They went and told the Sexton and the Sexton toll'd the Bell

[steepholm]

I've not been diligent about catching Neil MacGregor's Shakespeare's Restless World, in which he attempts to do for Shakespeare what he previously did for the whole of human history by finding a selection of representative objects that tell us about his times. It's always been interesting when I've caught it, though, and some of the objects have been new to me, such as James's abandoned designs for a Union Flag.

Today he was talking about clocks. While I knew about the anachronistic striking clock in Julius Caesar, I hadn't taken in (though it should have been obvious) that in Richard II, too, when Richard compares himself to a clock, he is using much later model:

For now hath time made me his numbering clock:
My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar
Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,
Whereto my finger, like a dial's point,
Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.

The minute hand was a very recent invention in Shakespeare's day, so that this passage is a bit like a modern playwright having George III compare himself to an iPad. (MacGregor wasn't vulgar enough to use this analogy.)

MacGregor doesn't mention it, but hearing his programme also made me realise (with a cry of "Duh!") that at school I'd misread a line in Henry IV Part 1. When Falstaff claims to have fought Hotspur "a long hour by Shrewsbury clock" I'd fondly imagined that the battle must have taken place within sight of the clock-tower, so used am I to thinking of the telling of time as a visual act. But to Falstaff, as to most Elizabethans, it was an aural experience: Falstaff's referring to the sound of the bell, not the sight of the dial.

This got me thinking about the phrase "tell the time". It's a two-way phrase: the clock tells (i.e. communicates) the time to us, and we can tell (i.e. perceive) the time by looking at the clock. But in both directions time is also being told in another sense, that of counting. The clock tells the hours as the beadsman tells his rosary, one chime at a time; and we tell them the same way, by counting off the chimes (at midnight or otherwise). So there's a little fossil of the aural primacy of time-telling, hidden away in a phrase that has been assimilated to other senses of "tell".

Tolling, on the other hand, has a different root entirely, and seems to be related to the action of pulling on a rope to make the bell ring.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

This is interesting stuff. One of the things I've tried to delve into is how people perceived time.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I realise I forgot to include a link for this specific programme. It's well worth listening to.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

That was quite lovely, and brings to mind some reading issues I wanted to mull. Thanks!

[larryhammer]

Huh -- I think I've been unconsciously been considering the tell and toll senses as related at the deep root.

---L.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Me too, until I checked the OED for this post!

[nwhyte]

This looks brilliant. I have downloaded the first 16 and can't wait for the rest.

There's a very curious bit of time-keeping in Richard III Act V Scene 3. We start in the evening before the battle - Richmond goes to bed and Catesby tells Richard that it's nine o'clock. Richard then sees his ghosts; he wakes for Catesby to tell him that "The early village-cock / Hath twice done salutation to the morn" and mreanwhile Richmond is told that it's four o'clock. The we have this exchange between Richard and Ratcliff:

[Clock striketh]
Richard III. Ten the clock there. Give me a calendar.
Who saw the sun to-day?
Sir Richard Ratcliff. Not I, my lord.
Richard III. Then he disdains to shine; for by the book
He should have braved the east an hour ago.

That 'Ten' must be wrong. We've just been told that it's four o'clock, and Richard, who has an almanac to hand like any sensible commander, reckons it's an hour after sunrise - in August. So there's no way it can be as late as ten in the morning. "Ten" is surely meant to be "Attend" or something similar.

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

Which edition are you using? If it's digital, that's likely to be an OCR error or something; every edition of RIII I have gives the line as "Tell the clock there," and none of them list it in the textual notes as an emendation. It would be pretty easy for a scanner to render "tell" as "ten."

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

It's an excellent series.

I suspect angevin2 is right about the OCR error: certainly my Arden has "tell", at any rate - although "attend" would also make sense.

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

The mechanical clock actually arrived in England during the reign of the historical Richard II, as I recall. Interestingly, the generally very thorough Arden 3 notes on that passage don't mention the anachronism, although elsewhere we are informed that neither apricots nor rapiers, also referenced in the same play, were available to Englishmen in the fourteenth century. Although there is a note that points out that "numbering clock" means "as distinct from a sundial or hourglass."

(of course, both the new and old Ardens devote a lot of time to just explaining what the passage means -- I've never thought it was all that difficult, unless you stop to sort out things like "with sighs they jar / their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch," so I guess it would be harder to paraphrase than to understand.)

Anyway I will clearly have to look that up so I can put it in my Arden 4 notes 30 years from now, because that is clearly likely to happen. :p

Also, the counting/telling overlap is quite clear in the opening of sonnet 12: "When I do count the clock that tells the time..."

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Another instance, from 1590, is in Book 1 of The Faerie Queene, in the description of Lucifera's house: "And on the top a Dial told the timely Hours". Here there's a "toll" pun in the mix as well.

[sovay]

So there's a little fossil of the aural primacy of time-telling

That is a lovely way to phrase it, I am just saying.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Such sayings make me happy. :)

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

I still keep hearing it as "With Ewan MacGregor".