practicality by mechanical writing, as printing was at first 
called, the response to the new time sense was very ambiguous 
and even mocking. Shakespeare’s sonnets are full of the twin 
themes of immortality of fame conferred by the engine of print, 
as well as the petty futility of daily existence as measured by 
the clock:

     When I doe count the clock that tels the time,
     And see the brave day sunck in hideous night. . . . 
     Then of thy beauty do I question make
     That thou among the wastes of time must goe.

                                  (Sonnet X)

     In Macbeth , Shakespeare links the twin technologies of 
print and mechanical time in the familiar soliloquy, to manifest