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CHAPTER 10: THE NEW ASTRONOMY The most fateful human invention was the lens. The lens
destroyed the world into which it was put. Wendell Johnson Authors have wondered whether
Digges studied the stars telescopically, but have neglected to ask whether
he looked at the Sun, Moon, and planets. Stars are common celestial objects
distinguished by brightness and color, but planets attract attention in
other ways and are just as intriguing. The proposition deserves testing. Omens. In 1.1 of Q2, Horatio speaks
of dreaded events: In the most high and palmy state of Rome, These echo the words of Caesar's Calpurnia that “graves
have yawned and given up their dead” and “ghosts did shriek
and squeal about the streets.” Horatio continues (1.1.117-20): As stars with trains of fire, and dews of blood, These are “harbingers ... and prologue to the omen coming
on” (1.1.122-3). Interpretation of these passages is difficult
if only because 1.1.117-8 are incomplete. However,
“Dews of blood” does immediately precede and belong with
“disasters in the Sun,” suggesting a relationship between
blood and the royal Sun. Plasma. Perhaps the phenomenon of
sunspots serves as Hamlet’s omen. Sunspots can exceed tens of
thousands of kilometers in size, large enough to encompass several Earths.
The larger ones are readily visible to the naked eye when atmospheric
conditions reduce the sun's glare. Sunspots form because the Sun's outer
layers are in a state of convective turbulence, which generates magnetic
fields. Sometimes the fields become so strong that they burst out from
the deeper layers and affect the appearance of the visible surface.
Magnetic fields inhibit the motion of plasma and thus diminish convection,
so the surface gases cool because the hot plasma from below does not
replace the cooler surface plasma at the same rate as occurs elsewhere
on the surface of the Sun. The resulting areas are cooler than the surrounding
photosphere. Small temperature differences give rise to large changes
in radiant flux so that, to the naked eye, sunspots appear dark and
black, like holes in the Sun's surface. In fact, William Herschel (1738-1822)
believed that sunspots actually were holes in the Sun through which
observers could see the solar interior, cold and dark as Erebus. At
that time, no one realized the physical impossibility of insulating
the solar interior from its surface heat. Holes. Sunspots were known to Charlemagne
(742-814) and possibly, to Virgil, and Ptolemy was said to have seen them
too. In about 1612, Galileo determined that sunspots are associated with
the solar surface and are not some sort of interplanetary phenomenon.
He and Harriot observed their relative angular speeds across the face
of the Sun and saw that spots always move less rapidly near the rim than
near the meridian. This difference results from foreshortening, as spots
near the rim of the rotating Sun have less motion across the line of sight
than those near the meridian where lateral motion is greatest. By contrast,
a passing foreground object would move uniformly across the apparent disk
of the Sun. Cytherea. From the outset, Ophelia's
father and brother oppose her romantic involvement with Hamlet. In 1.3,
just before he departs for France, Laertes inundates Ophelia with brotherly
advice. He speaks of Hamlet's amorous interests and advises her not
to take matters of the heart too seriously in light of Hamlet's youthfulness.
In keeping with mythology, Shakespeare relates love and chastity to
their respective deities, love (1.3.5-28) to Venus, and chastity (1.3.29-44)
to the Moon. Laertes begins by addressing the subject of love in general
(1.3.11-14): ... nature crescent does not grow alone In other words, growing up is not just a matter of physical size
because, as the body grows, so the inner life of mind and soul must
develop too. Cynthia.
A little ere the mighty Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.
Disasters in the Sun; and the moist star,
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands,
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.
The impending calamities involve
the Sun and a lunar eclipse and the ominous tone forewarns of the deaths
of Hamlet and Ophelia. Hamlet figures prominently in the next scene
(1.2) and Ophelia in the one thereafter, and both omens are associated
with celestial excess. Hamlet's being too much in the Sun is a pun on
his being “too much” the “son” of Old Hamlet;
but an equally apt interpretation of this solar excess concerns the
integrity of the royal body. In “disasters in the Sun,”
the word “disasters” is a plural noun, referring to multiple
events of some kind that involve the Sun. “Disasters in the Sun”
are likely not analogous solar eclipses because the solar “disasters”
are plural whereas the lunar “eclipse” is singular.
By speaking of disasters in
the Sun, Shakespeare probably means that they are actually part
of the Sun itself and not some foreground phenomenon. Even if the
latter were true, he probably would not believe that a transit of some
dark body, like the planet Mercury, portends disasters on Earth since
there is no analogous superstition or lore. The significance of the
preposition “in” in “disasters in the Sun” is
apparent also when Hamlet says to Horatio that many things exist in
heaven and in earth, not on Earth. Since sunspots
look like holes in the skin of the Sun and since the Sun represents
kingship both in the sky and on Earth, one might expect that holes pertain
to all claimants to the throne. In fact, Claudius, Hamlet, and Laertes
all suffer puncture wounds.
Shakespeare is unlikely to engage in
guesswork and must have had excellent empirical evidence if he meant us
to take in the Sun literally. The word “in” carries
weight disproportionate to its length, but we are not dismayed because
Shakespeare often makes weighty pronouncements with little fanfare. The
present hypothesis suggests that the lunar eclipse and solar sunspot disasters
together foretell the deaths of Ophelia and Hamlet, the former by drowning,
the latter by wounding.
In thews and bulk, but as this temple waxes
The inward service of the mind and soul
Grows wide withal.
The word “crescent” pertained originally to the waxing Moon
regardless of phase, but, by 1578, it had come to mean the illuminated
shape when the Moon is less than half full (OED). In the passage above,
most editors avoid connecting the word “crescent” to the Moon,
no doubt, because they know that the issue is love, which is the province
of Venus, whereas, as noted, chastity is the province of the Moon. One editor throws caution to the wind (Martz 1.3.11n) perhaps
because, before now, it had been inconceivable that Shakespeare would
make such a reference to any celestial body but the Moon. The implicit
assumption is that, in the sixteenth century, the Moon was the only Ancient
Planet known to have crescent phases, but Shakespeare makes it abundantly
clear that the immediate context is love, not chastity, and, in so doing,
he intentionally associates the process of waxing with Venus, not the
Moon.
Shakespeare's description of a crescent
shape agrees with the description of a change of shape in which “love”
(i.e., Venus) “waxes” and “grows wide.” The waxing
process involves phases that change from New, via crescent, to First Quarter,
and then to gibbous and Full, this order being reversed in the waning
phase. Shakespeare refers to the complete waxing phase from crescent to
gibbous as a “widening.” He did not use the term “gibbous,”
which refers to the phase between quarter and full, since this technical
term entered the English language only in 1690 (OED).
Since the phases of Venus correlate
with its position with respect to the Sun, Venus shines by reflecting
sunlight just like the Moon. A further consequence is that Venus shows
a full range of phases as it “grows wide” only because it
circles the Sun. Galileo reached the same conclusion in 1610, after
he observed all phases with his spyglass. Venus would not manifest a
full range of phases if it orbited the Earth and, if it were to lie
always between the Earth and the Sun,
it would never show gibbous phases, and conversely, if it were always
farther away than the Sun, it would never show crescent phases.
Shakespeare would not have asserted
positively that Venus shows the full gamut of phases without empirical
evidence. If not telescopically, could the naked eye have provided it?
The appearance of Venus is best discerned when its angular size is largest,
i.e., when it is close to Inferior Conjunction, yet sufficiently far from
the Sun in angular distance to render it visible in the twilight. The
optimal angular size falls in a range of about ½ to 1 arc minute,
which is the stated range of the minimum resolvable angle for ordinary
visual acuity corresponding to 20/10 or 20/20 vision. Resolution could
exceed this when the eye seeks to locate an element relative to another
of the same target, in which case the so-called hyperacuity of the eye
can have a minimum discriminable angle as small as 2 to 10 arc seconds.
Such detections occur through complex neural processes that would need
quantification if visual data were to have scientific value, but, in antiquity,
there were no studies to assess the capabilities of human eyes and no controlled
experimentation to quantify effects of astigmatism, near- and far-sightedness,
weather conditions, seeing, and glare.
Under
optimum conditions, the naked eye might barely resolve the image of Venus,
and early Babylonian accounts do report that Ishtar (Venus) has “horns,”
a shape also seen by keen-sighted contemporary observers. Perhaps, these
observations entered lore and manifested themselves in ancient culture.
Conceivably, the combined crescent and starlike images on the flags of
Muslim countries could represent Venus near Superior and Inferior Conjunction.
Moreover, it is more likely that the two images are different representations
of the same object than that they are pictures of the crescent Moon and
some otherwise unspecified star.
Even if the characteristic mark of
Muslim nations is Cytherean in origin, there is no evidence that such
information became part of lore in Europe. Galileo used an anagram, Cynthiae
figuras aemulatur amorum (“the mother of love [Venus] emulates figures
[phases] of [the Moon] Cynthia”), to establish priority for his
discovery of the phases, but would not have done so if the fact were known.
If Shakespeare were to have based his text on lore, he would surely have
left textual clues to that effect, but none is evident. Neither is there any historical evidence for a progressive change
in phase that Shakespeare describes (“grows wide withal”),
suggesting that his positive assertion is most likely based on the quality
of information that a telescope supplies. It seems reasonable to conclude,
therefore, that spotty and generally unverified evidence on Venus from
antiquity would not explain the textual clarity of the astronomical descriptions
with which Laertes berates his sister.
The range of phases for Venus is consistent
with the Copernican hypothesis but does not prove it because a heliocentric
orbit for Venus also supports the Egyptian-Capellan-Tychonic solution.
To make the case for the New Astronomy, Shakespeare needs more grounds
than this.
