#acd references

...three feet to the left by scrub456

There is “nothing new under the sun” including the contents of this post, but I decided to compile everything I found on this topic and post it here for easy reference, especially with new information about the number 59.

Let’s take it from what seems to be the original literary reference:

Ecclesiastes 1:9

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

Then we have:

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 59

If there be nothing new, but that which is Hath been before, how are our brains beguil’d, Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss The second burneth of a former child! O, that record could with a backward look, Even of five hundred courses of the sun, Show me your image in some antique book, Since mind at first in character was done! That I might see what the old world could say To this composed wonder of your frame; Whether we are mended, or whe’r better they, Or whether revolution be the same. O! sure I am, the wits of former days To subjects worse have given admiring praise

This then leads to this quote in ACD canon

“There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before.” - Holmes in A Study in Scarlet

And finally, we have multiple references in BBC Sherlock:

From John’s Blog: “My new flatmate” 31st January, following the events of A Study in Pink

“And then we went to this great Chinese restaurant where my fortune cookie said ‘There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before.’ After the night I’d had, I beg to differ.”

From A Scandal in Belgravia:

“It’s Coventry all over again. The wheel turns. Nothing is ever new.”

And now we have the soundtrack for The Six Thatchers where we have a track titled “59 Missed Calls”.

Many wonderful people pointed to the Sonnet 59 reference, which speaks of a timeless and beautiful love that should have existed hundreds of years ago. A sonnet in which the writer wishes that they could have been alive when language was new so they could describe their lover during a time when words had a greater impact, before the words were overused and diluted by lesser beauty, by lesser loves. Even words go through inflation apparently. The sonnet writer says that “far worse subjects than this” have been praised with the words they would have used for their beloved if not for the fact that these same words are now inadequate.

What can we infer from these references in BBC Sherlock then?

-There is a timeless love so immense and pure that it should have been allowed to exist hundreds of years ago.

-We know something will cause a huge change in the dynamic of the show. Some people will react like John’s fortune cookie and tell the world that there’s nothing new under the sun, while others will react like John in his blog and “beg to differ”. It’s not that they’ll object. In fact, if they’re anything like John, they will embrace it.

-The writer of the sonnet struggles with trying to put into words a story that has been told before, but which they feel is more beautiful, more RIGHT than the ones that came before it. Compare this with the fact that the writers of Sherlock have said that they wanted to do the series because there is something that everyone else has been getting wrong and they think they can get it RIGHT.

-Nothing new will be told, just a beautiful love revealed.