‘Vat is the clock, Jack?’: Shakespeare and the Technology of Time

Sophie Chiari opens the volume’s last section with an exploration of the technology of time in Shakespeare’s plays. For if the lower classes of the Elizabethan society derived their idea of time thanks to public sundials, or, even more frequently in rural areas, to the cycles and rhythms of Nature, the elite benefited from a direct, tactile contact with the new instruments of time. Owning a miniature watch, at the end of the 16th century, was still a privilege, but Shakespeare already records this new habit in his plays. Dwelling on the anxiety of his wealthy Protestant contemporaries, the playwright pays considerable attention to the materiality of the latest time-keeping devices of his era, sometimes introducing unexpected dimensions to the measuring of time. Chiari also explains that the pieces of clockwork that started to be sold in early modern England were often endowed with a highly positive value, as timekeeping was more and more equated with order, harmony and balance. Yet, the mechanization of time was also a means of reminding people that they were to going to die, and the contemplation of mechanical clocks was therefore strongly linked to the medieval trope of contemptus mundi.