anything whateVER to do with
> "defining the 'Shake-speare philosophy'" (whateVER that is)?
It's what Burghley made sure that de Vere and
the all rest of his wards would know.
> > "be educated,
>
> Shakespeare was only indifferently educated.
Shakspere was only indifferently educated.
> > skillful with the pencil,
>
> What evidence is there that Shakespeare was "skillful with the
> pencil"? I thought that you claimed that he could barely sign his
> name.
That's Shakspe.
> > instructed in geometry,
>
> What makes you think (if I may use the word loosely) that
> Shakespeare had any expertise in geometry?
------------------------------------------------------------
The Merchant of Venice Act 4, Scene 1
GRATIANO O, be thou damn'd, inexecrable dog!
And for thy life let justice be accused.
Thou almost makest me waver in my faith
To hold opinion with Pythagoras,
That souls of animals infuse themselves
Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit
Govern'd a wolf, who, hang'd for human slaughter,
Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,
And, whilst thou lay'st in thy unhallow'd dam,
Infused itself in thee; for thy desires
Are wolvish, bloody, starved and ravenous.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Brother George Washington's Masonic Apron
http://www.tntpc.com/252/brother_george_washington.htm
11. FORTY-SEVENTH PROBLEM OF EUCLID'S first book of geometry. It is
said that when Pythagoras solved the problem he exclaimed. "Eureka!,"
which signifies "I have found it." It is, however, not a problem,
but a theorem. It has been adopted as the symbol
on the Past Master Mason's Jewel in Pennsylvania.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Twelfth Night Act 4, Scene 2
Clown What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl?
Clown Fare thee well. Remain thou still in darkness:
thou shalt hold the opinion of Pythagoras ere I will
allow of thy wits, and fear to kill a woodcock, lest
thou dispossess the soul of thy grandam. Fare thee well.
----------------------------------------------------------------
> > know much history,
>
> What makes you think that Shakespeare knew much history? Most of
> his history comes straight from Holinshed.
And HERODOTUS
(DROESHOUT).
> > have followed the philosophers with attention,
> > understand music,
>
> Shakespeare exhibits no clear understanding of music. He may well
> have commanded some musical skills, as would be expected of an actor,
> but I see no evidence of it in the canon. At best he uses some
> commonplace musical terminology at times.
------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/shakes/beth.htm
<<Soon after undertaking his quest for the true author of
Shakespeare's works, Looney turned to the Dictionary of
National Biography, where he read:
"Oxford, despite his violent and perverse temper,
his eccentric taste in dress, and his reckless waste
of his substance, evinced a genuine interest in
music, and wrote verses of much lyric beauty.
Puttenham and Meres reckon him among 'the
best for comedy' in his day; but, although he was
a patron of players, no specimens of his dramatic
productions survive." - Sir Sidney Lee
------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.everreader.com/shakirel.htm
<<Farmer held the post of organist and master of the children of the
choir in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, according to the Chapter Acts
of that church, reprinted in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians
(3rd Edition). He was one of the most gifted composers and musical
arrangers of the Elizabethan era, a pioneer in the fields of the
madrigal and counterpoint of different orders.
In 1591 Farmer dedicated his first studies in counterpoint to Edward de
Vere, "Earle of Oxenford." Divers and Sundry Ways...to the Number of
Forty, Upon One Playn Song carries a significant statement of its
composer's relationship to the nobleman who, like his prototype in All's
Well, is known to have sold many "a goodly manor for a song":
"Hereunto, my good Lord, I was the rather emboldened for your
Lordship's great affection to this noble science (i.e., music) hoping
for the one you might pardon the other, and desirous to make known your
inclination this way.... Besides this, my good Lord, I bear this
conceit, that not only myself am vowed to your commandment, but all that
is in me is dedicated to your Lordship's service."
At this time, as his volume states, John Farmer was living in London "in
Broad Street, near the Royal Exchange."
On August 10th, 1596, the records of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin,
tell us that Farmer was sworn in as "Viccar Corrall" in place of Robert
Jordan, "resigned." He held this position until 1599, when he appears to
have returned to London to resume a close personal relationship to the
Earl of Oxford.
During the same year he published another work, which insures his
immortality in British musical history. This was The First Set of
English Madrigals to Foure Voices. Newly composed by John Farmer,
practitioner in the art of Musicque. Printed at London in Little Saint
Helen's by William Barley...Anno Dom. 1599.
Again Farmer dedicates his labors to his "very good Lord and Master,"
the Earle of Oxenforde." The wording of this dedication is so
interesting from the personal angle that it should be read at length:
Most honourable Lord, it cometh not within the compass of my power
to express all the duty I own, nor to pay the least part; so far have
your honourable favors outstripped all means to manifest my humble
affection that there is nothing left but praying and wondering. There is
a canker worm that breedeth in many minds, feeding only upon
forgetfulness and bringing forth to birth but ingratitude. To show that
I have not been bitten with that monster, for worms prove monsters in
this age, which yet never any painter could counterfeit to express the
ugliness, nor any poet describe to decipher the height of their illness,
I have presumed to tender these Madrigals only as remembrances of my
service and witnesses of your Lordship's liberal hand, by which I have
lived so long, and from your honourable mind that so much have all
liberal sciences. In this I shall be most encouraged if your Lordship
vouchsafe the protection of my first-fruits, for that both of your
greatness you best can, and for your judgment in music best may. For
without flattery be it spoke, those that know your Lordship know this,
that using this science as a recreation, your Lordship have overgone
most of them that make it a profession. Right Honourable Lord, I hope it
shall not be distasteful to number you here amongst the favourers of
music, and the practisers, no more than Kings and Emperors that have
been desirous to be in the roll of astronomers, that being but a star
fair, the other an angel's choir.
Thus most humbly submitting myself and my labours and whatever is or
may be in me to your Lordship's censure and protection, I humbly end,
wishing your Lordship as continual an increasing of health and honour as
there is a daily increase of virtue to come to happiness.
Your Lordship's most dutiful servant to command, John Farmer
------------------------------------------------------------
> > have some knowledge of medicine,
>
> What makes you think (if I may use the word loosely) that
> Shakespeare had much expertise in medicine? The fact that he bandies
> about a few terms?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shakespeare/debates/ogburnarticle.html
<<An article in the Journal of the District of Columbia Medical Society
states that Shakespeare had enough knowledge of medicine to justify
hanging out his shingle as an Elizabethan M.D., and that in some aspects
of human physiology he was years and centuries ahead of his times. He
referred to the circulation of the blood before Harvey had described
it.>>
The April Fool:
William Harvey, circulation of blood, is born April 1, 1578.
> > know the opinions of jurists and
> > be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens."
>
> What makes you think (if I may again use the word loosely) that
> Shakespeare knew much astronomy? Altschuler's farcical preprint?
-------------------------------------------------------------
Fool Thy asses are gone about 'em. The reason why the
seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason.
KING LEAR Because they are not eight?
Fool Yes, indeed: thou wouldst make a good fool.
----------------------------------------------------------------
> > Is http://www.yorkrite.com/RAM/8.HTM a nutcase Website??
>
> No, only to the extent that Freemasonry itself possesses nutcase
> appeal. It also has no discernible connection with Shakespeare.
> HoweVER, that circumstance won't prevent nutcases like yourself from
> hallucinating one neVERtheless.
>
> HoweVER, I'm pleased to see that you finally(!) -- after my only
> having told you about a dozen times -- seem to be aware of the
> existence of the York Rite.
I've been eating their Peppermint Pattys for years now.
> When (or if) you manage to count its
> degrees, you'll find that the number of York Rite and Scottish Rite
> degrees far exceeds 33, the number you endow with such mystical
> Masonic significance.
33 is the number they endow with mystical Masonic significance.
> > VERITABLE VITRUVIUS By James L. Sieber
> > http://www.yorkrite.com/RAM/8.HTM
> >
> > <<Inigo Jones, King James' architect and one of the forerunners of
> > Masonry in England
>
> If Inigo Jones, who lived from 1573 to 1652, was indeed one of the
> *forerunners* of Masonry in England, then the Craft cannot have had
> anything to do with the Shakespeare canon, since the existence of the
> Craft postdates Jones's career, while much of the Shakespeare canon
> predates that career.
Who said Inigo Jones was a *forerunner* of Masonry in England,
> > designed and built public buildings using Vitruvius'
> > 1500 year old plans. London's Globe Theater, where Shakespeare
> > originally presented his works, was an example of Jones using Vitruvius'
> > designs.>>
> > VERITABLE VITRUVIUS By James L. Sieber
> > http://www.yorkrite.com/RAM/8.HTM
> >
> > <<Vitruvius' treatise had inspired the revival of architecture that
> > started the Renaissance. His contribution to Masonic philosophy is
> > even greater. In Book I, he states that an architect:
> >
> > "be educated,
> > skillful with the pencil,
> > instructed in geometry,
> > know much history,
> > have followed the philosophers with attention,
> > understand music,
> > have some knowledge of medicine,
> > know the opinions of jurists and
> > be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens."
>
> Where did you get the absurd idea that Shakespeare was an architect, Art?
The folks who designed & built the Globe Theatre were architects.
> > He justifies each of these Arts and Sciences skills.
> > Astronomy is needed for laying out buildings.
> > Buildings need to be oriented that they benefit from natural
> > lighting and the prevailing winds. Religious and culture requirements
> > demanded they face in the certain direction much as today Muslin
> > buildings must face Mecca.
>
> "Muslin buildings"? They certainly don't sound VERy durable, Art,
> and I would view an architect that constructed them with grave
> suspicion.
Muslin, n. [F. mousseline; cf. It. mussolino, mussolo, Sp. muselina;
all from Mussoul a city of Mesopotamia, Ar. Mausil, Syr. Mauzol, Muzol,
Mosul, where it was first manufactured. Cf. {Mull} a kind of cloth.]
A thin cotton, white, dyed, or printed. The name is also applied to
COARSER AND HEAVIER COTTON GOODS.
> I also commend to your attention the first paragraph, Art:
>
> "Mathematics is a landmark of Freemasonry. To attempt to
> understand, why Mathematics holds this exalted position,
> requires returning to Freemasonry's early days. Freemasonry
> was a product of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment."
>
> If Freemasonry was a product of the Renaissance *and the
> Enlightenment*, then it cannot have had anything to do with the
> Shakesepare canon. (You do know that the Enlightenment transpired a
> century after Shakespeare's death, don't you, Art? Well, perhaps you
> don't.)
Born in the Renaissance, Freemasonry reached it's pinnacle during the
Enlightenment.
> > Vitruvius's emphasis on the education of the architect/mason in the
> > liberal arts and, especially in mathematics, contributed to the
> > scientific and mathematical orientation of the operative fraternity
> > as well as the current non-operative fraternity. In the days when
> > the fraternity was started, the educated population held mathematics
> > in very high esteem.>>
>
> I certainly concur with Vitruvius's opinion that mathematics
> deserves to be held in high esteem.
I believe Vitruvius is refering to applied mathematics
(or at least mathematical physics a la Lev Landau.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
As for the esoteric math that you engage in, Dave, . . .
"What things again most dear in the esteem And poor in worth!"
Wir Mathematiker sind alle ein biszchen meschugge. -- Lev Landau
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
"The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who
make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians
have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine
man in the bonds of Hell." -- St. Augustine (354-430)
Medicine makes people ill, mathematics make them sad and
theology makes them sinful. -- Luther, Martin (1483-1546)
"Like other occult techniques of divination, the statistical method has
a private jargon deliberately contrived to obscure its methods from
non-practitioners." -- G. O. Ashley
Mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules
with meaningless marks on paper. -- Hilbert, David (1862-1943)
"Mathematics: A tentative agreement that two and two make four."
--Elbert Hubbard (1859-1915; American writer)
Mathematics consists of proving the most obvious thing
in the least obvious way. - Polyá, George (1887, 1985)
"A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a
black cat which isn't there" - Charles R. Darwin (1809-1182)
It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical
author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.
-- Alfred North Whitehead, An Introduction to Mathematics, 1948.
Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.
-- Jules Henri Poincare (1854-1912)
Mathematics contains much that will neither hurt one if one does
not know it nor help one if one does know it. - J.B. Mencken
Standard mathematics has recently been rendered obsolete
by the discovery that for years we have been writing
the numeral five backward. - Woody Allen
Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things,
you just get used to them. -- John von Neumann (1903-1957)
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality,
they are not certain,
and as far as they are certain,
they do not refer to reality.
-- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"The author discusses valueless measures in pointless spaces."
-- Halmos
"There are only two kinds of math books. Those you cannot read beyond
the first sentence, and those you cannot read beyond the first page."
C.N. Yang, about 1980 I think. (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1957.)
Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know
what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.
-Bertrand Russell, _Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays_, 1918
I have come to believe, though very reluctantly, that it [mathematics]
consists of tautologies. I fear that to a mind of sufficient
intellectual power, the whole of mathematics would appear trivial...
I cannot any longer find any mystical satisfaction in the
contemplation of mathematical truth. - Bertrand Russell
I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history
of thought without profound study of the mathematical ideas of
successive epochs is like omitting Hamlet from the play which is
named after him. . . But it is certainly analogous to cutting out
the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly exact. For Ophelia
is quite essential to the play, she is very charming-- and a
little mad. : Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer
Neuendorffer
ROSALIND I was seven of the nine days out of the wonder
before you came; for look here what I found on a
palm-tree. I was never so be-rhymed since
Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat, which I
can hardly remember.
Art Neuendorffer
Bob Grumman
> > automatically.
>
> IF that was so, Bob, then the distribution of words like
> 'clock' would be randomly spread across the canonical
> plays and poems. They are anything but.
Clocks are mention more in the plays where Shakespeare wanted to
mention them for some dramatic purpose and less in the other plays.
He chose when to use them, of course.
> > But I did
> > want to repeat that if the mistakes were intentional, there is
> > no sane reason to think he could not have kept them in if he wanted
> > to, even if he were a mere commoner since he was an actor/playwright
> > of the highest importance in a company with his friends and himself
> > making the theatrical decisions, and the theatre-owners caring as
> > little about what they did as such people do nowadays so long
> > as the plays made money.
>
> Think about what you are writing. Suppose there were
> similar 'mistakes' in a modern play or commercial film
> -- let's say that at some point Russell Crowe in 'Gladiator'
> checked his watch -- can't you hear the critics laugh?
> David Webb would wet his pants. Or imagine someone
> in 'Titanic' using a biro. Nothing like that is normally
> permissible when authors intend their works to be taken
> seriously.
Silly attempts at parallelling again, Paul. I don't think
clocks in Ancient Rome would have struck many people of
Shakespeare's time as being as wrong as a watch back then
would strike people of today. But movies get a lot of
things wrong that perhaps Crowleys of four hundred years
hence will consider mistakes made intentionally to irritate
pedants. Look how many mistakes were made in Shakespeare
in Love (ones that both sides of the authorship question
would agree on). And movies have technical advisors.
> Above all else, Shakespeare's company did not want to
> be thought of as 'a bunch of rude mechanicals' like Bottom,
> Peter Quince et al in MSND. They would have avoided
> anything where they _might_ have made a mistake. Any
> new play that was going to be performed at court would
> have been checked minutely for errors of that nature.
>
> > If Burbage, say, didn't like the
> > errors (because all those clerks, aristocrats and lawyers snickered at
> > them), but Shakespeare wanted them in, Burbage might have thought
> > to himself what a tempermental yo-yo Will was, but he would have gone
> > along with it.
>
> He would not have put up with such an 'error' for one
> second. It would have been a resigning issue --as it would
> have been for the whole of the company.
Here's where I can't argue with you. You know these people inside
and out, and I don't.
> While we might not expect a clock in
> V&A, with its pastoral setting, we should certainly have
> some in 'The Rape of Lucrece' (applying your 'rules').
> That was set in Rome, and had the poet simply trans-
> located the scene from London, the sound of church
> clocks throughout the night would have pervaded the action.
> (Can you conceive of such an error?
Yes. but why don't we have sun dials in Lucrece, if
Shakespeare wanted to mention time, and be historically
accurate? If sun dials would be that. I'm not sure, myself.
You seem to be saying that when Shakespeare used clocks
anachronistically, he was joking, and when he wanted to
be serious he avoided using clocks, which doesn't make sense.
If he wanted to avoid anachronisms, he would not just have not used
clocks, he would have used sun dials, or water clocks.
> I suggest that it is
> virtually unthinkable. Why then do doltish Strats believe
> the same author could make the same mistake in his
> plays?)
Because he thought the SOUND of clocks dramatic.
Macbeth was not pre-clock? I truly don't know either when clocks
were invented or when Macbeth was supposed to have taken place,
though I thought around 1000.
Of course,you miss my point about sun dials versus clocks. And I
don't understand what you mean by the clock-mentions not being random.
Nothing a writer puts into a work is random. All your chart tells
me is that Shakespeare mentioned clocks a lot, and put them in
any work he felt like putting them into with no concern for
where the work was set in a pre-clock time or not.
--Bob G.
Greg Reynolds
Neuendorffer wrote:
> As You Like It Act 3, Scene 2
>
> ROSALIND I was seven of the nine days out of the wonder
> before you came; for look here what I found on a
> palm-tree.
Yes, Art the gulf stream flows to Ireland and there are palm trees
on the southwestern coast.
> I was never so be-rhymed since
> Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat, which I
> can hardly remember.
>
> Art Neuendorffer
Serenity now.
Nicholas Whyte
> On 24 Jul 2001 13:07:06 -0700, expl...@whyte.com (Nicholas Whyte)
> wrote:
>
> >"Paul Crowley" <pebj...@ubgznvy.pbz (apply ROT13)> wrote in message news:<MZ077.18992$Fk7.1...@news.indigo.ie>...
> >
> >> The use in Richard III is curious
> >>
> >> KING RICHARD III
> >> He was in the right; and so indeed it is.
> >> [Clock striketh]
> >> Ten the clock there. Give me a calendar.
> >> Who saw the sun to-day?
> >> RATCLIFF Not I, my lord.
> >> KING RICHARD III
> >> Then he disdains to shine; for by the book
> >> He should have braved the east an hour ago
> >> A black day will it be to somebody.
> >Anyway it doesn't take a genius to work out that if the sun hasn't
> >risen by ten o'clock - in August!!! - there's something ominously
> >wrong, which is the point of the scene. Why does Richard think that
> >nine o'clock is a reasonable time to expect sunrise in August????
> >(Does it really matter???????)
> I think it does matter and unless this was a joke, it must be a
> misprint. Perhaps the manuscript read "'tend the clock there."
> and it got "corrected" to "ten".
On reflection, you must be right, both that it does matter and that
there is a misprint. I took the radical step of reading the whole
scene, and just a few minutes before Richard's noting the clock we
have this exchange:
Richmond:
How far into the morning is it, lords?
Lords:
Upon the stroke of four.
Richmond:
Why, then 'tis time to arm and give direction.
I don't think we can be expected to believe that six hours passed
between this exchange and Richard's observations of the clock - in
fact if anything I think the two exchanges may be supposed to have
taken place almost simultaneously, with Richmond's clock about to
strike four and Richard's actually doing so. (This would indicate a
three o'clock sunrise, which is not too far off for August.) The
version of the text at http://www.r3.org/bookcase/shaksper/act5.html
has "tell the clock there". That still doesn't seem quite right but
it's better than "ten".
Nicholas
Nicholas Whyte
> Bob Grumman <bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> wrote in message news:5f7d2eb3.01072...@posting.google.com...
>
> > I think he had no idea when clocks came in, and used them
> > automatically.
>
> IF that was so, Bob, then the distribution of words like
> 'clock' would be randomly spread across the canonical
> plays and poems. They are anything but.
You list 40 canonical works. There is indeed an obvious double peak in
the distribution of mentions of the word "clock". I think we can all
agree that Shakespeare put plenty of clocks in some of his works and
very few in others.
8 have 5+ mentions of "clock" by your criteria. 3 of those (Cymbeline,
A Comedy of Errors, Julius Caesar) are clearly set in pre-clock times.
That is 37.5%.
32 have 0-3 mentions of "clock" by your criteria. 12 of those (Hamlet,
Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, King Lear, Pericles, Rape of
Lucrece, Timon, Titus Andronicus, Venus and Adonis, Two Noble Kinsmen,
Troilus and Cressida, Macbeth) are clearly set in pre-clock times.
That is 37.5%.
The average number of "clocks" in "pre-clock" works is 1.47; the
average in others is 2.72. An f-test comparing the variances in the
two distributions gives a 90.99% probability that the difference
between them (ie, the fact that there are *fewer* "clocks" in
"pre-clock" works) is purely random.
Your call.
> Nothing like that is normally
> permissible when authors intend their works to be taken
> seriously.
If that is so, you should be able to point to examples of inferior
playwrights in Elizabethan times whose anachronisms were howled down
by the critics, or by rival playwrights, or resulted in a loss of
patronage, or whatever. Are there any?
Nicholas Whyte
Nicholas Whyte
Clearly the first and third of these references are to Pythagoras'
well-known belief in reincarnation, and nothing to do with geometry.
The second reference attributes to Pythagoras a story that is usually
told of Archimedes, which should make one dubious about any other
information from this source.
Nicholas Whyte
Neuendorffer
> Neuendorffer wrote:
>
> > As You Like It Act 3, Scene 2
> >
> > ROSALIND I was seven of the nine days out of the wonder
> > before you came; for look here what I found on a
> > palm-tree.
Greg Reynolds wrote:
>
> Yes, Art the gulf stream flows to Ireland and there are palm trees
> on the southwestern coast.
----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.hatterasrealty.com/lost.html
<<In 1587, 20 years prior to the colony at Jamestown, 116 men, women,
and children struggled for existence in the wilderness and vanished
without a trace. Their disappearance remains one of the great mysteries
of history. No clue of this thriving community has every been found,
save for the eerie carving upon the bark of an old, twisted oak:
"Croatan". It is the saga known as The Lost Colony.>>
----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.intercom.net/user/cyberm/the.htm
Sir Thomas Dale / The Roanoke Voyages
<<William Lane, merchant of London, was also a privateer and sailed
alongside Sir Christopher Newport. We also noted that William Parker
who attended GRAYS INN was also married to an Elizabeth Lane.
We wondered if this genealogy was possible: Walter Marlar, cloth
merchant, was one of the investors in the syndicate organized to outfit
these ships. We know that he was married to the daughter of Matthew
Dale. Marlar's brother-in-law's will mentioned theor associate
"Customer Thomas Smythe". His son, Thomas Smythe (the future Treasurer
of the Virginia Company) financed much of this exploration activity. We
also noted that in 1589, soldier Sir John Norris of Barnstable led the
attack against Portugal with the 2nd Earl of Essex. In 1587, Norris and
Sir George Cary had financed ships to sail to North America. Cary
thought the Chesapeake Bay would be a good place to refit privateer
ships.
Norris was one of the great English generals and had been fighting in
the Low Countries ten years prior with soldiers like Sir Thomas Shirley.
Norris led us to review the background of his 1587 partner Sir George
Cary. Like RALPH LANE, George Cary was a second cousin to Queen
Elizabeth. Sir George's aunt first married Sir Francis Knolleys,
grandfather of the 2nd Earl of Essex. His cousins were the privateers
Captains Henry and Francis Knolleys. After the death of Sir Francis,
his aunt remarried Sir Charles Howard, classmate of Sir Thomas Gates
at GRAYS INN and admiral of the fleet in the English defeat
of the Spanish at Cadiz. His daughter married Thomas Berkeley, son of
Henry, Lord Berkeley, another GRAYS INN classmate of Sir Thomas Gates.
As we were reading about Sir George Cary, 2nd Baron Hundson, we learned
that he was at Tilbury in 1588, just as RALPH LANE was muster Master,
Sir George was honored with the personal safety of Queen Elizabeth. His
nephew Robert Cary was Captain of the Horse serving under Sir Horace
Vere in Holland.>>
------------------------------------------------------------
RALPH (Smith/John) LANE
------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/lsf/knight2.htm
<<As has been observed, Shakespeare's eldest daughter, Susanna, was
married on June 5, 1607, to John Hall, a learned man, a distinguished
physician and a noted citizen. Scandal erupted in the Hall household in
1613. As a consequence, on July 13, Susanna sought a writ of slander and
brought action for defamation (cf. _Measure for Measure_, II. i. 190)
in the Consistory (an Ecclesiastical) Court at Worcester. Susanna's
charge was against John Lane, whose uncle, Richard Lane, Shakespeare had
asked to be one of the witnesses for the commission out of Chancery on
the Lambert controversy (through which Shakespeare lost his mother's
inheritance finally in 1599) and had been of Shakespeare's party in the
suit to Chancery on the Stratford tithes. John Lane (Jr.) had accused
Shakespeare's daughter by saying Susanna "...had the running of the
reins and had been naught (i.e. immoral) with Rafe Smith & John Palmer."
Ralph Smith was a Stratford haberdasher and HATTER; his uncle was Hamlet
Sadler, the close friend of Shakespeare (for whom he named his son). The
males of the second generation of close acquaintances were a threat to
the reputation of his daughters; and in the case of Judith, to come,
and, at first, Susanna, the Shakespeares struck back at the male
contemporaries of the son William no longer had. With this court case,
Susanna has become subject to precisely the slanderous accusation of
adultery as in something of a prophetic manner for Shakespeare's
biography was Hermione in The Winter's Tale, anticipated by Desdemona
in Othello. John Lane, "...a ne'er-do-well, was some years later hailed.
into court for riot and libels against the vicar and aldermen, and was
then described as a drunkard."
Robert Whatcott was the lawyer who represented Mrs. Susanna Hall and is
often not recognized, or is misidentified, by scholars and critics when
they encounter his name as one of the witnesses of the dramatist's will.
He is another one of the numerous attorneys or representatives working
for, or associated with, the Shakespeare family. John Lane did not
appear in court to support the rumors he had spread and was
excommunicated. Susanna's chastity had been maligned, but like Hermione,
she survived the accusation triumphantly, and like Cordelia was
ultimately honored by the father, receiving New Place and virtually all
his personal property upon his death. The epitaph upon her tomb after
she dies in 1649 reads:
Witty above her sex, but that's not all,
Wise to salvation was good Mistress Hall;
Something of Shakespeare was in that, but this
Wholly of him with whom she's now in bliss.>>
----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nps.gov/fora/raleigh2.htm
<<By the time the English began to send out voyages of exploration,
Spain was already entered into what is now Florida and Mexico. English
privateers had been sailing to the North American coast since 1562,
slave-trading and preying on Spanish shipping loaded with royal loot
from Mexico. No one, though, had seriously considered a colony in North
America until 1578, when Sir Humphrey Gilbert, armed with a charter from
Queen Elizabeth "to inhabit and possess... all remote and heathen lands
not in actual possession of any Christian prince," made the first two
attempts to reach Newfoundland. After he died on the second voyage, Sir
Walter Raleigh, his half-brother, decided to carry on the venture, and
obtained a similiar charter from the queen. Reports from his expedition
in 1584 sang the praises of the rich land, and by the middle of the
following year, England had made its first tentative move to transplant
English culture to foreign soil. The new colony was called "Virginia,"
after the Virgin Queen.
England's motives for settling the New World ranged from the mercenary
to the idealistic. One of the primary spurs, at least for Raleigh, was
the prospect of an ideal base for forays against French and Spanish
shipping. Publicist Richard Hakluyt conjured up visions of gold and
copper mines and cash crops, which fit neatly with Gilbert's plan to put
"needy people" to work there. The anticipated Northwest Passage was
another strong lure. Finally, like Spain's efforts to make the New World
Catholic, England wanted to spread the new Protestant religion among the
"savages" - to claim the land for God and Queen, although not
necessarily in that order. In a sense the two settlements at Fort
Raleigh represented England's schooling in establishing a colony. The
first was more like the Spanish operation - militaristic, dependent on
the home country, and exploitative of the Native Americans. The second
was intended to be a permanent colony, with women and children, fewer
soldiers, and a sounder agricultural base. Although all of the settlers
who were to have built "The Cittie of Raleigh" disappeared, their dream
of an English home in the New World was realized 20 years later at
Jamestown.
After Captains Amadas and Barlowe returned in 1584 from their expedition
to the New World with reports of "a most Pleasant and fertile ground,"
Sir Walter Raleigh had little trouble getting the Queen and a number of
other investors to back his colony. In the spring of 1585, 500 men - 108
of them colonists - set sail for Virginia in seven ships commanded by
Raleigh's cousin, Sir Richard Grenville. After weeks of searching (and
privateering), they found, with the help of nearby Indians, a fertile,
well-watered, and defensible spot on Roanoke Island. Ralph Lane was
named Governor of the colony, and the settlers immediately set to work
in building a fort for defense against the Spanish.
Although the colonists established a trading relationship with the
Indians, they soon realized that, with the coming of winter, providing
for themselves would not be easy. Many supplies had been lost when one
of the ships ran aground, and since they cultivated little land, the
colonists soon grew dependent on the Indians, cadging food and robbing
their fish traps. But as winter deepened, the Indians had less food to
spare, and in any case were growing tired of trinkets. Disenchantment
set in, especially after measles and smallpox brought by the settlers
began to kill the Indians.
By 1586 the colonists were anxious to relocated. Lane had concluded that
the site wasn't suitable as a privateering base, and tales of Indian
gold and a possible northwest passage were circulating. So in late
winter Lane took a party up Albemarle Sound. Chief Wingina of the
Roanoke Indians saw a chance to rid himself of the demanding colonists.
He told inland tribes that Lane planned to attack them, so they deserted
their villages, depriving Lane's party of food. But Lane made it back to
the colony, and by late spring there were open battles. When a member of
a friendly tribe warned Lane that Wingina planned an assault on the
island, Lane arranged for a parley with Wingina and other Indian
leaders. But at a prearranged signal, the English opened fire. Wingina
was killed and beheaded.
A week later Sir Francis Drake's privateering fleet was sighted. His
offer to the ship Francis was readily accepted, because Grenville, due
by Easter with supplies, had never arrived. Lane knew that "it was
unlikely that he would come at all," as his ships would probably be
pressed into service against the Spanish. With the Francis, the
colonists could return to England after Lane had finished his
explorations. But a storm forced the ship, loaded with supplies and
several of the colony's most responsible members, to leave the harbor
and sail for England. Demoralized, Lane and the colonists decided to
leave with Drake.
Two days later a supply ship sent by Raleigh arrived. Grenville himself
finally arrived two weeks later, only to find a deserted settlement.
After searching the island, he left 15 men to guard the settlement until
a new group of colonists could be recruited.
By 1586, Raleigh was already planning another colony in Virginia. This
one would be more ambitions, with its own coat of arms and the title,
"Cittie of Ralegh." It would be agrarian rather than militaristic, less
an adventure than a commitment. Raleigh's decision to locate it on the
lower end of the Chesapeake Bay was prompted by Lane's report of
friendly Indians and a good natural harbor. The inclusion of 17 women
and 9 children among the 110 colonists would make this a long-term,
self-perpetuating settlement. Instead of wages, each settler was deeded
a 50-acre plot, thereby giving him a stake in the undertaking. John
White, the artist who had accompanied the first voyage, was appointed
Governor, to be aided by 12 assistants.
When the three ships sailed in May of 1587, the plan was to stop briefly
at Roanoke Island to resupply Grenville's party. But when they arrived
in July, the pilot Fernandez insisted that the summer was too far
advanced to go further, and the colonists were left at Roanoke. It
wasn't an auspicious beginning. They had already failed to pick up salt
and fruit in Haiti, and the Indians' hostility had not cooled since the
first group had left. They had attacked the men left by Grenville, White
reported " We found none of them sauing onely we found the bones of one
of those fifteene." Through Manteo, who had visited England and was
appointed "Lord of Roanoke" by the English, White arranged a peace
conference, but a misunderstanding of the date made poor relations
worse. Thinking the Indians had rejected their offer, the colonists
attacked what they mistakenly thought was a hostile village, killing one
Indian. After the incident the two cultures coexisted uneasily.
White's burdens were lightened when his daughter gave birth in August to
Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World. A week
later, however, he was forced to return to England for badly needed
supplies. But upon arrival, his ship was pressed into service against
the threat of the Spanish Armada. All White could do was petition the
Queen through Raleigh and wait. Finally, in 1590, he got passage on a
privateering voyage. As the party stepped ashore, there was no sign of
the colonists except the letters "CRO" carved on a tree. When they
approached the settlement, there was only silence. The houses had been
taken down and a palisade constructed, on one post of which was carved
"CROATAN," the name of a nearby island. The colonists had agreed on this
kind of message if they had to leave Roanoke, but there was no Maltese
cross, the signal that trouble had forced their departure. White's
armour lay rusting in the sand, indicating that the colonist had been
gone for some time. He wanted to sail to Croataon, but low provisions,
the loss of sea anchors in a storm, and privateer's impatience prevented
them from stopping there. Raleigh made several attempts to locate the
colonists between 1590 and 1602, but no trace was found. Their fate will
probably never be known.>>
-------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer
Neuendorffer
> > > What makes you think (if I may use the word loosely)
> > > that Shakespeare had any expertise in geometry?
Nicholas Whyte wrote:
>
> Clearly the first and third of these references are to Pythagoras'
> well-known belief in reincarnation, and nothing to do with geometry.
> The second reference attributes to Pythagoras a story that is usually
> told of Archimedes, which should make one dubious about any other
> information from this source.
Et tu, Nick?
(I was wondering how you knew so quickly that I was using data from
your website. I suppose a little birdy must have told you.)
-----------------------------------------------------
Ba n : the soul represented by a bird with a human head
As on the de Vere Coat-of-Arms:
http://www.congressionalschools.org/html/Default.htm
<<Congressional School was founded in Arlington, Virginia,
by Evelyn and Malcolm DEVERS in 1939 as a primary school.
In 1942, the school moved to the estate of
General George PATTON on Ft. Meyer Hill.>>
-----------------------------------------------------
James Joyce's _Ulysses_ p.377
"Metempsychosis. They believed you could be changed into a tree from
grief. Weeping willow. Ba. There he goes. Funny little beggar. Wonder
where he lives. Belfry up there. Very likely."
"Ba. Again."
"Ba. Who knows what they're always flying for. Insects?"
-----------------------------------------------------
MOTH . . . What is a,
b, spelt backward, with the horn on his head?
HOLOFERNES
Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Francis Meres's _Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury_ (1598) says:
"As the soule of EUPHORBUS was thought to live in Pythagoras : so
the sweet wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous & honytongued
Shakespeare, witnes his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred
Sonnets among his private frinds, &c."
-----------------------------------------------------------
http://history.hanover.edu/texts/presoc/pythagor.htm
<<[Pythagoras] said that the soul is immortal, and that it changes from
one body to another; so he was wont to say that he himself had been born
before the Trojan war as Aethalides, and at the time of the Trojan war
as EUPHORBOS, and after that as Hermotimos of Samos,
then as Pyrrhos of Delos, fifth as Pythagoras.>>
(Aethalides: son of Hermes by Eupolemeia,
daughter of Myrmidon. Aethalides had:
1) the ability to live either in the Underworld or on earth &
2) an infallible memory; and he served as herald of the Argonauts.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
<<This is a thing well known by the learned, that we are not secure that
we have any genuine writings of Pythagoras; those Golden Verses, which
are his best remains, being generally supposed to have been written not
by himself, but by some of his scholars only, in agreement with what
Josephus here affirms of him.>>
----------------------------------------------------------------
<<Grainier, who had not observed him before, recognised him. “Tiens!”
said he with a cry of astonishment, “it is my master in Hermetics,
Dom Claude Frollo the Archdeacon. What the devil can he want with
that one-eyed brute? He will assuredly be devoured!”>>
<<much of Paris flocks to the Palace of Justice (i.e., the Paris
equivalent of the Inns of Court) to observe a new mystery play
written by one Pierre Gringoire. (Gringoire was an illiterate poet
who was mentored by Hermetist Don Claude Frollo.)>>
<<Claude Frollo . . . had penetrated farther afield, had
dug deeper, underneath all that finit, material, limited knowledge;
he had risked his soul, and had seated himself at that mystic table
of the Alchemists, the Astrologers, the Hermetics of which Averroës,
Guillaume de Paris, and Nicolas Flamel occupy one end in the Middle
Ages, and which reaches back in the East, under the rays of the
seven-branched candlestick, to Solomon, PYTHAGORAS, and Zoroaster.>>
-------------------------------------------------------
THE HISTORY OF ANAGRAMS
<<According to some historians, anagrams orginated in the 4th century
B.C. with the Greek poet Lycophron who use them to flatter the rich and
mighty. Other sources suggest that Pythagorus, in the 6th century B.C.,
used anagrams to discover philosophical meanings. Anagrams were often
believed to have mystical or prophetic meaning in Roman and early
Christian times. History then mentions little of anagrams until the 13th
century A.D., when the Jewish Cabbalists again found mystical
significance in them. In the Middle Ages in Europe, anagrams became
popular. In the days of French royalty. Louis XIII appointed a Royal
Anagrammatist, Thomas Billon, to entertain the Court with amusing
anagrams of people's names. However, the principal activity of
anagrammatists in the Middle Ages was in forming anagrams
on religious texts.>>
-------------------------------------------------------------------
CROTONA <=> CROAT(A)N
-------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.bulfinch.org/fables/bull34.html
Bulfinch's Mythology
The Age of Fable
PYTHAGORAS
THE teachings of Anchises to Æneas, respecting
the nature of the human soul, were in conformity with the doctrines
of the Pythagoreans. Pythagoras (born five hundred and forty years
B.C.) was a native of the island of Samos, but passed the chief
portion of his life at CROTONA in Italy. He is therefore sometimes
called "the Samian," and sometimes "the philosopher of CROTONA." When
young he travelled extensively, and it is said visited Egypt, where he
was instructed by the priests in all their learning, and afterwards
journeyed to the East, and visited the Persian and Chaldean Magi, and
the Brahmins of India. At Crotona, where he finally established himself,
his extraordinary qualities collected round him a great number of
disciples. The inhabitants were notorious for luxury and licentiousness,
but the good effects of his influence were soon visible. Sobriety and
temperance succeeded. Six hundred of the inhabitants became his
disciples and enrolled themselves in a society to aid each other in the
pursuit of wisdom, uniting their property in one common stock for the
benefit of the whole. They were required to practise the greatest purity
and simplicity of manners. The first lesson they learned was silence;
for a time they were required to be only hearers. "He [Pythagoras] said
so" (Ipse dixit), was to be held by them as sufficient, without any
proof. It was only the advanced pupils, after years of patient
submission, who were allowed to ask questions and to state objections.
Ovid represents Pythagoras addressing his disciples in these words:
"Souls never die, but always on quitting one abode pass to another. I
myself can remember that in the time of the Trojan war I was Euphorbus,
the son of Panthus, and fell by the spear of Menelaus. Lately being in
the temple of Juno, at Argos, I recognized my shield hung up there among
the trophies. All things change, nothing perishes. The soul passes
hither and thither, occupying now this body, now that, passing from the
body of a beast into that of a man, and thence to a beast's again. As
wax is stamped with certain figures, then melted, then stamped anew with
others, yet is always the same wax, so the soul, being always the same,
yet wears, at different times, different forms. Therefore, if the love
of kindred is not extinct in your bosoms, forbear, I entreat you, to
violate the life of those who may haply be your own relatives."
[Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book XV, Pythagorus, lines 241 - 269]
Shakespeare, in the "Merchant of Venice," makes Gratiano allude to the
metempsychosis, where he says to Shylock:
"Thou almost mak'st me waver in my faith,
To hold opinion with Pythagoras,
That souls of animals infuse themselves
Into the trunks of men; thy currish spirit
Governed a wolf, who, hanged for human slaughter,
Infused his soul in thee; for thy desires
Are wolfish, bloody, starved and ravenous."
[Act IV, scene I]
-----------------------------------------------------------
Francis Meres's _Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury_ (1598) says:
"As the soule of EUPHORBUS was thought to live in Pythagoras : so
the sweet wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous & honytongued
Shakespeare, witnes his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred
Sonnets among his private frinds, &c."
-----------------------------------------------------------
Ancient Mystery Religions by Jim Fournier
http://deepcyber.ciis.edu/jim/ancientmystery.html
<<One thing which does stand out about Pythagoras was that he, like the
figure of Orpheus, shares a great deal of shamanic characteristics. He
is identified with the Hyperborean Apollo, and with the figure of
Abaris, again a shamanic figure from out of the north. He is also
identified Aristeas a shamanic figure from the north who is said to
bi-locate, to go into trance, to have a soul like a bird, and to be
associated with rebirth. Finally, Heraclides tells us that (presumably)
Pythagoras himself recounted that in a previous life he was Hermetimus,
who was himself identified with soul travel and prophesy, and who was
said to have authenticated his identity as the Homeric hero EUPHORBUS
in his previous life by identifying the rotting shield of MENELAUS at a
temple of Apollo. This suggests that Pythagoras like Orpheus might have
represented an incursion of northern shamanism into Mediterranean
culture. Regardless of its origin, Pythagoras appears to have been the
first to introduce the idea of a potential final spiritual liberation
into the Orphic doctrine of cyclical death and rebirth through
reincarnation. Thus Pythagoras transforms the death and rebirth theme
into one of physical death and the potential for a final spiritual
rebirth or liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth itself. In
this way, and in several others related to harmonic relationships in
number, music and astronomy, Pythagoras stands out as the symbol of
the dawn of western thought.>>
------------------------------------------------------------------
"Unerring as the dart of Procris"
------------------------------------------------------------------
http://library.thinkquest.org/10395/text/canisma.html
<<When Procris, daughter of Thespius, married Cephalus in ancient
Greece, she received two unique wedding presents. One gift was a dart,
which, once hurled, would seek out its target, trail it and then make a
hit. The other present was the hound dog, Laelaps, which, once started
on a scent left by an animal, would always get his quarry. Procris
valued these gifts highly. Her husband, Cephalus persuaded her to let
him use them on a hunting trip. While he was gone, Procris became lonely
for him, as she loved her husband very much, and decided to join him at
his camp. Wishing to surprise him, she left secretly. At the camp.
watchdog Laelaps growled an alert to Cephalus, who thought that the
rustle made by Procris was that of a wild animal. He quickly hurled the
unerring dart into the dark, silencing Procris forever.
Laelaps was placed in the skies following Orion, where he is doomed
forever to chase Lepus the hare in the southern sky just out of reach of
his jaws. Laelaps was permitted however, to be the weather watchdog for
the Egyptians across the Mediterranena. From his orbiting position high
in the sky, he could watch the Upper Nile River. When the Nile
floodwaters started north, he would alert the people to have their
fields ready for irrigation. How did he do this? The priests in the
temples would daily watch the rising sun. As soon as Canis Major showed
his jaws, as represented by Sirius rising shortly before the sun did,
the priests would send the signal over the countryside.>>
----------------------------------------------------------------
Philip/Mary Sydney's S T O R G(e)
P H E O N azure crest:
http://www.renaissance.dm.net/heraldry/blazons3.html
http://www.geocities.co.jp/Milano/8947/m455a.gif
<<PHEON, n. A bearing representing the head of a dart or javelin,
with long barbs which are engrailed on the inner edge.>>
-------------------------------------------------------------------
T O T H E O N L I E B 'raw' probabilities:
E G E T T E R O F T H
E S E I N S V I N G S TIBIAL: 1 in 11,600
O N N E T S M r W H A EMEPH: 1 in 300
L H A P I N E S STORG: 1 in 199
N D T A T E PHEON: 1 in 127
|L] T I [P] P R [S|
[E|A] Y [H] V [T|E]
[N|I] [E] [O|M]
R [D|B] [O] [R|E] I
S E [V|I][N][G|P] V E
R L I [E||T||H] O E T
W I S H T H E W
E L L W I [S] H I N G A
D V E N T [U] R E R I N
S E T T I [N] G F O R T H
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Dartmouth, Devon, SW England, on the Dart estuary.
<<Dartmouth was an important port for the wine trade (12th-15th cent.)
with Bordeaux and supplied Edward III with 31 ships for the siege of
Calais in the Hundred Years War.>>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
“The dart of Abaris carried the philosopher wheresoever he desired it.”
—Willmott
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.occultopedia.com/a/abaris.htm
<<Said to be the teacher of Pythagoras, Abaris was a magician and
hermeticist of Scythia, an ancient culture on the north shore of the
Black Sea. He claimed to possess a golden arrow (the "dart of Abaris"),
given to him by Apollo (Abaris was one of his priests), by means of
which he could travel through the air and become invisible. Pythagoras
stole (some accounts say that it was freely given) this arrow from him,
and accomplished many wonderful feats by its aid. Abaris was also said
to have lived without eating or drinking, besides foretelling the
future, pacifying storms and banishing disease. Abaris was mentioned by
Herodotus, Pindar and others, and surnamed 'the Hyperborean'. With the
bones of Pelops he made a statue of Minerva, which he sold to the
Trojans as a talisman descended from heaven. This was the famous
Palladium, which protected and rendered impregnable the town wherein it
was lodged.>>
------------------------------------------------------------------
(W)idow & (S)on
------------------------------------------------------------------
http://library.thinkquest.org/10395/text/ursama.html
<<One of the myths ancient Greeks loved to relate concerned the plight
of two mortals, beautiful Callisto and her son Arcas, who incurred the
wrath of jealous Juno, the goddess queen and wife of Jupiter, King of
Olympus. Callisto was changed into a bear and separated from Arcas, who
was left an orphan-boy. Being separated was tragic enough for Callisto
and Arcas, but imagine the horror of the situation when grown-up Arcas,
now a hunter, came across a docile bear in the woods near his home.
Callisto could not communicate with her son, and Arcas did not know the
tame bear was his mother ! He was about to let fly an arrow to kill the
bear when Jupiter, acting in his role of judge, caused the son, too, to
be changed into a bear. To illustrate forever his humanitarian
character, Jupiter also proclaimed that Mother Bear, Callisto and Son
Bear, Arcas, be changed into stars and placed in the northern sky.
Jupiter lifted the bears by their tails. The bears were heavy and it was
a long distance from the earth to the sky; their tails stretched from
stubby to long ones.>>
------------------------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer
Neuendorffer
http://www.encyclopedia.com/articlesnew/52925.html
<<Crotona [kroton or Croton krotn] , ancient city, S Italy, on the east
coast of Bruttium (now Calabria), a colony of Magna Graecia founded
c.708 B.C. There Pythagoras established his school, which exerted a
notable political and moral influence. The nearby temple of Hera Lacinia
was the religious shrine of Magna Graecia. Crotona's athletes won fame
at the Olympic games. The height of the city's prosperity was reached
after the army, led by the athlete Milo, destroyed the rival town of
Sybaris (510 B.C.). Crotona then became involved in wars and soon
declined. It was captured by the Romans in 277 B.C.; until modern times
it was never more than a provincial town. It was called Cotrone from the
Middle Ages until 1928, when its name was changed to Crotone.>>
The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001.
<<Sybaris [sb´rs], ancient city of Magna Graecia, S Italy, in Bruttium,
on the Gulf of Tarentum (now Taranto). It was founded in 720 B.C. by
Achaeans and people from Argolis, the Troezenians. It became a wealthy
Greek city, and its inhabitants were reputed to live voluptuous lives,
hence the word sybaritic. The Troezenians, ejected by the Achaeans,
obtained the help of neighboring Crotona and destroyed the city in 510
B.C.>>
http://phd.evansville.edu/tools/loc/sybaris.htm
<<The city was founded in 720 by settlers from Peloponnese and was very
prosperous for a while. It retained a reputation of luxury and lush life
(hence the word "sybarite" for one living a life of pleasure and luxury
; see Herodotus, VI, 127). The city was destroyed in 511 by neighboring
Crotona (Herodotus, V, 44-45 and VI, 21). After two unsuccessful
attempts at reviving the city, the panhellenic city of Thurii was
created near the site of Sybaris in 444 at the instigation of
Pericles.>>
----------------------------------------------------------
Bulfinch's Mythology: SYBARIS AND CROTONA
Sybaris, a neighbouring city to Crotona, was as celebrated for
luxury and effeminacy as Crotona for the reverse. The name has become
proverbial. J. R. Lowell uses it in this sense in his charming little
poem "To the Dandelion":
"Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee
Feels a more summer-like, warm ravishment
In the white lily's breezy tent
(His conquered Sybaris) than I when first
From the dark green thy yellow circles burst."
A war arose between the two cities, and Sybaris was conquered and
destroyed. Milo, the celebrated athlete, led the army of Crotona. Many
stories are told of Milo's vast strength, such as his carrying a heifer
of four years old upon his shoulders and afterwards eating the whole of
it in a single day. The mode of his death is thus related: As he was
passing through a forest he saw the trunk of a tree which had been
partially split open by wood-cutters, and attempted to rend it further;
but the wood closed upon his hands and held him fast, in which state he
was attacked and devoured by wolves.
-------------------------------------------------------
THE HISTORY OF ANAGRAMS
<<According to some historians, anagrams orginated in the 4th century
B.C. with the Greek poet Lycophron who use them to flatter the rich and
mighty. Other sources suggest that Pythagorus, in the 6th century B.C.,
used anagrams to discover philosophical meanings. Anagrams were often
believed to have mystical or prophetic meaning in Roman and early
Christian times.>>
-------------------------------------------------------
HERODOTUS <=> DROESHOUT
<<HERODOTUS is said to have been one of the colonists of the second
Sybaris.>> - New Century Classical Handbook
-------------------------------------------------------------------
CROTONA <=> CROAT(A)N
----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.hatterasrealty.com/lost.html
<<In 1587, 20 years prior to the colony at Jamestown, 116 men, women,
and children struggled for existence in the wilderness and vanished
without a trace. Their disappearance remains one of the great mysteries
of history. No clue of this thriving community has every been found,
save for the eerie carving upon the bark of an old, twisted OAK:
"Croatan". It is the saga known as The Lost Colony.>>
----------------------------------------------------------
Byron, in his "Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte,"
alludes to the story of Milo:
"He who of old would rend the OAK
Deemed not of the rebound;
Chained by the trunk he vainly broke,
Alone, how looked he round!"
----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nps.gov/fora/raleigh2.htm
<<White's burdens were lightened when his daughter gave birth in August
to Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World. A week
later, however, he was forced to return to England for badly needed
supplies. But upon arrival, his ship was pressed into service against
the threat of the Spanish Armada. All White could do was petition the
Queen through Raleigh and wait. Finally, in 1590, he got passage on a
privateering voyage. As the party stepped ashore, there was no sign of
the colonists except the letters "CRO" carved on a tree. When they
approached the settlement, there was only silence. The houses had been
taken down and a palisade constructed, on one post of which was carved
"CROATAN," the name of a nearby island. The colonists had agreed on this
kind of message if they had to leave Roanoke, but there was no Maltese
cross, the signal that trouble had forced their departure. White's
armour lay rusting in the sand, indicating that the colonist had been
gone for some time. He wanted to sail to Croataon, but low provisions,
the loss of sea anchors in a storm, and privateer's impatience prevented
them from stopping there. Raleigh made several attempts to locate the
colonists between 1590 and 1602, but no trace was found. Their fate will
probably never be known.>>
PYTHAGORAS
To hold opinion with Pythagoras,
That souls of animals infuse themselves
Into the trunks of men; thy currish spirit
Governed a wolf, who, hanged for human slaughter,
Infused his soul in thee; for thy desires
Are wolfish, bloody, starved and ravenous."
[Act IV, scene I]
-----------------------------------------------------
James Joyce's _Ulysses_ p.377
"Metempsychosis. They believed you could be changed into a tree from
grief. Weeping willow. Ba. There he goes. Funny little beggar. Wonder
where he lives. Belfry up there. Very likely."
"Ba. Again."
"Ba. Who knows what they're always flying for. Insects?"
-----------------------------------------------------
Ba n : the soul represented by a bird with a human head
As on the de Vere Coat-of-Arms:
http://www.congressionalschools.org/html/Default.htm
<<Congressional School was founded in Arlington, Virginia,
by Evelyn and Malcolm DEVERS in 1939 as a primary school.
In 1942, the school moved to the estate of
General George PATTON on Ft. Meyer Hill.>>
-----------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer
Nicholas Whyte
> Nicholas Whyte wrote:
> > Neuendorffer <ph...@erols.com> wrote:
> > > "David L. Webb" wrote:
>
> > > > What makes you think (if I may use the word loosely)
> > > > that Shakespeare had any expertise in geometry?
>
> > > Brother George Washington's Masonic Apron
> > > http://www.tntpc.com/252/brother_george_washington.htm
> > >
> > > 11. FORTY-SEVENTH PROBLEM OF EUCLID'S first book of geometry. It is
> > > said that when Pythagoras solved the problem he exclaimed. "Eureka!,"
> > > which signifies "I have found it." It is, however, not a problem,
> > > but a theorem. It has been adopted as the symbol
> > > on the Past Master Mason's Jewel in Pennsylvania.
> >
> > ...attributes to Pythagoras a story that is usually
> > told of Archimedes, which should make one dubious about any other
> > information from this source.
>
> Et tu, Nick?
I meant of course that this howler makes me suspicious that there are
probably other elementary mistakes on the website you referred to. (It
also doesn't really address the question of Shakespeare's knowledge of
geometry.)
> (I was wondering how you knew so quickly that I was using data from
> your website. I suppose a little birdy must have told you.)
That's easy enough. Bookmark a search on Google, and it will pick up
recent postings on anything. I've bookmarked a search for the latest
postings containing the phrase "Nicholas Whyte".
Nicholas
David L. Webb
the "To," "Cc," and "Newsgroups" headers for details. ]]
In article <3B5E12C2...@erols.com>, Neuendorffer <ph...@erols.com>
(ph...@errors.comedy) wrote:
> > ph...@erols.com wrote:
>
> > > Aren't you going to discuss the significance of the
> > > Masonic "Bible": Vitruvius' _Architecture_ in
> > >
> > > 1) building the 'acoustical' Globe &
> "David L. Webb" wrote:
>
> > Why should I? Because you hallucinate that "significance"?
> > This is a Shakespeare newsgroup, not an architectural newsgroup.
> Discussing the Globe theatre is inappropriate for hlas?
No, discuss it if you like. But Vitruvius is scarcely the "Masonic
Bible" and there is no discernible connection bewteen Freemasonry and
Shakespeare's literary activity.
> > > 2) defining the "Shake-speare philosophy":
> > Who eVER said that Vitruvius had anything whateVER to do with
> > "defining the 'Shake-speare philosophy'" (whateVER that is)?
> It's what Burghley made sure that de Vere and
> the all rest of his wards would know.
And what evidence do you have for this assertion? What makes you
think that Burghley's wards studied Vitruvius closely? You mean, you
just made it up? That's what I thought.
> > > "be educated,
> > Shakespeare was only indifferently educated.
> Shakspere was only indifferently educated.
The author of the canon certainly shows no signs of anything but an
indifferent education coupled with a curious intellect. I'm glad that
you appear to agree that that characterization fits "Shakspere"; it
certainly does not fit Oxford, Rutland, Bacon, etc.
> > > skillful with the pencil,
> > What evidence is there that Shakespeare was "skillful with the
> > pencil"? I thought that you claimed that he could barely sign his
> > name.
> That's Shakspe.
What evidence do you have that the author of the canon was "skillful
with the pencil"? You mean, you just made it up? That's what I
thought.
> > > instructed in geometry,
> > What makes you think (if I may use the word loosely) that
> > Shakespeare had any expertise in geometry?
> The Merchant of Venice Act 4, Scene 1
>
> GRATIANO O, be thou damn'd, inexecrable dog!
> And for thy life let justice be accused.
> Thou almost makest me waver in my faith
> To hold opinion with Pythagoras,
*That* is your evidence that Shakespeare exhibited expertise in
*geometry*?! This is plainly a reference to Pythagorean mysticism, not
to geometry. Of course, I realize that although you can type words
into a search engine, you cannot read the results, and I recognize that
this imposes a seVERe handicap upon the Clueless Cretin persona you
adopt for trolling purposes. Still, even an illiterate Clueless Cretin
would scarcely read this mention of Pythagoras as an illusion to
geometry.
> That souls of animals infuse themselves
> Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit
> Govern'd a wolf, who, hang'd for human slaughter,
> Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,
> And, whilst thou lay'st in thy unhallow'd dam,
> Infused itself in thee; for thy desires
> Are wolvish, bloody, starved and ravenous.
> Brother George Washington's Masonic Apron
> http://www.tntpc.com/252/brother_george_washington.htm
>
> 11. FORTY-SEVENTH PROBLEM OF EUCLID'S first book of geometry. It is
> said that when Pythagoras solved the problem he exclaimed. "Eureka!,"
> which signifies "I have found it." It is, however, not a problem,
> but a theorem. It has been adopted as the symbol
> on the Past Master Mason's Jewel in Pennsylvania.
And what, pray tell, does Brother George Washington's Masonic Apron
and the adornments thereof have to do with Shakespeare? You mean,
there's *no* connection, except in the mind (to use the term loosely)
of a delusional nutcase? That's what I thought.
> Twelfth Night Act 4, Scene 2
>
> Clown What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl?
>
> Clown Fare thee well. Remain thou still in darkness:
> thou shalt hold the opinion of Pythagoras ere I will
> allow of thy wits, and fear to kill a woodcock, lest
> thou dispossess the soul of thy grandam. Fare thee well.
The way you repeat your farcical blunders is always entertaining,
Art -- but it's one of the most obvious giveaways that you're trolling.
Once again, this is an allusion to Pythagorean mysticism, specifically,
to the Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis (transmigration of
souls). Of course, I realize that you don't know the difference
between metempsychosis and mere psychosis, which presumably accounts
for your evident failure to seek effective treatment for the latter
affliction long ago, Art.
> > > know much history,
> > What makes you think that Shakespeare knew much history? Most of
> > his history comes straight from Holinshed.
> And HERODOTUS
> (DROESHOUT).
I'm pleased that you liked my jocular anagram, Art, but like
virtually all anagrams, it's merely a meaningless coincidence. I
realize, of course, that paranoid conspiracy theorists don't understand
the nature of coincidence.
> > > have followed the philosophers with attention,
>
> > > understand music,
> > Shakespeare exhibits no clear understanding of music. He may well
> > have commanded some musical skills, as would be expected of an actor,
> > but I see no evidence of it in the canon. At best he uses some
> > commonplace musical terminology at times.
> http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/shakes/beth.htm
>
> <<Soon after undertaking his quest for the true author of
> Shakespeare's works, Looney turned to the Dictionary of
> National Biography, where he read:
>
> "Oxford, despite his violent and perverse temper,
> his eccentric taste in dress, and his reckless waste
> of his substance, evinced a genuine interest in
> music, and wrote verses of much lyric beauty.
> Puttenham and Meres reckon him among 'the
> best for comedy' in his day; but, although he was
> a patron of players, no specimens of his dramatic
> productions survive." - Sir Sidney Lee
But Art -- you were trying to establish that Oxford wrote the
Shakespeare canon -- remember? You're arguing here that *Oxford* was
musical, therefore (since Oxford was the author of the Shakespeare
canon) the author of the canon was musical. The author of the
Shakespeare canon was musical, therefore the author of the Shakespeare
canon was Oxford! It's pretty easy, even for a Clueless Cretin, to
"prove" something via circular argument. But evidently circular
argumentation is the closest you can come to understanding geometry.
But why stop there? Why not argue that a "canon" is a musical form,
and that therefore the author of the Shakespeare canon was _ipso facto_
a skilled musician? It makes eVERy bit as much sense as anything
you've written above.
Another fascinating logorrhaeic effusion -- and still the same
farcically circular "argument."
> > > have some knowledge of medicine,
> > What makes you think (if I may use the word loosely) that
> > Shakespeare had much expertise in medicine? The fact that he bandies
> > about a few terms?
> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shakespeare/debates/ogburnarticle.html
>
> <<An article in the Journal of the District of Columbia Medical Society
> states that Shakespeare had enough knowledge of medicine to justify
> hanging out his shingle as an Elizabethan M.D., and that in some aspects
> of human physiology he was years and centuries ahead of his times. He
> referred to the circulation of the blood before Harvey had described
> it.>>
Get real, Art! That's *Ogburn* whom you're quoting! Note that
Ogburn, as usual, does not furnish any reference to the article. In
any case, the fact that Harvey had not yet made his *scientific*
observations of blood circulation does not mean that there was no
awareness of the phenomenon. You remind me of a fundamentalist
minister I once read who was trying to show that the Bible anticipated
modern scientific knowledge. One of his examples was a passage from
Job indicating an awareness of some connection between lightning and
thunder, a scientific discovery the minister ascribed to the twentieth
century!
> The April Fool:
> William Harvey, circulation of blood, is born April 1, 1578.
> > > know the opinions of jurists and
>
> > > be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens."
> > What makes you think (if I may again use the word loosely) that
> > Shakespeare knew much astronomy? Altschuler's farcical preprint?
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> Fool Thy asses are gone about 'em. The reason why the
> seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason.
>
> KING LEAR Because they are not eight?
>
> Fool Yes, indeed: thou wouldst make a good fool.
If you think that an awareness of the Pleiades (which had been to
herdsmen since antiquity) indicates a knowledge of astronomy, then you
would indeed make a good fool, Art.
> > > Is http://www.yorkrite.com/RAM/8.HTM a nutcase Website??
> > No, only to the extent that Freemasonry itself possesses nutcase
> > appeal. It also has no discernible connection with Shakespeare.
> > HoweVER, that circumstance won't prevent nutcases like yourself from
> > hallucinating one neVERtheless.
> >
> > HoweVER, I'm pleased to see that you finally(!) -- after my only
> > having told you about a dozen times -- seem to be aware of the
> > existence of the York Rite.
> I've been eating their Peppermint Pattys for years now.
That joke wasn't even VERy funny the *first* time you uttered it,
Art.
> > When (or if) you manage to count its
> > degrees, you'll find that the number of York Rite and Scottish Rite
> > degrees far exceeds 33, the number you endow with such mystical
> > Masonic significance.
> 33 is the number they endow with mystical Masonic significance.
No, they don't, as I've already explained to you.
> > > VERITABLE VITRUVIUS By James L. Sieber
> > > http://www.yorkrite.com/RAM/8.HTM
> > >
> > > <<Inigo Jones, King James' architect and one of the forerunners of
> > > Masonry in England
> > If Inigo Jones, who lived from 1573 to 1652, was indeed one of the
> > *forerunners* of Masonry in England, then the Craft cannot have had
> > anything to do with the Shakespeare canon, since the existence of the
> > Craft postdates Jones's career, while much of the Shakespeare canon
> > predates that career.
> Who said Inigo Jones was a *forerunner* of Masonry in England,
The VERy article you were quoting said so, Art! Can't you even read
the line *you* quoted? I reproduce your own text for your edification:
"VERITABLE VITRUVIUS By James L. Sieber
http://www.yorkrite.com/RAM/8.HTM
<<Inigo Jones, King James' architect and ONE OF THE FORERUNNERS OF
MASONRY IN ENGLAND..." [Emphasis added]
Are you getting senile, Art?
[...]
> > > VERITABLE VITRUVIUS By James L. Sieber
> > > http://www.yorkrite.com/RAM/8.HTM
> > >
> > > <<Vitruvius' treatise had inspired the revival of architecture that
> > > started the Renaissance. His contribution to Masonic philosophy is
> > > even greater. In Book I, he states that an architect:
> > >
> > > "be educated,
> > > skillful with the pencil,
> > > instructed in geometry,
> > > know much history,
> > > have followed the philosophers with attention,
> > > understand music,
> > > have some knowledge of medicine,
> > > know the opinions of jurists and
> > > be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens."
You *already* produced the list in this VERy post. Are you getting
senile, Art?
> > Where did you get the absurd idea that Shakespeare was an architect, Art?
> The folks who designed & built the Globe Theatre were architects.
What makes you think that Shakespeare designed and built the Globe,
Art? Did you design and build the building in which you work, or in
which you are incarcerated for your own protection?
> > > He justifies each of these Arts and Sciences skills.
> > > Astronomy is needed for laying out buildings.
> > > Buildings need to be oriented that they benefit from natural
> > > lighting and the prevailing winds. Religious and culture requirements
> > > demanded they face in the certain direction much as today Muslin
> > > buildings must face Mecca.
> > "Muslin buildings"? They certainly don't sound VERy durable, Art,
> > and I would view an architect that constructed them with grave
> > suspicion.
> Muslin, n. [F. mousseline; cf. It. mussolino, mussolo, Sp. muselina;
> all from Mussoul a city of Mesopotamia, Ar. Mausil, Syr. Mauzol, Muzol,
> Mosul, where it was first manufactured. Cf. {Mull} a kind of cloth.]
> A thin cotton, white, dyed, or printed. The name is also applied to
> COARSER AND HEAVIER COTTON GOODS.
What is this supposed to mean, Art? That you can use a dictionary?
> > I also commend to your attention the first paragraph, Art:
> >
> > "Mathematics is a landmark of Freemasonry. To attempt to
> > understand, why Mathematics holds this exalted position,
> > requires returning to Freemasonry's early days. Freemasonry
> > was a product of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment."
> >
> > If Freemasonry was a product of the Renaissance *and the
> > Enlightenment*, then it cannot have had anything to do with the
> > Shakesepare canon. (You do know that the Enlightenment transpired a
> > century after Shakespeare's death, don't you, Art? Well, perhaps you
> > don't.)
> Born in the Renaissance, Freemasonry reached it's [sic] pinnacle during the
> Enlightenment.
That's not what the article says, Art. Can you not read? Besides,
I thought that you held that Freemasonry had been in existence since
antiquity.
> > > Vitruvius's emphasis on the education of the architect/mason in the
> > > liberal arts and, especially in mathematics, contributed to the
> > > scientific and mathematical orientation of the operative fraternity
> > > as well as the current non-operative fraternity. In the days when
> > > the fraternity was started, the educated population held mathematics
> > > in very high esteem.>>
> > I certainly concur with Vitruvius's opinion that mathematics
> > deserves to be held in high esteem.
> I believe Vitruvius is refering to applied mathematics
> (or at least mathematical physics a la Lev Landau.)
Since Vitruvius lived nearly 1,000 years prior to Landau, the
likelihood that he is referring to Landau's mathematical physics is
indeed remote.
Incidentally, Art, I'm still waiting for you to send me those copies
of Landau and Lifshitz, as you offered earlier. I'll even forgive your
$10 debt from the bet we made if you do so in a timely fashion.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> As for the esoteric math that you engage in, Dave, . . .
>
> "What things again most dear in the esteem And poor in worth!"
>
> Wir Mathematiker sind alle ein biszchen meschugge. -- Lev Landau
Of course, you evidently know nothing of the sort of mathematics I
do, Art; that you were so awed by the fact that 19 is the sum of two
consecutive integers and the difference of their squares effectively
precludes the possibility of your understanding it (with the possible
exception of a popular article in _American Scientist_). If you did
understand, you would also understand why it is of interest especially
to physicists.
> "The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who
> make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians
> have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine
> man in the bonds of Hell." -- St. Augustine (354-430)
If you wish to rave along with Augustine about covenants with the
Devil, Art, be my guest.
[...]
> It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical
> author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.
> -- Alfred North Whitehead, An Introduction to Mathematics, 1948.
That's why I write as clearly as possible, Art.
[...]
> Mathematics contains much that will neither hurt one if one does
> not know it nor help one if one does know it. - J.B. Mencken
The same could be (and indeed has been) said of many sublime
activities, among them music and ornithology.
[...]
> "The author discusses valueless measures in pointless spaces."
> -- Halmos
"Pointless space" is a technical term with a precise meaning.
> "There are only two kinds of math books. Those you cannot read beyond
> the first sentence, and those you cannot read beyond the first page."
> C.N. Yang, about 1980 I think. (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1957.)
The same C.N. Yang expressed his amazement and his admiration of
mathematicians for their having fully developed the theory of
connections on principal bundles, the mathematical machinery underlying
gauge theories of elementary particles, "out of nowhere."
David Webb
Neuendorffer
> >
> > > > > What makes you think (if I may use the word loosely)
> > > > > that Shakespeare had any expertise in geometry?
> >
>
> > > > Brother George Washington's Masonic Apron
> > > > http://www.tntpc.com/252/brother_george_washington.htm
> > > >
> > > > 11. FORTY-SEVENTH PROBLEM OF EUCLID'S first book of geometry. It is
> > > > said that when Pythagoras solved the problem he exclaimed. "Eureka!,"
> > > > which signifies "I have found it." It is, however, not a problem,
> > > > but a theorem. It has been adopted as the symbol
> > > > on the Past Master Mason's Jewel in Pennsylvania.
> > Nicholas Whyte wrote:
>
> > > ...attributes to Pythagoras a story that is usually
> > > told of Archimedes, which should make one dubious about any other
> > > information from this source.
> Neuendorffer <ph...@erols.com> wrote in message news:<3B5EA680...@erols.com>...
>
> > Et tu, Nick?
Nicholas Whyte wrote:
>
> I meant of course that this howler makes me suspicious that there are
> probably other elementary mistakes on the website you referred to. (It
> also doesn't really address the question of Shakespeare's knowledge of
> geometry.)
I meant of course that you hit this Website running: No doubts, no
confusion, not the slightest indication of having an open mind on the
issues. Welcome to the hlas Goon Squad, Nicholas Whyte,
Sint-Genesius-Rode/Rhode-St-Génèse.
Portrait of Nicholas Whyte as a young candidate:
http://explorers.whyte.com/
<<Nicholas Whyte currently holds the Mary Ward Fellowship in the history
of science in Ireland. At the Institute of Irish Studies in Belfast, he
is writing his Ph D dissertation on the social context of science in
Ireland between 1890 and 1930. His previous work has included research
on medieval science, particularly astrology. Outside academe, he is an
active member of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland.>>
> > (I was wondering how you knew so quickly that I was using data from
> > your website. I suppose a little birdy must have told you.)
>
> That's easy enough. Bookmark a search on Google, and it will pick up
> recent postings on anything. I've bookmarked a search for the latest
> postings containing the phrase "Nicholas Whyte".
Yeah sure, Nick. (Shouldn't you be working on your dissertation?)
Why is nice astrologer/politician performing f-test's on Shakespeare
anyway.
----------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer, the Paranoid Android:
If Arthur moves into the same space as any other unit, it will
retreat at double strength. Other units will refuse to move to
a province occupied by Arthur at the beginning of the turn.
john_baker
wrote:
Exciting stuff!!! After four centuries to make sense of something the
Stratfordian editors have mushed up or over looked for ages!!!
I don't like "tell" the clock. I'm sticking with "tend" for "attend"
or "pay attention to the clock."
I think it would be printed "'tend the clock there."
In any case its heady stuff to come up with a new reading, I will
be grinning about it for the next week or more.
baker
Nicholas Whyte
personal invective on this group is rather shocking. I point out that I
see a problem with one of your sources, going to some lengths to
emphasise that this is not meant as a personal jibe at you; you react by
publicly posting a potted CV of mine which is incidentally five years
out of date (my dissertation is not only finished but published by Cork
University Press), combined with a little personal invective and
accusing me of having a closed mind. I mean, of course I have my own
opinions, some of which I hold quite strongly, but if you look at my
exchange with John Baker over "tend/tell/ten the clock there" I don't
think "closed minded" is a fair characterisation.
Don't expect to see much of me in hlas in future. I don't really care
enough about these issues to put up with this kind of personal shite.
Nicholas Whyte
--
Nicholas Whyte, Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels
CEPS - thinking ahead for Europe
(phone) +32 2 229 3942/3911 (mobile) +32 495 544 467
CEPS web-site: http://www.ceps.be/
Northern Ireland elections web-site: http://explorers.whyte.com/
David L. Webb
the "To," "Cc," and "Newsgroups" headers for details. ]]
In article <3B5EF461...@whyte.com>, Nicholas Whyte
<expl...@whyte.com> wrote:
> This is precisely what I meant when I said that the level of vitriol and
> personal invective on this group is rather shocking. I point out that I
> see a problem with one of your sources, going to some lengths to
> emphasise that this is not meant as a personal jibe at you; you react by
> publicly posting a potted CV of mine which is incidentally five years
> out of date (my dissertation is not only finished but published by Cork
> University Press), combined with a little personal invective and
> accusing me of having a closed mind. I mean, of course I have my own
> opinions, some of which I hold quite strongly, but if you look at my
> exchange with John Baker over "tend/tell/ten the clock there" I don't
> think "closed minded" is a fair characterisation.
>
> Don't expect to see much of me in hlas in future. I don't really care
> enough about these issues to put up with this kind of personal shite.
>
> Nicholas Whyte
Don't let Art Neuendorffer get your goat -- we've all been subjected
to this treatment. I tried at length to argue reasonably with him
several years ago. He is risibly wrong about factual matters most of
the time, although when he's decisively proven wrong (which is an
almost daily occurrence), he generally changes the subject adroitly,
resorts to some sort of feeble wordplay, attempts a witticism, or gets
overly personal. After observing Art for a while, I concluded that he
is probably very intelligent, but either stark raving mad (in which
case he could scarcely function as he apparently does in real life) or
else is engaged in a pointless practical joke of monstrous proportions.
I decided that the latter is far more probable, and since then I've
seen some pretty unmistakable signs that he's just trolling. So, I
don't take his posts seriously any longer, but they're often gold mines
of unintentional (or intentional -- your call) humor. Nobody parodies
some of the truly demented scenarios suggested here (e.g., Caxton as
contemporary of Shakespeare, the deceased Thomas Seymour as father, by
the Queen, of the Earl of Oxford, etc.) more amusingly than Art.
Generally, he stays within the confines of what I call his "Clueless
Cretin" persona, although in his posting of your outdated CV he has
assumed some of the attributes of his less frequently adopted but no
less entertaining "Petulant Paranoid" persona.
You were quite right to be suspicious of the reliability of the
"information" Art trawls for his trolls. On previous occasions, he has
resorted (for information supposedly supporting his hilarious theory
that a Masonic/Templar/Priory of Sion conspiracy is responsible both
for the Shakespeare canon and for the ensuing authorship "coverup") to
a web site promoting various conspiracy theories involving space aliens
from so many different stellar systems that one would need a scorecard
to keep track of them all, from an overtly racist, European-supremacist
web site with an obvious political agenda, from a nutcase text at a web
site that contained an explicit warning that the information therein
was notoriously unreliable, but was included only for completeness,
etc. Of course, Art's answer to my pointing out a few of his many
gaffes was merely to insinuate that I must be a high-level member of
the mythical Masonic/Templar/Priory of Sion conspiracy that he
hallucinates is responsible for the Shakespeare canon! Art's
disarmingly bizarre and original sense of humor is too conspicuous and
at times too self-deprecating for me to consider seriously the
possibility that he is really delusional enough to believe the rubbish
that he posts.
Oh, and welcome to the Goon Squad (another of Art's inventions).
One is far better off there than as a member of the Goof Squad.
David Webb
> > Sint-Genesius-Rode/Rhode-St-Génčse.
Paul Crowley
> "Paul Crowley" <pebj...@ubgznvy.pbz (apply ROT13)> wrote in message news:<MZ077.18992$Fk7.1...@news.indigo.ie>...
>
> > The use in Richard III is curious
> >
> > KING RICHARD III
> > He was in the right; and so indeed it is.
> > [Clock striketh]
> > Ten the clock there. Give me a calendar.
> > Who saw the sun to-day?
> > RATCLIFF Not I, my lord.
> > KING RICHARD III
> > Then he disdains to shine; for by the book
> > He should have braved the east an hour ago
> > A black day will it be to somebody.
> >
> > In the monarch's tent on the field of battle, immediately before
> > the battle is to start we have a clock (or one very near) and we
> > also have a calender listing the times of sunrise!
>
> Yes, well that was (and is) part of the information you would expect
> to find in any decent almanac, as owned by any well-equipped commander
> in chief, right up to the present day - remember the Gulf War land
> campaign in 1991, which had to wait until there was less risk of
> illumination by moonlight?
That's a very interesting point. I conceived of Richard III's
military action against Henry Tudor as being a quick
response, rather than a long-term planned campaign.
However, your interpretation seems incontrovertible.
But that strongly indicates to me that Shakespeare was
quite familiar with military campaigns, and had seen an
experienced commander in operation.
> Anyway it doesn't take a genius to work out that if the sun hasn't
> risen by ten o'clock - in August!!! - there's something ominously
> wrong, which is the point of the scene. Why does Richard think that
> nine o'clock is a reasonable time to expect sunrise in August????
I think John is probably right here. It would make much
more sense if the original text had Richard III saying
"Attend the clock there".
> Also the use of the clock here is not anachronistic, since striking
> clocks were certainly well established by 1485 when the historical
> battle took place. If anybody can be bothered to find where the
> historical Richard III spent the last night of his life, they will
> probably have to stick with the Croyland Chronicle's line that he
> camped "near the abbey of Mirival/Merevale" (quoted in many paces on
> the Web including http://www.r3.org/bosworth/chron2.html). It is
> hardly remarkable that an abbey would have a striking clock, audible
> to someone camped in the grounds. Not that I imagine that bothered the
> playwright much.
Well, either he was being a bit careless -- and inviting
ridicule; OR he had done a very surprising amount of
research in documents that were not easy of access
at the time. I'm more inclined to believe the latter
Paul Crowley
> > Suppose there were
> > similar 'mistakes' in a modern play or commercial film
> > -- let's say that at some point Russell Crowe in 'Gladiator'
> > checked his watch -- can't you hear the critics laugh?
> > David Webb would wet his pants. Or imagine someone
> > in 'Titanic' using a biro. Nothing like that is normally
> > permissible when authors intend their works to be taken
> > seriously.
>
> Silly attempts at parallelling again, Paul.
OK, so why don't you give your attempts are parallels.
They remarkable by their absence.
> I don't think
> clocks in Ancient Rome would have struck many people of
> Shakespeare's time as being as wrong as a watch back then
> would strike people of today.
Why? Just cos they was all thick then and we're
really brilliant now?
> But movies get a lot of
> things wrong that perhaps Crowleys of four hundred years
> hence will consider mistakes made intentionally to irritate
> pedants.
They don't make crude mistakes like giving a coastline
to one of the major powers when it had no direct access
to the sea. They don't put most of the major inland cities
of the leading cultural country on the coast.
> Look how many mistakes were made in Shakespeare
> in Love (ones that both sides of the authorship question
> would agree on). And movies have technical advisors.
That film was largely a joke anyway. Complaining
of 'mistakes' in it, is like finding fault with a Marx
brothers show -- on its technical accuracy.
> > While we might not expect a clock in
> > V&A, with its pastoral setting, we should certainly have
> > some in 'The Rape of Lucrece' (applying your 'rules').
>
> > That was set in Rome, and had the poet simply trans-
> > located the scene from London, the sound of church
> > clocks throughout the night would have pervaded the action.
> > (Can you conceive of such an error?
>
> Yes. but why don't we have sun dials in Lucrece, if
> Shakespeare wanted to mention time, and be historically
> accurate?
Because nearly all the action was at night.
Haven't you read it?
> You seem to be saying that when Shakespeare used clocks
> anachronistically, he was joking, and when he wanted to
> be serious he avoided using clocks, which doesn't make sense.
When he wanted to be really serious (and jokes would
not fit into Lucrece) he avoided anachronisms.
[..]
> Macbeth was not pre-clock? I truly don't know either when clocks
> were invented or when Macbeth was supposed to have taken place,
> though I thought around 1000.
Macbeth's source definitely was pre-clock. And so was
King John and Hamlet. But few members of the audience
would be sure enough about dating to say (as regards
2NK, Macbeth and King John) that the largely
metaphorical references were anachronistic.
> Of course,you miss my point about sun dials versus clocks.
What the heck is the point? Sun dials were in use long
before ancient Rome, so there would never anachronistic
in Shakespeare's plays or poems.
> And I
> don't understand what you mean by the clock-mentions not being random.
> Nothing a writer puts into a work is random. All your chart tells
> me is that Shakespeare mentioned clocks a lot, and put them in
> any work he felt like putting them into with no concern for
> where the work was set in a pre-clock time or not.
I suppose you can't help being mathematically blind
(and a rigidnik). I'll work it out the odds against the
pattern we see sometime.
David L. Webb
the "To," "Cc," and "Newsgroups" headers for details. ]]
In article <3B5EEF18...@erols.com>, Neuendorffer <ph...@erols.com>
(ph...@errors.comedy) wrote:
He already pointed out, as did I, that your "evidence" is as
farcical as usual, Art. In particular, your psychotic Pythagorean
reference is to metempsychosis, not to geometry, and moreover the web
site in question contains an overt error, a circumstance that might
lead a cautious, prudent investigator to suspect that there might be
other errors as well. I think that you're confusing an *open* mind
with an *empty* mind, Art.
> Welcome to the hlas Goon Squad, Nicholas Whyte,
> Sint-Genesius-Rode/Rhode-St-Génèse.
Now, Art, don't you think that you're being a bit rough on a
newcomer who isn't familiar with your habitual style? He may not yet
have read enough of your stuff to conclude that you aren't serious, and
that your Petulant Paranoid persona isn't real.
> Portrait of Nicholas Whyte as a young candidate:
> http://explorers.whyte.com/
>
> <<Nicholas Whyte currently holds the Mary Ward Fellowship in the history
> of science in Ireland. At the Institute of Irish Studies in Belfast, he
> is writing his Ph D dissertation on the social context of science in
> Ireland between 1890 and 1930. His previous work has included research
> on medieval science, particularly astrology. Outside academe, he is an
> active member of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland.>>
He evidently has training and expertise in history, Art, so he's
*far* ahead of you. I'll bet that he doesn't even seek confirmation of
invented fantasies in failed anagrams!
> > > (I was wondering how you knew so quickly that I was using data from
> > > your website. I suppose a little birdy must have told you.)
You've really *got* to stop impersonating a paranoid nutcase with
newcomers, Art. It makes them nervous.
> > That's easy enough. Bookmark a search on Google, and it will pick up
> > recent postings on anything. I've bookmarked a search for the latest
> > postings containing the phrase "Nicholas Whyte".
> Yeah sure, Nick.
Come on, Art -- it's *far* too early in your exchange with him to
unleash your pseudo-paranoia yet. Stick with your "genial goof" style
for a while until he gets the hang of your posts.
> (Shouldn't you be working on your dissertation?)
Can't you read, Art? He plainly states on his web page that he has
been employed as a Research Fellow *since 1999*, and that his Ph.D. was
*completed in 1997*. (You do know what year it is, don't you, Art?
Well, perhaps you don't. Do you even know what millennium it is, Art?
And here I thought that mindlessly grepping web sites with a search
engine was the one thing that you could actually do! As usual, when
actually *reading* as well as grepping is required, you fail eVERy
time, Art.)
> Why is nice [sic] astrologer [sic]/politician performing f-test's [sic]
> on Shakespeare anyway. [sic]
Why is nice lunatic impersonator lodging cantankerous criticism's of
nice historians reasonable objection's anyway.
Astrologer? Do you assume that anyone who does research on medieval
astrology is an astrologer himself or herself, Art? Do you also assume
that anyone who studies the history of the Apostolic Succesion must be
the Pope?
David Webb
Alkibiades
<expl...@whyte.com> wrote:
>--
>Nicholas Whyte, Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels
>CEPS - thinking ahead for Europe
Nicholas,
No personal invective here, but do please offer fond regards to my
dear one who has herself involved in the nastiness over there in
Brussels. (If you're not sure who she is, she's the one who can, and
does, take any guy in that town, with one hand tied behind her back,
and a smirk on her face -- can't miss her.) If you don't know who I'm
talking about then you really cannot possibly be thinking ahead for
Europe. The question is: what is she thinking?
Even if you're not going to post, stick around, or at least drop in
from time to time...
- Alkibiades
Paul Crowley
> You list 40 canonical works. There is indeed an obvious double peak in
> the distribution of mentions of the word "clock". I think we can all
> agree that Shakespeare put plenty of clocks in some of his works and
> very few in others.
>
> 8 have 5+ mentions of "clock" by your criteria. 3 of those (Cymbeline,
> A Comedy of Errors, Julius Caesar) are clearly set in pre-clock times.
> That is 37.5%.
>
> 32 have 0-3 mentions of "clock" by your criteria. 12 of those (Hamlet,
> Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, King Lear, Pericles, Rape of
> Lucrece, Timon, Titus Andronicus, Venus and Adonis, Two Noble Kinsmen,
> Troilus and Cressida, Macbeth) are clearly set in pre-clock times.
> That is 37.5%.
>
> The average number of "clocks" in "pre-clock" works is 1.47; the
> average in others is 2.72. An f-test comparing the variances in the
> two distributions gives a 90.99% probability that the difference
> between them (ie, the fact that there are *fewer* "clocks" in
> "pre-clock" works) is purely random.
>
> Your call.
First, we must be quite clear about the questions we are
asking. They are:
a) Was Shakespeare aware that it was inappropriate to
put clocks into plays and poems unambiguously set in a
'pre-clock' era?
2) Did Shakespeare on occasion deliberately breach
that rule for his own reasons?
Your first observation above gets straight to the point.
> There is indeed an obvious double peak in the distribution
> of mentions of the word "clock". I think we can all agree that
> Shakespeare put plenty of clocks in some of his works and
> very few in others.
The peak on the zero tells us that Shakespeare was
fully aware of the standard rule. He knew that clocks
did not exist in 'pre-clock' eras:
V&A 0 p
RoL 0 p
3H6 0
A&C 0 p
COR 0 p
HAM 0 ?
KLE 0 p
MID 0 ?
PER 0 p
TIM 0 p
TIT 0 p
2) Did Shakespeare on occasion deliberately breach
the standard rule for his own reasons?
MOV 5
CYM 6 p
ERR 6 p
JCS 6 p
AYL 7 p+
MWW 7
RI3 8
1H4 9
The peak at the top end of the distribution tells us
unambiguously that he did.
> 32 have 0-3 mentions of "clock" by your criteria. 12 of those (Hamlet,
> Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, King Lear, Pericles, Rape of
> Lucrece, Timon, Titus Andronicus, Venus and Adonis, Two Noble Kinsmen,
> Troilus and Cressida, Macbeth) are clearly set in pre-clock times.
> That is 37.5%.
One of your problems is that you have not set out the
questions that you are trying to answer (or the hypotheses
that you are attempting to test). There are some other
considerations. An underlying question is whether or not
the mention of 'clock' would (or should) strike members of
an audience as anachronistic. A clock in ancient Rome
would; one in Hamlet, Macbeth, Two Noble Kinsmen,
Mid-Summer Night's Dream, or in King John, wouldn't.
A few knowledgeable historians might pick up the 'error'
as regards King John -- but they'd hardly be bothered
about it. (The use of artillery in that play is a much more
egregious anachronism!). A few might pick up the 'errors'
as regards Macbeth or Hamlet-- but they'd be few indeed.
The other plays are not really set in any definite time. You
have to double-check 2NK carefully to clarify the period in
which it is apparently set. So those plays can largely be
disregarded in any assessment.
> The average number of "clocks" in "pre-clock" works is 1.47; the
> average in others is 2.72. An f-test comparing the variances in the
> two distributions gives a 90.99% probability that the difference
> between them (ie, the fact that there are *fewer* "clocks" in
> "pre-clock" works) is purely random.
There are (as you suggested in your second sentence)
at least three categories of works (a) those in the 'zero'
peaks; (b) those in the 'high' peak, and (c) the rest.
> > Nothing like that is normally
> > permissible when authors intend their works to be taken
> > seriously.
>
> If that is so, you should be able to point to examples of inferior
> playwrights in Elizabethan times whose anachronisms were howled down
> by the critics, or by rival playwrights, or resulted in a loss of
> patronage, or whatever. Are there any?
Nonsense -- and you know it. Such 'mistakes' simply
don't occur in such plays, for the most obvious of reasons.
The playwright, the actors, the theatre managers, the
company as a whole, the company's patron, etc., don't like
being the objects of derision. That's why you don't get the
sea-port of Atlanta being described, with its ships and tides.
Errors in serious artistic works certainly occur, but only
when the author is not in a position to correct them -- in
one-off works like books or films. That is why publishers
often use small armies of 'fact-checkers'.
But when the works are rehearsed by intelligent actors,
for weeks, the mistakes rarely survive to production.
When they do, and are performed every night in front of
intelligent audiences, they are rectified as soon as they
are spotted.
Neuendorffer
> > >
> > > Portrait of Nicholas Whyte as a young candidate:
> > > http://explorers.whyte.com/
> > >
> > > <<Nicholas Whyte currently holds the Mary Ward Fellowship in the history
> > > of science in Ireland. At the Institute of Irish Studies in Belfast, he
> > > is writing his Ph D dissertation on the social context of science in
> > > Ireland between 1890 and 1930. His previous work has included research
> > > on medieval science, particularly astrology. Outside academe, he is an
> > > active member of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland.>>
> > >
> > > > > (I was wondering how you knew so quickly that I was using data from
> > > > > your website. I suppose a little birdy must have told you.)
> > > >
> > > > That's easy enough. Bookmark a search on Google, and it will pick up
> > > > recent postings on anything. I've bookmarked a search for the latest
> > > > postings containing the phrase "Nicholas Whyte".
> > >
> > > Yeah sure, Nick. (Shouldn't you be working on your dissertation?)
> > > Why is nice astrologer/politician performing f-test's on Shakespeare
> > > anyway.
> > > ----------------------------------------------------
> > > Art Neuendorffer, the Paranoid Android:
> > >
> > > If Arthur moves into the same space as any other unit, it will
> > > retreat at double strength. Other units will refuse to move to
> > > a province occupied by Arthur at the beginning of the turn.
> In article <3B5EF461...@whyte.com>, Nicholas Whyte
> <expl...@whyte.com> wrote:
>
> > This is precisely what I meant when I said that the level of vitriol and
> > personal invective on this group is rather shocking. I point out that I
> > see a problem with one of your sources, going to some lengths to
> > emphasise that this is not meant as a personal jibe at you; you react by
> > publicly posting a potted CV of mine which is incidentally five years
> > out of date (my dissertation is not only finished but published by Cork
> > University Press), combined with a little personal invective and
> > accusing me of having a closed mind. I mean, of course I have my own
> > opinions, some of which I hold quite strongly, but if you look at my
> > exchange with John Baker over "tend/tell/ten the clock there" I don't
> > think "closed minded" is a fair characterisation.
> >
> > Don't expect to see much of me in hlas in future. I don't really care
> > enough about these issues to put up with this kind of personal shite.
> >
> > Nicholas Whyte
No wonder Northern Ireland has so many problems!
-- The moon, professor MacHugh said. He forgot Hamlet.
-- That mantles the vista far and wide and wait till the glowing orb
of the moon shines forth to irradiate her silver effulgence .
-- O! Mr Dedalus cried, giving vent to a hopeless groan, shite and
onions!
That'll do, Ned. Life is too short.
Art Neuendorffer, the Paranoid Android:
If Arthur moves into the same space as any other unit, it will
retreat at double strength. Other units will refuse to move to
a province occupied by Arthur at the beginning of the turn.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"David L. Webb" wrote:
Thanks for your support, Dave.
> Oh, and welcome to the Goon Squad (another of Art's inventions).
> One is far better off there than as a member of the Goof Squad.
I am not a member of any organized group, Dave. I'm an Oxfordian.
Art Neuendorffer
Neuendorffer
> > Discussing the Globe theatre is inappropriate for hlas?
"David L. Webb" wrote:
> No, discuss it if you like. But Vitruvius is scarcely the "Masonic
> Bible" and there is no discernible connection bewteen Freemasonry and
> Shakespeare's literary activity.
No discernible connection between Freemasonry and Vitruvius?
> > > > 2) defining the "Shake-speare philosophy":
> > > Who eVER said that Vitruvius had anything whateVER to do with
> > > "defining the 'Shake-speare philosophy'" (whateVER that is)?
>
> > It's what Burghley made sure that de Vere and
> > the all rest of his wards would know.
"be educated,
skillful with the pencil,
instructed in geometry,
know much history,
have followed the philosophers with attention,
understand music,
have some knowledge of medicine,
know the opinions of jurists and
be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens."
> And what evidence do you have for this assertion? What makes you
> think that Burghley's wards studied Vitruvius closely?
----------------------------------------------------------------
THIS STAR OF ENGLAND Chapter Two by Dorothy and Charlton Ogburn
http://home.earthlink.net/~mark_alex/Star/ch02.html
<<SIR WILLIAM CECIL, Principal Secretary of State, had been appointed
guardian of the Royal Ward on behalf of the Queen. And it was at Cecil
House in the Strand, just opposite the recent site of the Cecil Hotel,
that young Oxford took up his residence. This new home was an imposing
structure of brick and timber, "adorned with four turrets placed at the
four corners of the house; within . . . curiously beautified with rare
devices, and especially the Oratory, placed in an angle of the great
chamber.'' 1 The garden, for twenty years the charge of John Gerard,
author of Herbal, or General History of Plants, was noted for its rich
variety of flowers, shrubs, and trees. Formal allees were adorned with
fountains, a sun-dial, occasional statuary.
During the ensuing eight years, except for the time spent at Cambridge
and later at Oxford, Edward de Vere lived at Cecil House, where his days
were strictly regimented, as a document entitled "Orders for the Earl of
Oxford's exercises" indicates. He was "to rise at such time as he may be
ready to his exercises by 7 o'clock." Then:
7-7:30. Dancing, [understand music]
7:30-8. Breakfast,
8-9. French, [be educated]
9-10. Latin, [be educated]
10-10:30. Writing and Drawing. [skillful with the pencil]
Then Common Prayers, and so to Dinner.
1-2. Cosmography, [be acquainted with astronomy]
2-3. Latin, [be educated]
3-4. French, [be educated]
4-4:30. Exercises with his pen. [skillful with the pencil]
Then Common Prayers, and so to supper.
He "read before dinner the Epistle and the Gospel in his own tongue and
in the other tongue after dinner. All the rest of the day to be spent in
riding, shooting, dancing, walking, and other commendable exercises. .
."
------------------------------------------------------------
> > > > "be educated,
>
> > > Shakespeare was only indifferently educated.
>
> > Shakspere was only indifferently educated.
>
> The author of the canon certainly shows no signs of anything but an
> indifferent education coupled with a curious intellect. I'm glad that
> you appear to agree that that characterization fits "Shakspere"; it
> certainly does not fit Oxford, Rutland, Bacon, etc.
Find them out whose names are written here! It is
written, that the shoemaker should meddle with his
yard, and the tailor with his last, the fisher with
his PENCIL, and the painter with his nets; but I am
sent to find those persons whose names are here
writ, and can never find what names the writing
person hath here writ. I must to the search engine.--In good time.
> > > > skillful with the pencil,
>
> > > What evidence is there that Shakespeare was "skillful with the
> > > pencil"? I thought that you claimed that he could barely sign his
> > > name.
>
> > That's Shakspe.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
King John Act 3, Scene 1
KING PHILIP Heaven knows, they were besmear'd and over-stain'd
With slaughter's PENCIL,
-----------------------------------------------------------------
> What evidence do you have that the author of the canon was
> "skillful with the pencil"?
----------------------------------------------------------------
10-10:30. Writing and Drawing. [skillful with the pencil]
4-4:30. Exercises with his pen. [skillful with the pencil]
Love's Labour's Lost Act 5, Scene 2
ROSALINE 'Ware PENCILs, ho! let me not die your debtor,
My red dominical, my golden letter:
O, that your face were not so full of O's!
------------------------------------------------------------------
THE KNYGHTES TALE. - Chaucer
A wolf ther stood biforn hym at his feet,
With eyen rede, and of a man he eet.
With soutil PENCEL was depeynt this storie,
In redoutynge of Mars and of his glorie.
Now to the temple of Dyane the chaste
As shortly as I kan I wol me haste,
--------------------------------------------------------
Sonnet 16
Much liker than your painted counterfeit:
So should the lines of life that life repair,
Which this, Time's PENCIL, or my pupil pen,
Neither in inward worth nor outward fair,
Can make you live yourself in eyes of men.
To give away yourself keeps yourself still,
And you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill.
Sonnet 101
'Truth needs no colour, with his colour fix'd;
Beauty no PENCIL, beauty's truth to lay;
But best is best, if never intermix'd?'
Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?
Excuse not silence so; for't lies in thee
To make him much outlive a gilded tomb,
And to be praised of ages yet to be.
Then do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how
To make him seem long hence as he shows now.
--------------------------------------------------------
> > > > instructed in geometry,
>
> > > What makes you think (if I may use the word loosely) that
> > > Shakespeare had any expertise in geometry?
> > Brother George Washington's Masonic Apron
> > http://www.tntpc.com/252/brother_george_washington.htm
> >
> > 11. FORTY-SEVENTH PROBLEM OF EUCLID'S first book of geometry. It is
> > said that when Pythagoras solved the problem he exclaimed. "Eureka!,"
> > which signifies "I have found it." It is, however, not a problem,
> > but a theorem. It has been adopted as the symbol
> > on the Past Master Mason's Jewel in Pennsylvania.
>
> And what, pray tell, does Brother George Washington's Masonic Apron
and the adornments thereof have to do with Shakespeare?
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Julius Caesar Act 1, Scene 1
MARULLUS Where is thy LEATHER APRON and thy rule?
-----------------------------------------------------
King Henry VI, Part ii Act 4, Scene 2
HOLLAND The nobility think scorn to go in LEATHER APRONs.
-----------------------------------------------------
King Henry VI, Part ii Act 2, Scene 3
PETER Here, Robin, an if I die, I give thee my APRON:
and, WILL, thou shalt have my hammer:
-----------------------------------------------------
Antony and Cleopatra Act 5, Scene 2
CLEOPATRA With greasy APRONs, rules, and hammers, shall
-----------------------------------------------------
Pericles Prince of Tyre Act 4, Scene 6
Bawd Pray you, without any more virginal fencing, will
you use him kindly? He will line your APRON with gold.
-----------------------------------------------------
Coriolanus Act 4, Scene 6
MENENIUS You have made good work,
You and your APRON-men; you that stood so up much
on the voice of occupation and
The breath of garlic-eaters!
-----------------------------------------------------
Wait just a minute, Dave, while I pop a Tic-Tac.
-----------------------------------------------------------
> > Twelfth Night Act 4, Scene 2
> >
> > Clown What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl?
> >
> > Clown Fare thee well. Remain thou still in darkness:
> > thou shalt hold the opinion of Pythagoras ere I will
> > allow of thy wits, and fear to kill a woodcock, lest
> > thou dispossess the soul of thy grandam. Fare thee well.
>
> The way you repeat your farcical blunders is always entertaining,
> Art -- but it's one of the most obvious giveaways that you're trolling.
> Once again, this is an allusion to Pythagorean mysticism, specifically,
> to the Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis (transmigration of
> souls). Of course, I realize that you don't know the difference
> between metempsychosis and mere psychosis, which presumably accounts
> for your evident failure to seek effective treatment for the latter
> affliction long ago, Art.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.bulfinch.org/fables/bull34.html
Bulfinch's Mythology
The Age of Fable
PYTHAGORAS
Ovid represents Pythagoras addressing his disciples in these words:
"Souls never die, but always on quitting one abode pass to another. I
myself can remember that in the time of the Trojan war I was Euphorbus,
the son of Panthus, and fell by the spear of Menelaus. Lately being in
the temple of Juno, at Argos, I recognized my shield hung up there among
the trophies. All things change, nothing perishes. The soul passes
hither and thither, occupying now this body, now that, passing from the
body of a beast into that of a man, and thence to a beast's again. As
wax is stamped with certain figures, then melted, then stamped anew with
others, yet is always the same wax, so the soul, being always the same,
yet wears, at different times, different forms."
[Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book XV, Pythagorus, lines 241 - 269]
Shakespeare, in the "Merchant of Venice," makes Gratiano allude
to the metempsychosis, where he says to Shylock:
"Thou almost mak'st me waver in my faith,
To hold opinion with Pythagoras,
That souls of animals infuse themselves
Into the trunks of men; thy currish spirit
Governed a wolf, who, hanged for human slaughter,
Infused his soul in thee; for thy desires
Are wolfish, bloody, starved and ravenous."
---------------------------------------------------------------
James Joyce's _Ulysses_ p.377
"Metempsychosis. They believed you could be changed into a tree from
grief. Weeping willow. Ba. There he goes. Funny little beggar. Wonder
where he lives. Belfry up there. Very likely."
"Ba. Again."
"Ba. Who knows what they're always flying for. Insects?"
------------------------------------------------------------
Neuendorffer
Neuendorffer
Neuendorffer wrote:
> > > > 2) defining the "Shake-speare philosophy":
> > > > know much history,
Dave Webb wrote:
> > > What makes you think that Shakespeare knew much history? Most of
> > > his history comes straight from Holinshed.
>
> > And HERODOTUS
> > (DROESHOUT).
>
> I'm pleased that you liked my jocular anagram, Art, but like
> virtually all anagrams, it's merely a meaningless coincidence. I
> realize, of course, that paranoid conspiracy theorists don't understand
> the nature of coincidence.
-------------------------------------------------------
THE HISTORY OF ANAGRAMS
<<According to some historians, anagrams orginated in the 4th century
B.C. with the Greek poet Lycophron who use them to flatter the rich and
mighty. Other sources suggest that Pythagorus, in the 6th century B.C.,
used anagrams to discover philosophical meanings. Anagrams were often
believed to have mystical or prophetic meaning in Roman and early
Christian times.>>
-------------------------------------------------------
HERODOTUS <=> DROESHOUT
<<HERODOTUS is said to have been one of the colonists of
the second Sybaris.>> - New Century Classical Handbook
<<Sybaris [sb´rs], ancient city of Magna Graecia, S Italy, in Bruttium,
on the Gulf of Tarentum (now Taranto). It was founded in 720 B.C. by
Achaeans and people from Argolis, the Troezenians. It became a wealthy
Greek city, and its inhabitants were reputed to live voluptuous lives,
hence the word sybaritic. The Troezenians, ejected by the Achaeans,
obtained the help of neighboring Crotona and destroyed the city in
510 B.C.>> -- The Columbia Encyclopedia
<<The city was founded in 720 by settlers from Peloponnese and was very
prosperous for a while. It retained a reputation of luxury and lush life
(hence the word "sybarite" for one living a life of pleasure and luxury
; see Herodotus, VI, 127). The city was destroyed in 511 by neighboring
Crotona (Herodotus, V, 44-45 and VI, 21). After two unsuccessful
attempts at reviving the city, the panhellenic city of Thurii was
created near the site of Sybaris in 444 at the instigation of
Pericles.>> -- http://phd.evansville.edu/tools/loc/sybaris.htm
----------------------------------------------------------
Bulfinch's Mythology: SYBARIS AND CROTONA
<<Sybaris, a neighbouring city to Crotona, was as celebrated for
luxury and effeminacy as Crotona for the reverse. A war arose between
the two cities, and Sybaris was conquered and destroyed.
Milo <=> Marlo
Milo, the celebrated athlete, led the army of Crotona. Many stories
are told of Milo's vast strength, such as his carrying a heifer
of four years old upon his shoulders and afterwards eating the whole of
it in a single day. The mode of his death is thus related: As he was
passing through a forest he saw the trunk of a tree which had been
partially split open by wood-cutters, and attempted to rend it further;
but the wood closed upon his hands and held him fast, in which state he
was attacked and devoured by wolves.
Byron, in his "Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte,"
alludes to the story of Milo:
"He who of old would rend the OAK
Deemed not of the rebound;
Chained by the trunk he vainly broke,
Alone, how looked he round!"
-------------------------------------------------------------------
CROTONA <=> CROAT(A)N
----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.hatterasrealty.com/lost.html
<<In 1587, 20 years prior to the colony at Jamestown, 116 men, women,
and children struggled for existence in the wilderness and vanished
without a trace. Their disappearance remains one of the great mysteries
of history. No clue of this thriving community has every been found,
save for the eerie carving upon the bark of an old, twisted OAK:
"Croatan". It is the saga known as The Lost Colony.>>
----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.encyclopedia.com/articlesnew/52925.html
<<Crotona [kroton or Croton krotn] , ancient city, S Italy, on the east
coast of Bruttium (now Calabria), a colony of Magna Graecia founded
c.708 B.C. There Pythagoras established his school, which exerted a
notable political and moral influence. The nearby temple of Hera Lacinia
was the religious shrine of Magna Graecia. Crotona's athletes won fame
at the Olympic games. The height of the city's prosperity was reached
after the army, led by the athlete Milo, destroyed the rival town of
Sybaris (510 B.C.). Crotona then became involved in wars and soon
declined. It was captured by the Romans in 277 B.C.; until modern times
it was never more than a provincial town. It was called Cotrone from
the Middle Ages until 1928, when its name was changed to Crotone.>>
---------------------------------------------------------------------
When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day.
But when I came to man's estate,
With hey, ho, &c.
'Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,
For the rain, &c.
But when I came, alas! to wive,
With hey, ho, &c.
By swaggering could I never thrive,
For the rain, &c.
But when I came unto my beds,
With hey, ho, &c.
With toss-pots still had drunken heads,
For the rain, &c.
A great while ago the world begun,
With hey, ho, &c.
But that's all one, our play is done,
And we'll strive to please you every day.
> > http://www.everreader.com/shakirel.htm
> >
> > <<Farmer held the post of organist and master of the children of the
> > choir in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, according to the Chapter Acts
> > of that church, reprinted in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians
> > (3rd Edition). He was one of the most gifted composers and musical
> > arrangers of the Elizabethan era, a pioneer in the fields of the
> > madrigal and counterpoint of different orders.
> >
> > In 1591 Farmer dedicated his first studies in counterpoint to Edward de
> > Vere, "Earle of Oxenford." Divers and Sundry Ways...to the Number of
> > Forty, Upon One Playn Song carries a significant statement of its
> > composer's relationship to the nobleman who, like his prototype in All's
> > Well, is known to have sold many "a goodly manor for a song":
> >
> > "Hereunto, my good Lord, I was the rather emboldened for your
> > Lordship's great affection to this noble science (i.e., music) hoping
> > for the one you might pardon the other, and desirous to make known your
> > inclination this way.... Besides this, my good Lord, I bear this
> > conceit, that not only myself am vowed to your commandment, but all that
> > is in me is dedicated to your Lordship's service."
> > ---------------------------------------------------------------
> Another fascinating logorrhaeic effusion -- and still the same
> farcically circular "argument."
Thus most humbly submitting myself and my labours and whatever is or
may be in me to your Lordship's censure and protection, I humbly end,
wishing your Lordship as continual an increasing of health and honour
as there is a daily increase of virtue to come to happiness.
> > > > have some knowledge of medicine,
>
> > > What makes you think (if I may use the word loosely) that
> > > Shakespeare had much expertise in medicine? The fact that he bandies
> > > about a few terms?
>
> > http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shakespeare/debates/ogburnarticle.html
> >
> > <<An article in the Journal of the District of Columbia Medical Society
> > states that Shakespeare had enough knowledge of medicine to justify
> > hanging out his shingle as an Elizabethan M.D., and that in some aspects
> > of human physiology he was years and centuries ahead of his times. He
> > referred to the circulation of the blood before Harvey had described
> > it.>>
>
> Get real, Art! That's *Ogburn* whom you're quoting! Note that
> Ogburn, as usual, does not furnish any reference to the article.
> In any case, the fact that Harvey had not yet made his *scientific*
> observations of blood circulation does not mean that there was no
> awareness of the phenomenon.
Perhaps that's what young Shakspere was doing by slaughtering the calf:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
<<His father was a butcher, and I have been told heretofore by
some of the neighbours that when he was a boy he exercised his father's
trade, but when he kill'd a calfe he would doe it in a high style, and
make a speech. There was at that time another butcher's son in this
towne that was held not at all inferior to him for a naturall wits,
his acquaintance and coetanean, but dyed young.>>
-- AUBREY, JOHN, 1669-96, Brief Lives
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
> You remind me of a fundamentalist minister I once read
"Bring hither the fatted calf, kill it, and let us eat and be merry;"
> who was trying to show that the Bible anticipated
> modern scientific knowledge. One of his examples was a passage from
> Job indicating an awareness of some connection between lightning and
> thunder, a scientific discovery the minister ascribed to the twentieth
> century!
So when Harvey described blood circulation it was all ancient history by
then.
Why the heck is Harvey so highly regarded then?
> > The April Fool:
> > William Harvey, circulation of blood, is born April 1, 1578.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer
Neuendorffer
Neuendorffer wrote:
> > > > 2) defining the "Shake-speare philosophy":
> > > > know the opinions of jurists and
> > > > be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens."
Dave Webb wrote:
>
> > > What makes you think (if I may again use the word loosely) that
> > > Shakespeare knew much astronomy? Altschuler's farcical preprint?
> > -------------------------------------------------------------
> > Fool Thy asses are gone about 'em. The reason why the
> > seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason.
> >
> > KING LEAR Because they are not eight?
> >
> > Fool Yes, indeed: thou wouldst make a good fool.
>
> If you think that an awareness of the Pleiades (which had been to
> herdsmen since antiquity) indicates a knowledge of astronomy, then you
> would indeed make a good fool, Art.
Or a good herdsman.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1-2. Cosmography, [be acquainted with astronomy]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Astrophysicist Finds New Scientific Meaning In 'Hamlet' 1-13-97
http://www.psu.edu/dept/ur/NEWS/SCIENCETECH/Hamlet.html
University Park, Pa. -- A paper read today (Jan. 13) at the American
Astronomical Society meeting in Toronto, Canada, offers a new
interpretation of Shakespeare's play Hamlet.
The paper, by Peter D. Usher, professor of astronomy and
astrophysics at Penn State, presents evidence that Hamlet is "an
allegory for the competition between the cosmological models of Thomas
Digges of England and Tycho Brahe of Denmark." Usher says the paper is
significant because Shakespeare favors the Diggesian model, which is the
forerunner of modern cosmology. "As early as 1601, Shakespeare
anticipated the new universal order and humankind's position in it,"
Usher states. "The play therefore manifests an astronomical cosmology
that is no less magnificent than its literary and philosophical
counterparts."
Though the Copernican model had been published before Shakespeare
was born, it was not yet in vogue in his lifetime.
However, both the Ptolemaic and the Copernican systems were
contained in a crystalline sphere, beyond which lay Paradise and the
realm of the Prime Mover. By contrast, in 1576 when Shakespeare was 12
years old, the English scientist and military scholar Thomas Digges
extended the Copernican model by suggesting that the stars were like the
Sun and were distributed through infinite space. He was therefore the
first Renaissance scholar to publish the idea of an infinite universe.
Eight years later similar ideas were published in a book by the Italian
philosopher Giordano Bruno.
Shakespeare would have known of the existence of these competing
cosmological models through his acquaintance with Digges. "Through
Digges, Shakespeare knew also of the astronomer Tycho Brahe, and he
named the characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern for Tycho's
ancestors," the paper states. Tycho's model of the universe was similar
to Ptolemy's in two major ways: it was Earth-centered, and it too was
imbedded in a spherical shell of stars.
This paper suggests that Hamlet dramatizes the struggle of
Renaissance scholars to discover the real picture of the universe from
the appearances in the sky. "When Hamlet states: 'I could be bounded in
a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space . . . ' he is
contrasting the shell of fixed stars in the Ptolemaic, Copernican, and
Tychonic models with the Infinite Universe of Digges," Usher says.
The paper notes that the play is set in Elsinore Castle, named for
Helsingr Castle which was being built at the time that Tycho was
constructing his observatory at Uraniborg. When Hamlet says: "By my fay,
I cannot reason," he means that his freedom to reason is restricted at
Elsinore," Usher claims.
Hamlet is a student at Wittenberg, a center for Copernican learning.
When Hamlet announces a desire to return to study in Wittenberg, the
King demurs, saying: "It is most retrograde to our desire." "The double
meaning refers to Hamlet's retrograde - or contrary - motion to the
place of learning which is a seat of Copernican cosmology," Usher says.
Retrograde motion occurs around the time of Opposition and is a perverse
westward motion relative to the sphere of the stars. Such perversity was
a puzzling feature of the heavens for it contradicted the perfect
simplicity of geocentricity.
The term "retrograde" follows hard upon the use of the term
"opposition" - which is the configuration when the planets Mars,
Jupiter, and Saturn, undergo retrograde motion in the sky whenever they
lie in a direction opposite to that of the Sun.
"Claudius is named for Claudius Ptolemy who perfected the geocentric
model," says Usher. " Claudius personifies Ptolemaic geocentricism while
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern personify Tychonic geocentricism. The
latter are summoned by Claudius because the position of the King is
threatened by the young Hamlet, who personifies the Infinite Universe of
Digges.
"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are contemporaries of Hamlet just as
Tycho and Digges were contemporaries. Digges' model killed geocentricism
just as Hamlet is responsible for the deaths of Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, and then of Claudius," Usher says. "The slaying of
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is the Bard's way of favoring the Diggesian
model over the Tychonic, while the death of Claudius signals the end of
geocentricism. Shakespeare delays dispatching Claudius until the final
act to simulate the protracted dominance of the Ptolemaic model over
fourteen centuries."
The gravedigger identifies Hamlet as the one sent to England to
recover from madness; though if he doesn't, he'll be at home in England
because "there the men are as mad as he." But Hamlet makes it clear that
he is merely "mad in craft." "Hamlet's 'madness' is associated both with
the new cosmology and Digges' advocacy of the experimental method,"
according to Usher.
"The chief climax of the play is the return of Fortinbras from
Poland and his salute to the ambassadors from England," Usher says.
"Here Shakespeare signifies the triumph of the Copernican model and its
Diggesian corollary. While the last year of the sixteenth century saw
the martyrdom of Bruno, the first year of the seventeenth century sees
the completion of Hamlet and the Bard's magnificent poetic affirmation
of the infinite universe of stars," Usher concludes. "In the tragic
story of this play, Shakespeare, Digges, and Bruno, speak to our day."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > > Is http://www.yorkrite.com/RAM/8.HTM a nutcase Website??
>
> > > No, only to the extent that Freemasonry itself possesses nutcase
> > > appeal. It also has no discernible connection with Shakespeare.
> > > HoweVER, that circumstance won't prevent nutcases like yourself from
> > > hallucinating one neVERtheless.
> > >
> > > HoweVER, I'm pleased to see that you finally(!) -- after my only
> > > having told you about a dozen times -- seem to be aware of the
> > > existence of the York Rite.
>
> > I've been eating their Peppermint Pattys for years now.
>
> That joke wasn't even VERy funny the *first* time you uttered it,
This is precisely what I mean when I say that the level of vitriol
and personal invective on this group is rather shocking!
> > > When (or if) you manage to count its
> > > degrees, you'll find that the number of York Rite and Scottish Rite
> > > degrees far exceeds 33, the number you endow with such mystical
> > > Masonic significance.
>
> > 33 is the number they endow with mystical Masonic significance.
>
> No, they don't, as I've already explained to you.
How would you know if you are not a Mason (as you claim not to be).
> > > > VERITABLE VITRUVIUS By James L. Sieber
> > > > http://www.yorkrite.com/RAM/8.HTM
> > > >
> > > > <<Inigo Jones, King James' architect and one of the forerunners of
> > > > Masonry in England
>
> > > If Inigo Jones, who lived from 1573 to 1652, was indeed one of the
> > > *forerunners* of Masonry in England, then the Craft cannot have had
> > > anything to do with the Shakespeare canon, since the existence of the
> > > Craft postdates Jones's career, while much of the Shakespeare canon
> > > predates that career.
>
> > Who said Inigo Jones was a *forerunner* of Masonry in England,
>
> The VERy article you were quoting said so, Art! Can't you even read
> the line *you* quoted? I reproduce your own text for your edification:
>
> "VERITABLE VITRUVIUS By James L. Sieber
> http://www.yorkrite.com/RAM/8.HTM
>
> <<Inigo Jones, King James' architect and ONE OF THE FORERUNNERS
> OF MASONRY IN ENGLAND..." [Emphasis added]
>
> Are you getting senile, Art?
No, I just forgot the names of those other three runners.
> > > Where did you get the absurd idea that Shakespeare was an architect, Art?
>
> > The folks who designed & built the Globe Theatre were architects.
>
> What makes you think that Shakespeare designed and built the Globe,
> Art? Did you design and build the building in which you work,
The World Weather Building is no Globe.
It's more like a cube (or Muslin Kaaba).
> > > > He justifies each of these Arts and Sciences skills.
> > > > Astronomy is needed for laying out buildings.
> > > > Buildings need to be oriented that they benefit from natural
> > > > lighting and the prevailing winds. Religious and culture requirements
> > > > demanded they face in the certain direction much as today Muslin
> > > > buildings must face Mecca.
>
> > > "Muslin buildings"? They certainly don't sound VERy durable, Art,
> > > and I would view an architect that constructed them with grave
> > > suspicion.
>
> > Muslin, n. [F. mousseline; cf. It. mussolino, mussolo, Sp. muselina;
> > all from Mussoul a city of Mesopotamia, Ar. Mausil, Syr. Mauzol, Muzol,
> > Mosul, where it was first manufactured. Cf. {Mull} a kind of cloth.]
> > A thin cotton, white, dyed, or printed. The name is also applied to
> > COARSER AND HEAVIER COTTON GOODS.
>
> What is this supposed to mean, Art? That you can use a dictionary?
No one would construct a building out of 'a thin cotton'
but if it were sufficiently coarse & heavy . . .
> > > I also commend to your attention the first paragraph, Art:
> > >
> > > "Mathematics is a landmark of Freemasonry. To attempt to
> > > understand, why Mathematics holds this exalted position,
> > > requires returning to Freemasonry's early days. Freemasonry
> > > was a product of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment."
> > >
> > > If Freemasonry was a product of the Renaissance *and the
> > > Enlightenment*, then it cannot have had anything to do with the
> > > Shakesepare canon. (You do know that the Enlightenment transpired a
> > > century after Shakespeare's death, don't you, Art? Well, perhaps you
> > > don't.)
>
> > Born in the Renaissance, Freemasonry reached it's [sic] pinnacle during the
> > Enlightenment.
>
> That's not what the article says, Art. Can you not read? Besides,
> I thought that you held that Freemasonry had been in existence since
> antiquity.
It has roots are firmly embedded in antiquity.
> > > > Vitruvius's emphasis on the education of the architect/mason in the
> > > > liberal arts and, especially in mathematics, contributed to the
> > > > scientific and mathematical orientation of the operative fraternity
> > > > as well as the current non-operative fraternity. In the days when
> > > > the fraternity was started, the educated population held mathematics
> > > > in very high esteem.>>
>
> > > I certainly concur with Vitruvius's opinion that mathematics
> > > deserves to be held in high esteem.
>
> > I believe Vitruvius is refering to applied mathematics
> > (or at least mathematical physics a la Lev Landau.)
>
> Since Vitruvius lived nearly 1,000 years prior to Landau, the
> likelihood that he is referring to Landau's mathematical physics is
> indeed remote.
You never can tell about these things.
> Incidentally, Art, I'm still waiting for you to send me those copies
> of Landau and Lifshitz, as you offered earlier. I'll even forgive your
> $10 debt from the bet we made if you do so in a timely fashion.
Most kind of you, Dave.
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > As for the esoteric math that you engage in, Dave, . . .
> >
> > "What things again most dear in the esteem And poor in worth!"
> >
> > Wir Mathematiker sind alle ein biszchen meschugge. -- Lev Landau
>
> Of course, you evidently know nothing of the sort of mathematics I
> do, Art; that you were so awed by the fact that 19 is the sum of two
> consecutive integers and the difference of their squares effectively
> precludes the possibility of your understanding it (with the possible
> exception of a popular article in _American Scientist_). If you did
> understand, you would also understand why it is of interest especially
> to physicists.
Even I do mathematics from time to time:
"Functional Powers near a Fixed Point"
by Lawrence J. Crone and Arthur C. Neuendorffer,
_Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications_,
Vol.132, No.2 June 1988.
> > "The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who
> > make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians
> > have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine
> > man in the bonds of Hell." -- St. Augustine (354-430)
>
> If you wish to rave along with Augustine about covenants with the
> Devil, Art, be my guest.
Most kind of you, Dave.
> > It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical
> > author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.
> > -- Alfred North Whitehead, An Introduction to Mathematics, 1948.
>
> That's why I write as clearly as possible, Art.
Just like Shakspere did, Dave?
> > Mathematics contains much that will neither hurt one if one does
> > not know it nor help one if one does know it. - J.B. Mencken
>
> The same could be (and indeed has been) said of many sublime
> activities, among them music and ornithology.
Enough already with the subliminible messages.
> > "The author discusses valueless measures in pointless spaces."
> > -- Halmos
>
> "Pointless space" is a technical term with a precise meaning.
Not at this point in time.
> > "There are only two kinds of math books. Those you cannot read beyond
> > the first sentence, and those you cannot read beyond the first page."
> > C.N. Yang, about 1980 I think. (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1957.)
>
> The same C.N. Yang expressed his amazement and his admiration of
> mathematicians for their having fully developed the theory of
> connections on principal bundles,
My mistake, Dave, I thought you worked on unprincipled bundles.
> the mathematical machinery underlying
> gauge theories of elementary particles, "out of nowhere."
<<AIRY was sarcastic and enforced a rigid discipline on his staff at the
Royal Observatory. An illustration of Airy's personality is shown from
his long running disagreements with Babbage. They had a dispute over the
quality of a telescope in 1832, he stated that Babbage's calculating
engine was "worthless" ten years later and effectively stopped
government funding of the project, and in 1854 he took the side of the
narrow gauge for railways while Babbage supported the wide gauge. In all
these disputes Airy came out the winner, but it is far from clear that
he took the "right" side in the arguments.>>
--------------------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer
john
thank you, its good to be right about something for a change! And I
will be happy about this for two weeks...lets see if we can get
Kathman to use his influence and put it into the next Var. Ed.
citing this discussion, begun by you.
baker
>
>> Also the use of the clock here is not anachronistic, since striking
>> clocks were certainly well established by 1485 when the historical
>> battle took place. If anybody can be bothered to find where the
>> historical Richard III spent the last night of his life, they will
>> probably have to stick with the Croyland Chronicle's line that he
>> camped "near the abbey of Mirival/Merevale" (quoted in many paces on
>> the Web including http://www.r3.org/bosworth/chron2.html). It is
>> hardly remarkable that an abbey would have a striking clock, audible
>> to someone camped in the grounds. Not that I imagine that bothered the
>> playwright much.
>
>Well, either he was being a bit careless -- and inviting
>ridicule; OR he had done a very surprising amount of
>research in documents that were not easy of access
>at the time. I'm more inclined to believe the latter
>
>
>Paul.
>--
>Email: pebj...@ubgznvy.pbz (apply ROT13)
>
>
>
>
John Baker
Bob Grumman
"OK, so why don't you give your attempts at parallels.
They remarkable by their absence."
I gave Shakespeare in Love and you barred it, as you would
with any other example I gave. Anyway, we've been through all
this before. I've no desire to rehash it.
Me: "I don't think clocks in Ancient Rome would have struck
many people of Shakespeare's time as being as wrong as a watch
back then would strike people of today."
"Why? Just cos they was all thick then and we're
really brilliant now?"
No, you halfwit: because watches are more obviously wrong than
clocks; because there are many, many more books per capita now
than there were then (we have few towns like your Shakespearean
Stratford where everyone was illiterate and books scarce); because
much more is known about ancient times now than was known then;
because there are televisions in every home that occasionally retail
information about the past, some of it of value and accurate; because
we've been exposed to plays and the like for four hundred years
since Shakespeare's time, and pedants have had time to make us
aware of their errors; because our history books are vastly more
thorough and accurate than theirs were; because there are many more
people in the world now making information available; because we
have things like telephones and the internet and newspapers to
spread facts much more quickly than anything those in Shakespeare's
time had . . . Shall I go on?
Me: "But movies get a lot of things wrong that perhaps Crowleys
of four hundred years hence will consider mistakes made
intentionally to irritate pedants."
Paul: "They don't make crude mistakes like giving a coastline
to one of the major powers when it had no direct access
to the sea. They don't put most of the major inland cities
of the leading cultural country on the coast."
Many comedies do. No, I can't give you an example. I just
know that every once in a while I read about one. Say,
about some movie that was supposed to take place in Japan
but was shot in Hawaii, a fact obvious to Hawaiians but few
others. All kinds of WWII movies have ridiculous mistakes
that military men laugh at but most others ignore. And what
about the amazing errors in sci fi movies?
Me: "Yes. But why don't we have sun dials in Lucrece, if
Shakespeare wanted to mention time, and be historically
accurate?"
Paul: "Because nearly all the action was at night.
Haven't you read it?"
Actually, no, I've never been able to get through it.
Me: "You seem to be saying that when Shakespeare used clocks
anachronistically, he was joking, and when he wanted to
be serious he avoided using clocks, which doesn't make sense."
"When he wanted to be really serious (and jokes would
not fit into Lucrece) he avoided anachronisms."
Yes, but why instead of passively avoiding anachronisms did
he not refer to time UNANACHRONISTICALLY? That, and only that,
would show that he knew what was anachronistic, what not.
Me: "And I don't understand what you mean by the clock-mentions
not being random. Nothing a writer puts into a work is random.
All your chart tells me is that Shakespeare mentioned clocks a lot,
and put them in any work he felt like putting them into with no
concern for where the work was set in a pre-clock time or not."
"I suppose you can't help being mathematically blind
(and a rigidnik). I'll work it out the odds against the
pattern we see sometime."
So? Are you going to tell me that clock-mentions appear in
stories where Shakespeare wanted to indicate the time?
But don't bother, Paul: you don't know too little about statistics.
The first thing you have to do is sort the subjects of your
analysis. You can't just say, here are a bunch of texts, let's
see how many clock-mentions are in each as though there would be
an equal probability for each text's getting one. I myself don't
have a clear enough grasp of statistics terms to explain it to
you, and probably don't fully understand it myself. But it's
like monitoring the mentions of swords in all the Shakespeare
texts without dividing those texts into military-related texts
and non-military-related texts. Just to begin with. Or can
someone explain to me how that's wrong--someone who knows more
about statistics than you, Paul. Even Peter Farey. I'd trust
him on this because I don't think his group is too worried about
whether Marlowe was capable of making mistakes in his plays.
--Bob G.
--
Posted from nut-n-but.net [205.161.239.5]
via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
David L. Webb
(ph...@errors.comedy) wrote:
[...]
> > Oh, and welcome to the Goon Squad (another of Art's inventions).
> > One is far better off there than as a member of the Goof Squad.
> I am not a member of any organized group, Dave. I'm an Oxfordian.
"Organized"?! Nobody (to my knowledge) eVER said that the Goof Squad
was *organized*. If it were, presumably its members wouldn't utter
hilarious absurdities such as the one about Anne Hathaway being
Shakespeare's mother.
For that matter, nobody (to my knowledge) has eVER said that the
fictitious "Goon Squad" was organized either, except perhaps for a
notorious lunatic impersonator whose "Petulant Paranoid" persona
occasionally makes paranoid, conspiracy-theoretic claims of that nature.
David Webb
Thomas Larque
L. Webb) wrote:
>In article <3B5F5735...@erols.com>, ph...@erols.com
>(ph...@errors.comedy) wrote:
>
>[...]
>> > Oh, and welcome to the Goon Squad (another of Art's inventions).
>> > One is far better off there than as a member of the Goof Squad.
>
>> I am not a member of any organized group, Dave. I'm an Oxfordian.
So you're not a member of the "Shakespeare Oxford Society"? - (SOS -
their acronym seems to be an unconscious admission that membership of
the Society should be regarded as a cry for help). I've always been
amused by the routine Anti-Stratfordian accusations that Stratfordians
in this Newsgroup are somehow members of a shady Authorship-related
conspiracy, when most Oxfordians really *do* belong to a shady
Authorship obsessed organisation, while there is no such organisation
for Stratfordians as far as I am aware. Admittedly if there was a
Stratfordian magazine focussing expressly on the Authorship issue I'd
very probably subscribe because I'm interested in the subject, but
there isn't one. The nearest thing is Dave and Terry's website (which
I avidly hope to see updated soon). Readers of Dave and Terry's
website, however, are not members of an organisation in the way that
SOS members are. Nobody has to pay a membership fee to be a
Stratfordian.
Thomas.
"Shakespeare and His Critics"
http://ds.dial.pipex.com/thomas_larque
Nicholas Whyte
> Nicholas Whyte <expl...@whyte.com> wrote in message news:aef59d20.01072...@posting.google.com...
>
> > "Paul Crowley" <pebj...@ubgznvy.pbz (apply ROT13)> wrote in message news:<MZ077.18992$Fk7.1...@news.indigo.ie>...
> >
> > > the battle is to start we have a clock (or one very near) and we
> > > also have a calender listing the times of sunrise!
> >
> > Yes, well that was (and is) part of the information you would expect
> > to find in any decent almanac, as owned by any well-equipped commander
> > in chief, right up to the present day - remember the Gulf War land
> > campaign in 1991, which had to wait until there was less risk of
> > illumination by moonlight?
>
> That's a very interesting point. I conceived of Richard III's
> military action against Henry Tudor as being a quick
> response, rather than a long-term planned campaign.
The campaign that cuminated in Bosworth Field was indeed a relatively
quick response, but Henry had landed at Milford Haven two weeks
before, so it does't take much organisation to remember to pack the
almanac/calendar.
> However, your interpretation seems incontrovertible.
Thanks!
> But that strongly indicates to me that Shakespeare was
> quite familiar with military campaigns, and had seen an
> experienced commander in operation.
Or had talked to somebody who had been involved with such an operation
(ie, done research). Why do you think it is surprising that the author
should have known this detail? I've never been in a military campaign
either, I just read the newspapers.
> > Anyway it doesn't take a genius to work out that if the sun hasn't
> > risen by ten o'clock - in August!!! - there's something ominously
> > wrong, which is the point of the scene. Why does Richard think that
> > nine o'clock is a reasonable time to expect sunrise in August????
>
> I think John is probably right here. It would make much
> more sense if the original text had Richard III saying
> "Attend the clock there".
I completely agree. I like "attend" more than any of the other
alternatives mentioned so far.
> > Also the use of the clock here is not anachronistic, since striking
> > clocks were certainly well established by 1485 when the historical
> > battle took place. If anybody can be bothered to find where the
> > historical Richard III spent the last night of his life, they will
> > probably have to stick with the Croyland Chronicle's line that he
> > camped "near the abbey of Mirival/Merevale" (quoted in many paces on
> > the Web including http://www.r3.org/bosworth/chron2.html). It is
> > hardly remarkable that an abbey would have a striking clock, audible
> > to someone camped in the grounds. Not that I imagine that bothered the
> > playwright much.
>
> Well, either he was being a bit careless -- and inviting
> ridicule; OR he had done a very surprising amount of
> research in documents that were not easy of access
> at the time. I'm more inclined to believe the latter
A little more research on my part reveals that the first part of the
Croyland Chronicle was published in 1596 but that only covers the
years to 1091, and the rest was not published until 1684. The
Chronicle seems to have been kicking around antiquarian circles in
London in between, but I must admit I agree that the author of
"Richard III" would have been unlikely to casually learn the detail
that the king spent his last night in the grounds of an abbey, since
it's not mentioned in other source (though most refer to him camping
"near" or "at" Bosworth village.)
However, I think that still leaves open the possibility that the sound
of a church clock striking in a nearby village could be heard easily
in Richard's tent (without needing to be too specific - the battle
site was equidistant between Market Bosworth, Sutton Cheney and
Shenton, any or all of which might be reasonably assumed to have had
church clocks, both in the late fifteenth century and at the time the
play was written). So I don't think there is any question of
carelessness or ridicule.
Nicholas
Neuendorffer
> >> > Oh, and welcome to the Goon Squad (another of Art's inventions).
> >> > One is far better off there than as a member of the Goof Squad.
> >(ph...@errors.comedy) wrote:
> >> I am not a member of any organized group, Dave. I'm an Oxfordian.
Thomas Larque wrote:
> So you're not a member of the "Shakespeare Oxford Society"? - (SOS -
I not joining any group that allows Bob Grumman as a member.
> their acronym seems to be an unconscious admission that membership
> of the Society should be regarded as a cry for help).
-------------------------------------------------------------------
S-U-E-U-S
-------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.batcave.net/business/web/elements/runic.html
http://zurix.apana.org.au/asatru/Webpage2/Ftpstone.htm
<<One of the best-known [memorial runestone] is the Kylver stone
(Gotland, ca. 400-450 C.E., thought to be part of a grave chamber),
gives us the whole futhark for the first time, together with the
palindrome "SUEUS", a word which Flowers notes as "generally (being)
interpreted as a palindrome for Gotlandic EUS: 'horse'"
a creature which is certainly most meaningful in Germanic religion,
especially where the dead are concerned.>>
<<The Uffington White Horse is the largest remaining monuments to
Epona (a giver of well being to fools) in the British Isles.>>
<<Warwickshire once had its own horse carved into the landscape
and a truly unique beast it was - the Red Horse of Tysoe, the
site of which lies between Banbury and Stratford upon Avon.
The first mention of it appears in 1607>>
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Bible Code:
y-(S-U-A-U-S)-y
yod-(SHIN-VAV-AYIN-VAV-SHIN)-yod
-------------------------------------------------------------------
EXODUS 3:7 YESHUAUHSEY ELS skip +120
spells YESHUA both ways-from left to right and right to left.
The adjacent letters to the backwards Yeshua spell,
Elijah backwards Eliyahu
at a skip of 120: Probability = 1/18,851
http://www.direct.ca/trinity/yeshuacodes.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The First significant Yeshua ELS phrase begins in the first word of The
Bible
B'raisheet [In the beginning] Equidistant Letter Sequence (ELS);
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jesus to Prevail
http://members.aol.com/Subbapt/codes3.html
http://www.direct.ca/trinity/yeshuacodes.html
Genesis 1:1 YESHUA LOHAY (yahkol backwards) ELS skip of +521
Jesus to prevail
Class 5 ELS (from first yod in Bible) = 1/ 59,394
To get this phrase to occur by chance from the first Yod
we need to search 59,394.26 Genesis sized books.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Leviticus 21:10 HAIN DAM YESHUA ELS skip +3
Behold! The blood of Jesus
Class 1 ELS (Character frequency for Leviticus) = 1/ 69,711
<<for this ELS, "Behold! The blood of Jesus" to come up random at a skip
distance between 2-3, we need to search 69,711.30 books of equal length
to the book of Leviticus with all the letters of the individual books in
different positions from the others until we can expect to find one
random occurence. This does not mean that we shouldn't expect to find
this on the 20,000th search but if we search 1,000,000 different books
of equal length to the book of Leviticus with all the letters of the
individual books in different positions from the others, we should only
expect to find this ELS 14 times at a skip of 2-3.>>
Leviticus 17:1 HA'MIQREH YESHUA ELS skip +77
The event of Jesus
Class 1 ELS (Character frequency for Leviticus) = 1/ 21,312
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Psalm 47:7-10 YESHUA CHAVRAH ELS skip +2
Jesus assembly
<<in the phrase "they plot evil" (a prophecy about Judas) beginning
with the letter yod counting forward every 2nd. letter. In verse eight
there is a phrase, they plot evil, yach'shvu rah'ah. Notice every other
letter starting with the first yod spells Yeshua. The remaining letters
spell, chavrah = an association, group family, or an assembly. The man
that betrayed Yeshua was of His group association.>>
Class 3 ELS (Character frequency for Psalms) => 1/26,790
In these four verses there are at least ten prophecies concerning
Yeshua:
Psalm 22:14-17 'OT KI'YUSHUA ELS skip +26
"A sign for (of) Jesus"
Class 1 ELS (Character frequency for Psalms) = 1/1,182
Psalms 22:1-12 YESHUA MASIAH ELS skip -45
Jesus Messiah (Christ/anointed one)
Class 2 ELS (Character frequency for Psalms) = 1/480
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Pomegranate is the fruit that God commanded Moses to put on the hem
of the ephod the high priest wore when he did service unto the Lord
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ezekiel 37:19 YESHUA NOM'IR (ri'mon backwards) ELS skip +13
Jesus pomegranate
Class 5 ELS (Character frequency for Ezekiel) =1/419
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
> I've always been
> amused by the routine Anti-Stratfordian accusations that Stratfordians
> in this Newsgroup are somehow members of a shady Authorship-related
> conspiracy, when most Oxfordians really *do* belong to a shady
> Authorship obsessed organisation, while there is no such organisation
> for Stratfordians as far as I am aware.
So your claiming the Goon Squad isn't shady or it isn't obsessed?
> Admittedly if there was a
> Stratfordian magazine focussing expressly on the Authorship issue I'd
> very probably subscribe because I'm interested in the subject, but
> there isn't one.
Gee. . . I wonder why.
> The nearest thing is Dave and Terry's website (which
> I avidly hope to see updated soon). Readers of Dave and Terry's
> website, however, are not members of an organisation in the way that
> SOS members are. Nobody has to pay a membership fee to be a
> Stratfordian.
The real issue here is whether the Goon Squad gets paid.
Art Neuendorffer
P.S.,
-------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.geocities.com/~bard_angel/goddess/epona.html
<<Epona, from Celtic Gaul, was especially
worshipped as a protectress of horses,
a bringer of fecundity to mares,
and a giver of well being to fools.>>
---------------------------------------------------------------
Feast Day of Epona: 18 December
------------------------------------------------------------------
Arthur Brooke was admitted to Inner Temple December 18, 1561
sponsors: Grandmaster Thomas Sackville
& Thomas Norton, authors of *Gordobuc*(1560)
Brooke wrote *Romeus and Juliet* in 1562
and drowned in 1563
Katherine HAMLETT drowned in the Avon December 18, 1579
while fetching a pail of water.
(during Venus/Mercury/Sun/Moon conj.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
http://druidry.org/obod/deities/epona.html
<<Epona is one of a very few Gaulish deities whose names were spread
to the rest of the Roman Empire. This seems to have happened
because Roman cavalry units stationed in Gaul followed Her and adopted
her as their Patroness. This may have started because many of the
cavalry troops were conscripted from Gaul as they were superb horsemen.
>From Gaul the Romans took Epona with them including to Rome where She
was given her own feast day on the 18 December. They worshipped her as
Epona Augusta or Epona Regina and invoked her on behalf of the Emperor.
She even had a shrine in the barracks of the Imperial Bodyguard.
There is some evidence that Epona could have been linked to the idea of
sovereignty as well as being a horse goddess and linked to the land and
fertility. Certainly, the fact that she was invoked on behalf of the
Roman Emperor implies a link of some kind to rulership and horse
symbolism is a recurring theme of sovereignty. In some Kingship rituals
the King had to first mate with a mare and then that mare was sacrificed
and, in some cases, the King was then required to sit in a bath of broth
made from the mare. There are other deities that have the horse as one
of their sacred animals but few, if any, with as strong a link to the
land as Epona seems to have had.>>
------------------------------------------------------------------
http://druidry.org/obod/deities/epona.html
It was set up for you, Sacred Mother.
It was set out for you, Atanta.
This sacrificial animal was purchased for you, horse goddess, Eponina.
So that it may satisfy, horse goddess Potia; we pay you,
Atanta, so that you are satisfied; we dedicate it to you.
By this sacrificial animal, swift Ipona, with a filly, goddess Epotia
for a propitious lustration they bind you, Catona of battle,
with a filly, for the cleansing of riding horses
which they cleanse for you, Dibonia.
This swift mare, this cauldron, this smithwork,
beside fat and this cauldron,
mind you, moreover with a filly, Epotia, noble and good Vovesia.
This dedication was found in 1887 at Rom (Deux-Sevres) on a thin lead
plate in latin script dated to around the first century BCE. Dr Garrett
Olmsted, who has made the most recent translation of the inscription,
comments that the closest example to the Rom inscription is a Vedic hymn
to Indra.
Epona is also known as the Great Mare. She is, first and foremost, a
Horse Goddess associated with the Gauls. In spite of Her popularity
there seems to be little information readily available about Her.
Unfortunately, any legends Gaulish Celts may have had have been lost to
us. The legends and myths of the British Celts were written down by
early Christian monks. However, the Gauls and others did leave a rich
legacy of inscriptions and monuments and it is from this that most of
the evidence for Epona comes. However there is one tale of Epona’s
origin that has survived.
A late Greek writer, Agesilaos wrote that Epona was born of a mare and a
man, Phoulonios Stellos. He chose to spurn womankind and instead mate
with a mare. The mare gave birth to a beautiful and lively daughter whom
she named Epona, and who became the Goddess of Horses. The giving of a
name in most Celtic legends is of vital importance in that individual's
future. The naming of Epona by her mother implies that the mare may have
had a divine nature herself and that Epona followed on in some way from
an earlier Horse Goddess.
Small images of Epona have been found in stables and barns all over
Europe. A niche would be cut in the walls and a little statue of the
Goddess would be found often garlanded with roses and sometimes with a
mare’s head. The German legions made plaques depicting Her in human form
with a foal or feeding foals. In imagery Epona is normally portrayed as
a woman either sitting on, or surrounded by, horses. She may have been
another form of the Great Mother Goddess as in some cases She is also
often portrayed with a Cornucopia, a symbol of the land and fertility.
She has also be portrayed as carrying keys, which may indicate a role
in the underworld and accompanied with birds, often symbols of a happy
otherworld. The Uffington White Horse may be one of the largest
remaining monuments to Epona in the British Isles.>>
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Neuendorffer
> Any technical consultant could have told the producers of _A View to a
> Kill_ (I think that's the one, the one with Olivia D'Abo) that a cello
> couldn't be played in recital with an unrepaired bullet hole in it.
Has this ever really been tested? After all, the cello already has
holes in it. I would think it would all depend on precisely where the
bullet hit (e.g., a node spot on the cello).
> But that would have messed up the crude symbolism.
What about the crude Hitchcock cymbalism
in the Albert Hall "Storm Cloud Cantata" climax?
Art Neuendorffer
Nicholas Whyte
> > agree that Shakespeare put plenty of clocks in some of his works and
> > very few in others.
>
> asking. They are:
>
> a) Was Shakespeare aware that it was inappropriate to
> put clocks into plays and poems unambiguously set in a
> 'pre-clock' era?
>
> 2) Did Shakespeare on occasion deliberately breach
> that rule for his own reasons?
In fact these are only one and a half questions, since if the answer
to the first question is "no" then there is no second question to
answer. If your statistics of the use of the word "clock" were
unambiguous I would have to admit that you might have a point, but in
fact I was able to take exactly the same numbers that you provided and
"prove" the opposite.
Your figures include phrases like "What is't o'clock?" as equal data
points with references to actual clocks striking, which is hardly
fair. How would you expect Caesar or Portia to ask what time it is?
Also, you have included references to "clocks" in the poetry; what is
the role of the theatre-going audience here?
On the other hand, when I search on a real anachronism like "minute"
(a concept not used for ordinary timekeeping purposes until mechanical
clocks were invented, and completely absent from Vitruvius'
descriptions of time-keeping devices) I find a number of anachronistic
uses:
"one minute in an hour" (Venus and Adonis),
"minutes fill up hours" (Rape of Lucrece),
"each minute threatens life or death" (Pericles),
"With every minute you do change a mind" (Coriolanus),
"not a minute of our lives" (Antony and Cleopatra),
"the minutes of this night" (Hamlet)
- all plays or poems which were in your "zero" category (though I
don't think I can really count "minute-jacks" from Timon of Athens).
If the author was really keen to avoid the anachronistic mention of
clocks in these works, why did he not also avoid the anachronistic
mention of minutes in the same plays and poems?
> One of your problems is that you have not set out the
> questions that you are trying to answer (or the hypotheses
> that you are attempting to test). There are some other
> considerations. An underlying question is whether or not
> the mention of 'clock' would (or should) strike members of
> an audience as anachronistic. A clock in ancient Rome
> would; one in Hamlet, Macbeth, Two Noble Kinsmen,
> Mid-Summer Night's Dream, or in King John, wouldn't.
> A few knowledgeable historians might pick up the 'error'
> as regards King John -- but they'd hardly be bothered
> about it. (The use of artillery in that play is a much more
> egregious anachronism!). A few might pick up the 'errors'
> as regards Macbeth or Hamlet-- but they'd be few indeed.
The more I think about this point, the less convinced I am. Why are
you so sure that the Elizabethans were more certain about ancient
Roman time-keeping methods than about medieval timekeeping? Those that
read Vitruvius would have known that the Romans *could* build clocks
that made noises; this would probably have been background information
for a lot of people, and I'm not aware of a history of clockmaking
being otherwise available in Elizabethan times. Is a clock in King
John really less anachronistic than one in Cymbeline?
Really your first question should be: Was Shakespeare aware that it
was inappropriate to put clocks that could strike the hour into plays
and poems unambiguously set in a 'pre-mechanical-clock' era? I'm
inclined to think the evidence indicates that he was not.
> > > Nothing like that is normally
> > > permissible when authors intend their works to be taken
> > > seriously.
> >
> > If that is so, you should be able to point to examples of inferior
> > playwrights in Elizabethan times whose anachronisms were howled down
> > by the critics, or by rival playwrights, or resulted in a loss of
> > patronage, or whatever. Are there any?
>
> Nonsense -- and you know it. Such 'mistakes' simply
> don't occur in such plays, for the most obvious of reasons.
[...]
> But when the works are rehearsed by intelligent actors,
> for weeks, the mistakes rarely survive to production.
> When they do, and are performed every night in front of
> intelligent audiences, they are rectified as soon as they
> are spotted.
I'm simply questioning your assumption that the Elizabethan
theatre-going audience expected historical accuracy from their
writers. The evidence as far as I can see it (references to striking
clocks in Julius Caesar, Macbeth and Cymbeline) is that they did not.
I therefore formally propose that Elizabethan playwrights and
theatre-goers were not at all concerned with this issue.
I put forward a possible test of my thesis: if there is a record
anywhere of any Elizabethan writer being criticized by a contemporary
because of such an anachronism, then you are right and I am wrong. You
tell me that there is no such record; I don't know, I'll take your
word for it. It strikes me as odd that there is not even a record of
two writers arguing over whether or not something was or was not an
anachronism.
A counter-test would be if we could identify anachronisms in any
Elizabethan writer other than Shakespeare. In that case my thesis
would be supported and yours undermined, though not critically. I am
not well enough read in the literature of Shakespeare's contemporaries
to make that judgement, but perhaps someone else reading this group
is.
Nicholas