The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 20.0095 Tuesday, 3 March 2009
[1] From: Aaron Azlant <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, 2 Mar 2009 08:15:59 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0087 Shakespeare by Heart
[2] From: Michael Luskin <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, 2 Mar 2009 11:23:36 EST
Subj: Re: Shakespeare by heart
[3] From: Scott Shepherd <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, 2 Mar 2009 13:11:58 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0087 Shakespeare by Heart
[4] From: Anne Cuneo <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 3 Mar 2009 23:39:37 +0100
Subj: RE: SHK 20.0078 Shakespeare by Heart
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Aaron Azlant <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, 2 Mar 2009 08:15:59 -0500
Subject: 20.0087 Shakespeare by Heart
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0087 Shakespeare by Heart
Wasn't Elizabethan education largely focused on learning Latin and
Greek, to include large swaths of memorization and recitation (i.e.
http://www.shakespeareinamericancommunities.org/education/elizabethanage.shtml)?
This isn't to say that the actors' work was any less athletic, just that
it may have been easier to get in the habit of recall. No doubt it would
be much harder for a kid growing up in the modern era, though how many
other people on this list memorized the lyrics to their favorite albums
as a child and teenager, intentionally or not?
--AA
[2]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Michael Luskin <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, 2 Mar 2009 11:23:36 EST
Subject: Re: Shakespeare by heart
In Muslim countries, it is considered desirable, and is by no means
unusual, for a young person to memorize the entire Koran, and a good bit
of the hadith. About twenty years ago, I met the son of the religious
leader of Tlemcen, a city in Western Algeria, who knew the entire Koran
in Arabic and in French. His (perhaps his father's) followers repeatedly
asked me to test him, which I did. I have no proof if he was correct or
not, but the claque were delighted with the performance. He asked us if
we wanted a tour of the grand mosque, and led us to the compound's main
gate. I asked him about the practice, and he said that it was quite
common, that several other young men in Tlemcen of his acquaintance knew
the entire Koran. There was grumbling about the fact that we were going
to go into the mosque, and as we walked in, he turned and gave the
followers a brief tirade. Then he recited more Koran. They quieted down,
and watched, but didn't bother us. As we walked, he said that it was his
family's tradition to memorize the Koran while still young. He said that
he was nowhere near through his religious studies, but since he was
going to be the religious leader of a significant town, those studies
might have been advanced. Anyway, he knew the Koran by heart in two
languages. I also tested him by asking him for verses with particular
words, such as apple, fountain, barley. . . He did not take it as a joke.
Completely off topic: There have been two times in my life that it was
good to identify myself as an American. In Algeria, identifying myself
as an American meant that I was not French. In Bohemia, it meant that I
was not German. I had a German rental car, with German tags, and it
helped with parking problems not to be German. And I talked my way out
of a ticket by showing the policeman know that I was not German.
[3]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Scott Shepherd <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, 2 Mar 2009 13:11:58 -0500
Subject: 20.0087 Shakespeare by Heart
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0087 Shakespeare by Heart
I certainly wouldn't underestimate the brain's capacity for a vast
amount of text. Ordinary people can store an incredible quantity of song
lyrics, for example, without ever making a concentrated effort to
memorize them. Some enthusiasts of Star Wars or Monty Python or The
Rocky Horror Picture Show can recite entire longer works verbatim.
I myself more or less inadvertently committed all of The Great Gatsby to
memory while working on a complete-text staging of it ("Gatz", by
Elevator Repair Service), and now I'm sometimes called on to entertain
people with a game called "Stump the Freak", in which 3 or 4 words are
read at random from the novel, and I recite the text that follows. I
gather William Sutton does something similar with the sonnets?
I think some people's minds have an exaggerated ability (and involuntary
tendency) to store sequences of words. I'm not particularly good with
jokes, or names, or historical dates, or phone numbers, or long-ago
events in my personal life.
And I'm only slightly non-average when it comes to text. That a
16-year-old prodigy might turn up in the world with the genetic
abnormality and sufficient compulsion to memorize all of Shakespeare
strikes me as not implausible. I doubt anybody could pass Mr Sutton's
100% test, but I can imagine a person who, while making occasional
omissions and substitutions, could still satisfy most people's
definition of knowing it all by heart.
[4]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Anne Cuneo <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 3 Mar 2009 23:39:37 +0100
Subject: 20.0078 Shakespeare by Heart
Comment: RE: SHK 20.0078 Shakespeare by Heart
May I bashfully state that I knew the first part of the Iliad by heart
at age 7, in Italian, in the rather bombastic translation by Francesco
Monti. I also knew a few Canti from Dante's Comedy. I heard them read
aloud, and then read them (I started reading early). They just stayed.
As I switched languages (from Italian to French, and then English) when
I was 9, nowadays I only remember bits of them all. I had also memorised
whole plays, before I was 10. I think many people could do this before
reading and writing were so widespread. My brother, actor and singer
Roger Cuneo, has committed to memory several hundreds songs and five or
six 60 to 80 minutes monologues, which he is ready to play (or sing) at
the drop of a hat.
It's one of those things. I shouldn't discount total recall, even for a
16-year old
William Sutton asks:
>Let's also not forget they had a prompter, who I'm sure was a busy and
>attentive man. Has Shakespeare ever been proposed as a prompt? Do we
>know anything about these people?
I have written a novel in which the fictional narrator is Shakespeare's
prompter. I had to work myself to bits in order to find details about
prompters. I think my historical reconstruction of the job is rather
accurate, even though I should have liked to do better (but I lacked
resources). There is no comprehensive study about prompters, I had to
collect details from many sources. Everything is in my novel (including
the sources). In case you read French and are interested, please order
it at www.campiche.ch. It takes a lot of explaining, that is why I do
not start here.
Anne Cuneo
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