Shakespeare's mystery play : the opening of the Globe theatre 1599 / Steve Sohmer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sohmer, Steve.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Globe Theatre (London, England : 1599-1644).

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Criticism and interpretation.

Shakespeare, William.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.

Criticism and interpretation.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Julius Caesar--Criticism, Textual.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Knowledge and learning--Astronomy.

Astronomy.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Knowledge and learning--Bible.

Physical Description:

xii, 292 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Other Title:

Opening of the Globe theatre 1599

Place of Publication:

Manchester : Manchester University Press ; New York : St. Martin's Press, 1999.

Summary:

This illuminating work sets out to show that "Julius Caesar was the first play performed at the new Globe Theatre on June 12, 1599. Drawing on many areas of expertise which are rarely allied in Shakespeare scholarship to such an extent, including biblical, liturgical, social and theatrical history, Sohmer sheds new light not only on "Julius Caesar but on a variety of accepted beliefs. These include: why Hamlet was not crowned king when his father died; why Brutus would not swear to murder Caesar; why the Elizabethan authorities retained the Julian calendar; and why the orthodox dates of the first composition of both "Twelfth Night and "Hamlet can be called into question.

Contents:

Part I The building of the first Globe and the Elizabethan calendar controversy

1 Building Shakespeare's Globe 3

2 Julius Caesar and the Elizabethan calendar controversy 17

3 Calendrical markers in Julius Caesar 25

4 Temporal markers to mid-June 1599 in Julius Caesar 36

5 Shakespeare's Corpus Christi archetype 71

Part II Endemic time confusion in Julius Caesar

6 The web of Caesar's time 77

7 Shakespeare's vernal equinox gambit: 'Here lies the East ...' 88

8 Why the 'sunne of Rome' set at three o'clock 96

Part III Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and the movable feast discordances of 1599

9 The disrupted Easter cycle of 1599 103

10 Shrovetide, St Valentine's Eve and the Roman Lupercal 105

11 Ash Wednesday, the night of the Lupercal and the eve of the Ides of March 120

12 Good Friday, the Ides of March and the day Christ died 129

13 Shakespeare's third day, the Books of Samuel and the Mass of the Catechumens 143

14 Holy Easter and Shakespeare's April Fools 166

Part IV Shakespeare among the assassins

15 The writer who changed the world 183

Part V Evidence of calendrical markers in other plays of Shakespeare

16 Prolegomenon for a mode of criticism 197

17 Illyria's faulty calendar 199

18 Real time in Hamlet 217

1 Caesar's place of death 248

2 The other Pontifex Maximus of Rome 250

3 Brutus's reading of Cicero 253

4 'Wit' or 'writ' in Antony's funeral oration? 257

5 Antony's wordplay on 'honourable men' 259

6 The priesthood of Julius Caesar 262

7 'Wrong in a just cause' 265

8 Dating the two battles at Philippi 269

9 Luther's exchange of pamphlets with Henry VIII 270

10 Principal holy days in the Julian and Gregorian calendars, 3 June - 5 September 1599 272

11 From the Book of Common Prayer (1560), folio 4v 275.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

071905544X

0719055660

OCLC:

41257024