say:—“It is most retrograde to our desire.” The retrogression of a planet was and is understood to be oppressive in effect.
In “Timon of Athens” and “As you like it” little use is made of this material, for obvious artistic reasons; the love story would have lost romance, the tragedy would have failed in its appeal. On the other hand there are numerous allusions in “Love’s Labor Lost,” in particular to the influence of the moon, while purely astronomical talk is very frequent, such as that of the Bear being “over the new chimney and yet our horse is not yet packed,” (time is flying, in other words) which appears in Act 2, Sc. 1 of “Henry IV.” The Bastard cries despairingly in “King John,” (Act 5, Se. 6):—“Now you stars that move in your right spheres, where be your powers?” In “Richard II.” (Act 3, Se. 4) and in the “Taming of the Shrew” (Act 4, Sc. 5) there are also exclamations similar in kind.
In the great classic play the Sooth or Truth Sayer warns Cæsar to “beware the Ides of March” and is represented throughout as being a personage who influenced his hearers, the higher class of them especially. In the opening of Act 3 the “sectary astronomical” appears again, when Cæsar says:—
“But I am constant as the Northern star, of whose true
and lasting quality there is no fellow in the firmament.”
talk of the day, no doubt, but with the weight of astronomy behind it. Nor is he neglectful of its possibilities in other ways; like his own William, he has “a pretty wit” at times, though it be caviare to the general; witness “Saturn and Venus” in Act 2, Sc. 4 of the second part of “Henry IV.’ when Hal and Poins enter from behind. To add to this there is the passage in Act 2 of “Troilus”:—
“And fly like children Mercury from
Jove, or like a star disorb’d;”
which shows that years of study had made the author so familiar with the properties of the conjunctions that he could toy with them correctly, had taught him also the relative speed of planets and the importance of the orbs; that is, the radius in which a planet is effective, as to which there are still discussions to be heard.
To the casual reader such quotations, shorn of the context and clubbed together in one collection, may appear of little moment; but, even as they are, the deduction is unavoidable that devotion to a science is necessary before it can be handled with
