Sonnet 122

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain

Full characters with lasting memory,

Which shall above that idle rank remain,

Beyond all date, even to eternity:

Or, at the least, so long as brain and heart

Have faculty by nature to subsist;

Till each to razed oblivion yeild his part

Of thee, thy record never can be missed.

That poor retention could not so much hold,

Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;

Therefore to give them from me was I bold,

To trust those tables that receive thee more:

      To keep an adjunct to remember thee

      Were to import forgetfulness in me.

Burbage and Alleyn

I love when classes intersect.  I took my Capstone class last semester (Renaissance Drama Sans Shakespeare with Gretchen Minton) and wrote my paper on the difference in acting styles for Chris Marlowe's lead actor Edward Alleyn (the top picture) and Shakespeare's lead actor (the picture to the left) Richard Burbage (Yates talks of him and his father - James, who built the first playhouse in England).  This time period (1580's-1616) is by far my favorite because it marks the beginning of the theatre.  Beforehand, there had been traveling acting companies, but this time was the first for settled theatre.  And the acting was tough.  The actors were in several plays at once.  They appeared on stage every day and the plays changed every day.  Their memories had to be powerful due to their various roles.  And this was a time without lights.  They couldn't memorize at night; candles were too expensive and they (well, at least Burbage) was too poor. They had to memorize during the day.

We talked today about the fact that without the written word, the sense of sight was keener.  Well, during Shakespeare's time, the sense of hearing was keener.  Think about it - these people did not have sounds, music, tv, etc., readily available to them.  This may help explain why Shakspeare's audience understood more clearly the plays - they picked up on the sounds of the words and what Shakespeare was trying to convey with these sounds.

if i don't put this out there i might burst

So!  

I've been in plays since I was five.  I went to the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (which is the sister school to Laguardia in New York - the school Fame! was based off) for theater.  There, I studied my art area (theater) for half the day and academics for the other half (we didn't have gym or other electives - just our art area).  In the time I've spent with theatre, I've learned a thing or two about memorization.  I'll explain what I've learned with a monologue of Ariel's from The Tempest.  

First, I scan the script for rhythmic variations, rhyming, alliteration, impressive words... anything that is striking to the sound of the lines.

You are three men of sin, whom destiny

that hath to instrument this lower world

and what is in it; the never-surfeited Sea

hath caused to belch up you: and on this Island

where man doth not inhabit: you 'mongst men,

being most unfit to live: I have made you mad.

You'll notice that the "in" sound is repeated throughout this section and moves to "m" sounds.  "Surfeited Sea" goes together, as does "mongst men," "most," and "made mad," all produce repeated sounds in the piece.

Then, I bust up the script into individual thoughts that I can place images and objectives too. The lines are in pink, the images in green and the objectives in  

purple...

You are three men Sebastian, Antonio, and Alonso to proclaim presence to the men

of sin  to condemn the men

whom destiny  Ariel, himself to explain presence to the men

that hath to instrument this lower world  organizing/cleaning the island  to complain 

and what is in't  the stupidity of the three men  to belittle the men

the never surfeited-Sea  the incomprehendable vastness of the sea  to praise

hath caused to belch up you  something like Pinnochio coming out of the whale  to enjoy the actions of the sea

and on this Island  empty, small, sandy, beach  to point out

where man doth not inhabit  boredom of the day to day routine of Ariel's  to remind / to belittle

That's a brief glimpse of some of the training I've received over the years.  I'm not too happy with my objectives or images, but I suppose they'll work in this blog.  

 

Commentary

Class Notes: January 22, 2009

Heart of the class:  Need to remember the things important to you because they hold some sort of power.

Historical events insist on memory.  Ex: JFK's assaisination, 9/11, Obama's election.  Dr. Sexson "Every day should be a 9/11"

Yates:  We remember things because they are out of the ordinary

Simulacrum:  When we say we're "like" something, we're representing

What makes things memorable?

What is your earliest memory?

What is writing?  How do we define it?

We make things memorable and sacred.

Page 79 "Most persons..."

-  Writing is inhuman

-  Writing establishes outside the mind what should be in the mind

-  Writing is unnatural

-  Writing destroys memory; weakens the mind

The oral world is a world of proverbs.

Memory muscles get lazy without exercise;  when you memorize your brain's neurons change.

Texts are unresponsive.

Theme:  Association of writing with death

Review of Blogs

Notes From Blogs

Why is memory so important to oral tradition?

Loci (Location) and image are the two important aspects of remembering.  The development of the memory is the LOCI

The problem with oral tradition is that it is too fleeting.

Test Material:

"Now that we have written it down, it is no longer ephemeral"  To capture language and make it concrete we must write it down

Primary Orality - denotes communication with the spoken word rather than with text and images (other than those we imagine)

What is the last thing you see before you go to bed?  What is it's importance to who you are and what you remember / dream?

First rule of memory - have a memory teacher like Prospero

Different cultures have similar techniques for memorizing

Nine Muses:

* Calliope / "beautiful of speech" / Chief of the muses / Muse of epic poetry

* Clio / "Glorious one" / Muse of history

* Erato / "Amorous one" / Muse of love poetry

* Euterpre / "Well-pleasing" / Muse of music 

* Melpomene / "Chanting one" / Muse of tragedy

* Polyhymnia / "Singer of many hymns" / Muse of sacred poetry

* Terpsichore / "Delights in dance" / Muse of dance

* Thalia / "Blossoming one" / Muse of comedy 

* Urania / "Celestial one" / Muse of astronomy  

Comments

Shannon - you probably remember all the NSync songs because you repeated them over and over and you probably had personal connections and images to go along with the lyrics.  You probably don't remember last semester because you didn't repeat it over and over and you didn't personalize what you were taught.

I feel impelled to respond and disagree to something Steve wrote on his blog about historian's lack of creativity and "All history is the regurgitation of what one's been told, even if it is interesting."

Writing history, I believe, concerns analytically creating different ways we can view and understand the past.  There is no one overall idea of history - there are histories; just like there is no one perspective of an event, there are perspectives.  History is the process of creating and understanding perspectives and I think there is an artistic component to this

Names - 

Collier:  My great-grandmother's maiden name and my and my mother's middle name.  It is French for necklace.  In 19th century Britain, it was the name for coal-miners.  In the early 16th century, it meant filthy wretch.

McGinty:  My father's surname.  Irish.  Descends from Gaelic, "son of the scholar"; or, it means white and snowy  Violence and strength seem to be associtated with this name in popular culture (I'm thinking of the movie "The Fighting McGinty's" and the character in the movie "The Jerk" named Iron-Balls McGinty) 

Skiles:  My mother's surname.  Westphalian-German.  Hereditary surname for a person who was either wild or clamorous.  Derived from the German word 'schel,' which means loud or noisy