A World of Change
Who knew about Jamestown? In 1607, There was too much else going on
In other matters celestial, Galileo Galilei in 1608 was working on improving the telescope—an instrument he would soon use to discover four moons orbiting Jupiter. Although the Roman church later forced Galileo to recant his promoting of a heliocentric solar system, Hotson says the church was not necessarily antiscience and that Galileo's fate was more the exception than the rule. "Most scientists of the time," he says, "pursued their investigations from deeply religious convictions."
In 1607, friction between Catholics and Protestants was a given. But after the Reformation, there was no shortage of rivalries among Protestants themselves. Protestants considered the Bible historic fact but, as remains the case today, they differed greatly over how to interpret it. With no papal authority to arbitrate, myriad theologies emerged. Followers widely believed in witchcraft at the time, and witch hunts and witch burnings were commonplace. Even Kepler's mother was accused of witchcraft, before he successfully defended her.
The year 1607 also saw the debut of a historically important opera: Claudio Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, based on the Greek tragedy of Orpheus, the demigod who attempts to rescue his dead bride from the underworld. "Of all of the early operas, it's the one that remains in the repertory and is still performed," says Massimo Ossi, a musicologist at Indiana University. "It's got beautiful music and a strong storyline." Popular instruments of the day included harpsichords, lutes, organs, and cornettos. The violin, becoming popular, was considered cutting-edge. Most music performed up until this time—secular and sacred—was vocal, but purely instrumental music was growing in popularity, as was the notion of the instrumentalist as a virtuoso soloist.
By 1607, William Shakespeare was an established literary heavyweight. Although dating his works is difficult, King Lear and Antony and Cleopatra probably were performed that year. At the same time he may have been working on Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, and Pericles.
Dark side. Grace Ioppolo, a Shakespeare expert at Reading University, notes that the Bard of 1607 was jettisoning his histories and comedies in favor of much darker tales—many involving shipwrecks. In earlier plays, characters on journeys often found new lives or redemption. Now, says Ioppolo, "a lot of his characters go on journeys but do not find anything."
Shakespeare stayed sharp with keen competition from other notable playwrights, among them Thomas Middleton, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Heywood. At the same time, one of the great early-modern novels was taking Europe by storm: Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, first published in Spain in 1605.
In Russia, meanwhile, events went beyond the imaginations of even the most gifted novelists. Russia's first czar, Ivan the Terrible, had died in 1584 and was succeeded by his son Fedor, ushering in the "Time of Troubles," a period of "profound crisis," says Sergei Bogtatyrev, a lecturer in history at University College London. Fedor's throne was laterassumed by various aristocratic pretenders, the first of whom took control in 1605. A year later, he was felled by an assassin. Vasilli Shuiskii took power for the next four years, but his reign was shaken by a bloody revolt. Shuiskii stamped out the rebellion in 1607, but he was soon under attack by a second pretender. The political turmoil was aggravated by the so-called "little ice age," Bogtatyrev says—unusually cold, wet weather resulting in crop failures, skyrocketing food prices, starvation, and peasant revolts.
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