Almanac for 1585

Description

At the time Shakespeare wrote Julius Caesar, there was a complex debate in Europe about calendars and the calculation of dates. This can be seen both in the play, and in this book, which is an almanac. During the 16th century, almanacs and calendars were the most frequently printed books, apart from the Bible. Almanacs include tables and calendars, important dates and calculations. This particular ‘compendious prognostication’ by John Harvey also attempts to explain the function of the leap year.

What has this got to do with Julius Caesar?

Systems such as calendars, which divide time up into regular units of days, weeks, months and years tend eventually to come out of sync with the motion of the sun and moon. In 46 BC, Julius Caesar had corrected the inaccuracies which had arisen, by implementing the Julian calendar. According to Plutarch, Shakespeare’s main source, it was one of the reasons Caesar had become unpopular in Rome.

Why would Shakespeare’s audience have thought about this?

The Julian calendar was still in widespread use in Shakespeare’s time; it was printed at the front of the Book of Common Prayer and in most Bibles. By the 1580s, however, inaccuracies had opened up again. In 1582, Pope Gregory brought in what became known as the Gregorian calendar, moving the summer solstice from the 12th to the 21st of June. This exacerbated divisions in Europe when Catholic countries adopted the Gregorian calendar but Protestant and Orthodox ones – including England until 1752 – did not. One of the arguments was that Christ had been revealed on the rhythms of the old Julian calendar.

From Lupercalia to the Ides of March, dates play an important role in the play. But, as the scholar David Daniell points out, the context of the reforms would have made Shakespeare’s contemporaries respond differently to Flavius’s question to the ‘commoners’ in the second line of the play – ‘Is this a holiday?’ Daniell adds that if, as he suspects, 12 June was the date on which the play opened at the Globe Theatre in 1599, it would have further meaning, as it coincided with the alignment of the sun and moon. This, of course, is information Shakespeare could have learnt by picking up an almanac such as Harvey’s.

Full title:
An almanacke, or annuall calender, with a prognostication for ... 1585
Published:
1585, London
Format:
Book / Octavo / Illustration / Image
Creator:
John Harvey
Usage terms
Public Domain
Held by
British Library
Shelfmark:
C.145.f.10.

Full catalogue details

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