Clock? What's a clock??

                                              
                                                     [clock strikes]
              BRUTUS
Peace! Count the clock.
      
              CASSIUS
                             The clock hath stricken three.

                                                                  Julius Caesar     (II, i)

While Rome sleeps, conspirators plot the murder of Julius Caesar. Perhaps it's the intensity of the scene that causes so many readers to pass right over a glaring anachronism.

A clock striking? That couldn't be: there were no clocks back in 44 BC, when the conspirators stabbed Caesar at the foot of Pompey's statue in the Roman Senate. There are quite a few anachronisms in Shakespeare's plays: the chiming clock in Julius Caesar is among the most often cited. It's certainly good for a laugh, and it's a credit to the playwright that so many of his works are so masterfully written that his occasional slip-ups seem so inconsequential, so endearingly human.

A number of Shakespeare's contemporary critics scolded him for not adhering to the classical unities of time, place, and action that the ancient Greeks had so enshrined. They fumed that a play should not jump from one specific time to another, from one place to another, from one motive of action to another: all that would leave the playgoer horribly confused. Shakespeare thought otherwise.

So it is hardly surprising that a playwright more focused on dramatic effect than peripheral details should let slip the occasional anachronism, or tinker with time by making important stage characters much younger or older than their real-life, historical counterparts. In 1 Henry IV, Shakespeare slices more than twenty years off the age of his rebellious-but-noble character Hotspur so that he can serve as a foil to the king's own son, the wayward and irresolute Prince Hal. The real Hotspur was much older, and for Shakespeare that little detail just didn't work. So the poet made time suit his fancy.

In an earlier posting, Agecroft Hall's rare 1610 lantern clock of brass and steel, made in London, received some attention. Pictured above, in the Study, is another 17th century lantern clock, this one dating to about 1640. Made in England, this clock is not as large as its earlier counterpart downstairs: its face and ornamentation measures slightly more than 15 inches in height. The pierced brass crest depicts flowers and dolphins. The sides of the clock are enclosed with brass doors. And like Agecroft's 1610 lantern clock, this one also has but one hand, to mark the hour.

With its pendulum and weights, the clock chimes loud enough to be heard throughout the exhibit rooms of Agecroft Hall. Its volume and resonance is sometimes a source of either lighthearted amusement or consternation to television and film crews who are recording in the building and aren't finding the perfect silence they had imagined.

Also in the second photograph is an English oak chair that dates to c1660; a Flemish tapestry fragment that was woven c1625, and a lectern and chest against the wall that both date to the 17th century.