These Late Eclipses

Abstract

In building a picture of a magnificent sky, a “majestical roof fretted with golden fire,” (Ham.2.2.302-303) Shakespeare’s opening lines suggest the wonders both of eclipses, and, in the following lines, comets. The sky was a busy place in the ­seventeenth century’s opening years, but of the string of celestial events, the ­passing of great shadows closest to the Earth that we call eclipses, generated the most ­interest. Eclipses of the Sun and Moon were (and are) specific events that could be predicted and traced to particular dates. Whether King Lear, with its ominous debate about the predictive value of eclipses, had already been completed and ­performed in London, or whether Shakespeare was completing it at the time, is less certain.