Shakespeare's Mystery Play, 1599 : The Opening of the Globe Theatre

by Steve Sohmer

• ISBN13: 9780719055669
• ISBN10: 0719055660
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 1999-07-02
• Publisher: Manchester University Press

Summary

This illuminating work sets out to show thatJulius Caesarwas 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 onJulius Caesarbut 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 bothTwelfth NightandHamletcan be called into question.

Author Biography

Steve Sohmer is a Fleming Fellow of Lincoln College.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. vii
Preface	p. x
Acknowledgements	p. xii
The building of the first Globe and the Elizabethan calendar controversy
Building Shakespeare's Globe	p. 3
Julius Caesar and the Elizabethan calendar controversy	p. 17
Calendrical markers in Julius Caesar	p. 25
Temporal markers to mid-June 1599 in Julius Caesar	p. 36
Shakespeare's Corpus Christi archetype	p. 71
Endemic time confusion in Julius Caesar
The web of Caesar's time	p. 77
Shakespeare's vernal equinox gambit: 'Here lies the East ...'	p. 88
Why the 'sunne of Rome' set at three o'clock	p. 96
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and the movable feast discordances of 1599
The disrupted Easter cycle of 1599	p. 103
Shrovetide, St Valentine's Eve and the Roman Lupercal	p. 105
Ash Wednesday, the night of the Lupercal and the eve of the Ides of March	p. 120
Good Friday, the Ides of March and the day Christ died	p. 129
Shakespeare's third day, the Books of Samuel and the Mass of the Catechumens	p. 143
Holy Easter and Shakespeare's April Fools	p. 166
Shakespeare among the assassins
The writer who changed the world	p. 183
Evidence of calendrical markers in other plays of Shakespeare
Prolegomenon for a mode of criticism	p. 197
Illyria's faulty calendar	p. 199
Real time in Hamlet	p. 217
Appendices
Caesar's place of death	p. 248
The other Pontifex Maximus of Rome	p. 250
Brutus's reading of Cicero	p. 253
'Wit' or 'writ' in Antony's funeral oration?	p. 257
Antony's wordplay on 'honourable men'	p. 259
The priesthood of Julius Caesar	p. 262
'Wrong in a just cause'	p. 265
Dating the two battles at Philippi	p. 269
Luther's exchange of pamphlets with Henry VIII	p. 270
Principal holy days in the Julian and Gregorian calendars, 3 June - 5 September 1599	p. 272
From the Book of Common Prayer (1560), folio 4v	p. 275
Bibliography	p. 278
Index	p. 287
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