|
How do we know this? Because it is November. and about midnight,
when Capella, the sixth brightest star in the sky, has passed west
of the celestial pole.
But how can we be sure it is November?
It cannot be later in the year because Hamlet
says his father was murdered only two months before while dozing
in an orchard. In Denmark few people would sleep out of doors
except in summer or early autumn. And it cannot be earlier because
another guard calls the night ``bitter cold.''
In all his other plays Shakespeare seems
indifferent to science in general, and to astronomy in particular,
but not so in Hamlet. Why the exception?
There are two possible reasons. The play was
written in 1601, and two events had happened before this that
might have persuaded Shakespeare that the night sky was far more
interesting than he had hitherto imagined.
The first was the supernova of 1572, later
called ``Tycho's Star'' because Tycho Brahe described it in such
detail. Shakespeare was only eight years old at the time, and it
must have made as great an impression on him as it did on the rest
of Europe. It was the first bright supernova to be seen in more
than 500 years. The Lord High Treasurer Lord Burghley even
consulted astronomers about its religious and political
significance.
The second event occurred some time in the
1580s, when Shakespeare met Giordano Bruno, the prophet of planets
beyond the solar system, in a London printing shop.
Bruno was a loquacious talker, especially on
his favourite subject, and it can be presumed that they had a long
conversation. It must have revived Shakespeare's memory of the
supernova, and it could have given him the idea of including
Capella in his new play.
No one of course knows what Shakespeare and Bruno talked about
in the printing ship. (It could have been the shortcomings of the
clergy, another of Bruno's favourite subjects).
But assume it was the stars. This could explain
Shakespeare's choice of Capella, a star fairly near the position
of the long-vanished supernova.
And it could explain why the action of
the play begins in November. It was in that month that the
supernova had first appeared.
While there is no proof that Shakespeare had a
part of his mind on astronomy when he wrote Hamlet, the
idea might explain other things in the play - like the wild
statement by the stolid and unimaginative Horatio that the Moon is
``sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.'' |
