SPETAKEL

[Phil Innes]

Mark Steese wrote [likely some years ago]

"I agree with you on this; it's not as though it hurts the play.
Shakespeare's anachronisms are generally of this character - I did a slight
double-take the first time I encountered Gloucester's reference to
spectacles (King Lear, I:ii), but Shakespeare wasn't trying to create a
realistic look at life in pre-Christian Britain."

---

It seems that WS used the word in two senses, here is the other "O, piteous spectacle? O, bloody times!" somewhat following Chaucer's "Poverty a spectacle is, as thinketh me, Through which he may his very friends see."

There is similar double usage in German and O.F., though none dispute the Latin origin of the word, one of whose meanings is 'spy glass'. Certainly a spyglass could have been known in pre-Christian but Roman Britain, and was spelled in the C15th, says Halliwell, as SPEKTAKEL.

The only extant other spelling I can find for for the rare stem Spec~ is Specular Stone, a kind of transparent stone mentioned in Harrison's History of England [p.187]

Does anyone know better about early glass and optics, from Venice, eg?

Phil Innes

[John W Kennedy]

Post by Phil Innes
Mark Steese wrote [likely some years ago]

2001, in fact

Post by Phil Innes
"I agree with you on this; it's not as though it hurts the play.
Shakespeare's anachronisms are generally of this character - I did a slight
double-take the first time I encountered Gloucester's reference to
spectacles (King Lear, I:ii), but Shakespeare wasn't trying to create a
realistic look at life in pre-Christian Britain."
---
It seems that WS used the word in two senses, here is the other "O, piteous spectacle? O, bloody times!" somewhat following Chaucer's "Poverty a spectacle is, as thinketh me, Through which he may his very friends see."
There is similar double usage in German and O.F., though none dispute the Latin origin of the word, one of whose meanings is 'spy glass'. Certainly a spyglass could have been known in pre-Christian but Roman Britain, and was spelled in the C15th, says Halliwell, as SPEKTAKEL.
The only extant other spelling I can find for for the rare stem Spec~ is Specular Stone, a kind of transparent stone mentioned in Harrison's History of England [p.187]
Does anyone know better about early glass and optics, from Venice, eg?

199. Two Brothers coming to be executed
once for ſome enormous Crime ; the Eldeſt was
firſt turn’d off, without ſaying one Word :
The other mounting the Ladder, began to ha-
rangue the Crowd, whoſe Ears were attentive-
ly open to hear him, expecting ſome Confeſ-
ſion from him, “Good People,” ſays he, “my Bro-
ther hangs before my Face, and you ſee what
a lamentable SPECTACLE he makes ; in a few Mo-
ments I ſhall be turned off too, and then you’ll
ſee a Pair of SPECTACLES.”
-- Joe Miller's Jeſts
or
the WITS Vade-mecum
MDCCXXXIX

[Phil Innes]

The original /quare?/ John seemed to be if the word, phonically; 'spectacle' can have been used as a personal optical aide in 'pre-Christian times.'

While we can trace the origin to latin with SPEKTAKLE and similar, and the word being about an optic and in use in pre-Christian times, it being a sort of telescope [used for spying] this seems insufficient to establish if pre-Christians actually used such devices as we now call spectacles as did Elizabethans.

Thus Mark Steese was correct in viewing the fault that this can't be sensibly projected back to the 2nd or 3rd Century, say, and was a lapsus thereby — that is to say by the written record. Your reference is to C17th, whereas we want for something 1400 years earlier. This is not solved by any text, but as I asked about Venetian glass, is it resolved by any image, any illustration or picture? I doubt it, but at least we haven't involved the Rosicrucians or the Masons nor even the Mongols in our missif, and this ain't nothing ;)

Cordially, Phil