I Love Shakespeare

Moonwalking with Einstein…

…Subtitled: the art and science of remembering everything by Joshua Foer. Or how a young journalist for the Rolling Stone won the US Memory Championship in a year.

Currently on international bestseller lists the cover tells us. Obviously I had to have it. Remembering and forgetting being a favourite pastime.

Josh’s quest is to discover whether we’ve sold our birthright for a bowl of potage. ie our internal memories for an external.

His due diligence in this task leads his book down two paths. First the search for memory techniques and their gradual extinction. Secondly his year long assisted training and accomplishment in winning.

The undisputed guru of modern day memory techniques is Tony Buzan. And the book could almost be sub-subtitled the interview I never got but really wanted from Tony Buzan.

Instead Josh settles on mop haired cane toting mnemomist Ed Cooke, who becomes his guide and mentor. The bible of mnemonists (do you pronounce the initial m as Buzan does)? is Rhetorica Ad Herennium. For those who wish to browse the memory section scroll to number 20.

But the father of memory techniques has to be Simonides and a rather singular event, which happened at a disastrous banquet he attended.

The story:
Simonides was celebrating the same victory with Scopas and his relatives at a banquet when he received word that two young men were waiting outside to see him. When he got outside, however, he discovered firstly that the two young men were nowhere to be found and, secondly, that the dining hall was collapsing behind him. Scopas and a number of his relatives were killed.

During the excavation of the rubble of Scopas’ dining hall, Simonides was called upon to identify each guest killed. Their bodies had been crushed beyond recognition but he completed the gruesome task by correlating their identities to their positions (loci in Latin) at the table before his departure. He later drew on this experience to develop the ‘memory theatre’ or ‘memory palace’,
Taken from wiki here

The memory palace arrives in the fifth chapter of Josh’s book. Before that we’ve encountered how difficult it is to find a smart man, the man who remembered too much, the expert on experts and the most forgetful man in the world.

The two basic components of a memory palace are images or that which is to be remembered and places or where it is to be remembered. The person remembering places their image in a certain spot, and animates the image outrageously, so next time he/she walks past the image the remembering happens.

The palace is unique to the person doing the remembering. It can be a structure or a familiar path. As Ed instructs Josh in his first lesson,

‘The thing to understand Josh, is that humans are very, very good at learning spaces’.

as he instructs him on a rock in Central Park on a freezing winter’s day. It’s a very Yoda young Skywalker relationship these two build.

Chapter six should have been my epiphany moment, How to memorize a poem. (he’s a yank. he does zed’s when we all know they should be s’s).
This chapter should be worth the price of the book. I mean 154 sonnets by rote coz i could never figure out how to use Buzan’s method must have some easier way. Right?!

Wrong. As the anonymous writer of ad herennium wrote 2,000 years ago: memorizing poetry and prose is extraordinarily difficult. Well thanks, I knew that. As does Josh, but he follows it with one of my 2 favourite quotes from the book.

“I believe that they who wish to do easy things without trouble and toil must previously have been trained in difficult things.”

The 2nd quote will have to wait as I have a 2nd birthday party of my boy to attend at Tun Fun.

Dating Sonnet 107…

This process is known as attribution. Accepting the fact that Shakespeare of Stratford wrote his plays, poems and sonnets, we need to agree on when that happened.

Attribution is a funny, even frustrating, process. Who is the final arbiter? What makes one person judge a sonnet to be from 1588? And another the same sonnet from 1603?

That we can barely connect Shakespeare to his writing is a problem right off the bat. A problem exploited by the authorship artists, who erase our man and creatively replace him with their own.

What we are left with are the plays and poems themselves. Editors puzzle together contemporary allusions to the plays and dates of first printings to arrive at a conjectured time of writing.

The sonnets were published in 1609 and believed to have been written during the first big sonnet craze from 1593 to 1596. Katherine Duncan Jones believes another spurt happened from 1603-1606.

In any case they were finished by April 1609 for their publication in May. Now within the sonnets there are several sonnets that date them even before 1593.

Sonnet 145, (the one written in tetrameter ie 4 ta-tums not 5 ta tums or the mighty iambic pentameter), Andrew Gurr has famously dated as far back as 1583 for its reference to Anne Hathaway in line 13.,

‘I hate from hate away she threw .

Sonnet 107 is currently part of a new debate on Shaksper. The dates given are 1588 because of the Spanish Armada and 1603 because of the death of Queen Elizabeth. The line defining both dates is the same:

‘the mortal moon hath her eclipse endured‘.

The metaphor ‘mortal moon’ then refers to Elizabeth or to the moon shape formation of the Armada.

Most of us appeal to authority in such situations. But what then is the ultimate authority on such matters? We could all of us quite easily tell after reading two plays, say Midsummer Night’s Dream and Macbeth, that they were written in that order.

But how do we do that? How about Titus Andronicus and Coriolanus? Again the one feels older than the other. More complicated, denser writing in Coriolanus and characters that seem deeper than the comic book villains of Titus.

So we realise there is a development in Sh’s writing, as there is in any writer. If it were John Irving and The World according to Garp versus A Widow for a year. I would on reading the two put Garp first.

In art attribution the same principles apply as for dating authors and books. Nowadays science helps even more by the array of tests we can run on the actual material attribute or artefact to be dated.

We can run a battery of tests on the paper, ink, paint, or wood used. We can x-ray images to see if anything is underneath. Maybe determine how the first sketches looked.

The scientists then present their information to an expert, who not only uses this knowledge but applies his or her extraordinary familiarity with the subject under investigation. And gives the final yea or nay.

Recently a BBC programme tracking the provenance of a Monet painting proved beyond any question of my doubt and a gaggle of monet experts that it was indeed a Monet painting.

However the leading expert in Paris determined that it was not. And it remains not. If Monet were to come back from the dead he could immediately poo-poo the leading expert and re-claim his work.

But that leading expert is the one who determines the market. The money trail is decided through his expertise.

If he says nay the value of that painting drops back to the price it was last bought for. If he says yea its value soars and art collectors everywhere would be vying for a bid at a priceless Monet.

And yet the artefract remains priceless. It is a Monet and no more of those will be made as Monet’s dead this last century.

Then again it could be a forgery…though the forger thought of not just the painting but also the path it followed after it was sold to its first owner. And forged the travel documents and book keeping path it took to its present owner.

Sometimes a Monet is just a Monet. What is it worth? What is its value? Who cares who owns it? Or who can vouch for its originality?

It is. Be thankful.

Sonnets in Amsterdam

Outside the American Hotel, occupied by the Germans naturally in WW2. Along the Marnixstraat there is a plaque to the fallen Dutch resistance executed there.

Gestapo HQ a stone’s throw away, where the Max Eeuweplein now stands. And where we work the Comedy Cafe a weekend or two a month.

History is so ever present here in Europa. Often a cunning facade of what once was. But sometimes you enter a space that lives and breathes its origin hundreds of years before.

The Leidseplein is to my offscreen left, the Vondelpark off right. Since the new fountain was installed some 2 years ago this is the square’s configuration.

This sonnet is the start of an afternoon’s experimenting with camera and sonnet with city as background.

‘Let me not’ number 116 is almost as famous as ‘Shall I compare thee’ number 18. Known popularly as the wedding sonnet:

That was the furthest thing from my mind as it happened.

[iframe_vimeo video=”22575192 “]

IDEA Sonnet to the Readers

If you doubt Shakespeare you doubt his friends. Michael Drayton was a friend.

Mikey wrote sonnets and published them year after year from 1594-1637.

Instead of a numb-assedly ridiculous dedication to W.H. it has this quatorzain:

TO THE READER OF THESE SONNETS

Into these loves who but for passion looks,
At this first sight here let him lay them by,
And seek elsewhere in turning other books,
Which better may his labour satisfy.

No far-fetched sigh shall ever wound my breast;
Love from mine eye a tear shall never wring;
Nor in “Ah me’s!” my whining sonnets drest,
A libertine fantasticly I sing.

My verse is the true image of my mind,
Ever in motion, still desiring change;
To choice of all variety inclined,
And in all humours sportively I range.

My muse is rightly of the English strain,
That cannot long one fashion entertain.

Now why didn’t Will do that? Yes why? Cry the authorshipists.

But really though, why didn’t Mikey D. ever say anything about Will of Straftford not being the writer of the sonnets and plays and poems?

He can’t not have known? And why didn’t Drayton write any form of eulogy or biography for Will either?

He knew Drummond of Hawthornden and corresponded with him for 13 years. Drummond collected Shakespeare’s plays, writing by Will Sha. in the flyleaf.

Sh didn’t know Drummond or Drummond would have said so.

Drummond also meets Ben Jonson in 1618 when he walked to Scotland. Another lifelong mate of Will’s.

Jonson bigging himself up and knocking down his contemporaries. Liked his drink did our Ben. Two years since the death of our Will.

Drummond slyly recorded the lot in his diary, which he kept til after his death. Only then was it made public.

Why did none of these people speak out if Will was a Milli-Vanilli sham?

A plain reading of the sonnets

Let’s call this a PLAIN reading of the Sonnets.

We wanted then a reading for the sounds, and not for any particular meaning inherent within the sonnets.

Intent is a fickle mistress. What we intended and what we have done is here for your appraisal and approval. Or diss! Kan ook!

We intend to make another professional studio recording, which will tackle the argument a little more personally.

Some suggestions for individual and series of sonnets:

1
From fairest creatures we desire increase

Numero uno because it starts the series and looks like it may have been placed there on purpose.

Our pet theory: number 4 started the lot.

The dedication of the sonnets sets forth this theory, which wishes the well-wishing adventurer in setting.

But did Sh even write the dedication? Oxford couldn’t have, he being 5 years dead when published.

Thomas Thorpe their publisher obviously got them from somewhere. Why was 1609 the right time to leak out his most personal of poems?

Conjecture aside, it’s a good sonnet filled with ideas that will be developed later in the series. We won’t go into details but remain with the flow of the overall narrative.

But hey, it’s number one and its bound to tell us something about what’s to happen right?

The clue for the first seventeen sonnets is that he’s trying to convince an ostensibly rich, beautiful, and social young man to marry and have children. Thus ensuring he lives on.

Number eighteen is the notorious
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
where immortality through eternal poetry becomes the new meta-theme.

Is this perhaps the original first sonnet? The first 17 being a presumed commission.

But then again 145 is dated by Andrew Gurr to the mid 1580’s, so that makes it the first one.

And again it was a loose sonnet and one doth not a sequence make.

Yet again what means first? He must have done some practice sonnets.

And there are several scattered throughout the plays.eg R+J HV LLL AYLI.

It is oft-recited that the first seventeen sonnets were a commission for his patron’s 17th birthday by the 3rd Earl of Southampton’s mother. No, not Queen Elizabeth, silly sausage. Maybe so, after we see Anonymous.

Sh always dives straight into the action in story telling. For proof see the first lines of his plays or poems. All of them suck you in, anticipating a reply or further developments.

So wethinks with the sonnet story. For a story there is, though t’ain’t very deep in narrative.

For that depth we refer you to the Authorship commentators. Several of whom may have just snorted in indignation.

We favour Shakespeare as having chosen to do a series of sonnets, with a complaint to follow them.

We imagine he and Drayton challenging each other. Both reworking their sonnet sequence over a 20 year period. And them being friends and poets. No proof, just intuition. Snort, snort.

A Lover’s Complaint is a mirror image of the sonnet story from a woman’s perspective. And is rarely dealt with, and often dismissed. But you paid your 5d in 1609 and it followed the Sonnets FINIS page in your purchase.

Sonnet series with complaints were all the vogue in the publishing industry of the time.

And besides it sounds and looks like the same writer to us. Read it for yourself if you haven’t already. It’s a short read and worth it.

Our theory on the sonnets is that 154 is the number, for the simple fact that it mirrors the maximum number of syllables in a sonnet.

Following Q’s punctuation there’s only one truly masculine end-stopped sonnet (number 150) and one wholly feminine lined sonnet (number 20).

Making a macrocosm and microcosm of the whole event. A unification of the whole in one.

And so back to the numbering.

Number one’s opener
‘From fairest creatures we desire increase,’
requires us to think and can put us to sleep in no time. it’s dense and wordy, whereas in two, three and four the argument develops apace.

Number two with its
‘When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,’ opener
is a challenge to the listener, especially if it’s delivered to that person in person. But still a ‘this’ll happen if’ scenario.

Number three’s gambit of
‘LOok in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest
is a direct address to the subject but a reflection of direct contact.

We think number four’s direct address and stern alarm is a wake-up call to whoever hears it. Certainly attention grabbing.

Our problem, with this pet theory is that number four is pretty insulting. Basically calling him a wanker and a banker. Insulting on both counts for early-moderns as post-moderns.

We can see number one being the more diplomatic route into the good graces of your subject. Or his mum’s.

But we also don’t like to read biography into his sonnets.

That they contain deeply and intimately Sh’s personal feelings, yes.

But a re-telling of auto-biographical events in verse, no.

SO when was sonnet one written? Not the year, in ordering. Did he start with it and give up and go back to it? Or did he work backwards from four?

All the time dampening his mood
from Unthrifty loveliness
to Look in thy glass,
to When forty winters
to From fairest creatures.

By way of the dedication, the sequence starts with number four, then one, two, three, then five, six etc.

But the way we have them is as they are. Who can argue successfully with that?

Pragmatic as well as plain.

You can listen for yourself and play them in any order. Nature is in all four sonnets. Growth and ripening, decay and waste,

2
WHen forty Winters shall besiege thy brow,

3
LOok in they glass and tell the face thou viewest,

4
UNthrifty loveliness why dost thou spend,

5
THose hours that with gentle work did frame,

OH yes the two capital letters at the start of each sonnet is the way it was done in the quarto. FOr us it sets up your first sound.

The 10 MUSE Sonnets

You can find the Muse in these sonnets. Note they are all capitalised. Also note how the tone of voice progresses.

21,
SO is it not with me as with that Muse,

32,
‘Had my friend’s Muse grown with this growing age,’

38,
‘How can my Muse want subject to invent’
‘Be thou the tenth Muse,’
‘If my slight Muse do please these curious days,

78,
‘SO oft have I invok’d thee for my Muse’

79,
‘And my sick Muse doth give another place.’

82,
‘I Grant thou wert not married to my Muse,’

85,
‘My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still’

100,
‘WHere art thou Muse that thou forget’st so long,’
‘Return forgetful Muse,and straight redeem,’
‘Rise resty Muse, my love’s sweet face survey’

101,
‘OH truant Muse what shall be thy amends,’
‘Make answer Muse, wilt thou not haply say,’
‘Then do thy office Muse, I teach thee how,’

103.
‘ALack what poverty my Muse brings forth,’

Listen to more…
Favourite sonnets and sequences.

Read and listen to more…

Sonnets in Leiden

So take a quarter Scottish, Irish, Dutch and German Filmmaker, add a trans-atlantic Brit and a city called Leiden. Follow a suggestion to film some sonnets special-like.

We’d been working the Financiele Dagblad Career Challenge at Nijenrode (2:51-3:10) when the idea first arose.

We then thought, ‘Hey, Sonnet 30 is painted on a wall on the Rapenburg and Houtstraat in Leiden. Let’s start there!’ Filmmaker agreed and here’s the result:

[iframe_vimeo video=”21651135″]

Then we moved locations to the edge of the old city and one of its old gateways. We like the effect of people rushing by us as we recite. A good metaphor for an actor’s career.

[iframe_vimeo video=”21648905″]

Playtime…

…We like to play. Our best moments are spent with our lump on the street looking for the next inspiration.

Around the corner from us is a silver ball, which affords climbing and balancing opportunities for us both. It’s a mixture of playing and parcours or street running but then for a 48 and a 5 year old.

About a year ago Mark Poysden asked us to be part of a Comedy Cover Group. As a lover of comedy we said yes. Our rehearsals are hilarious and involve lots of imbibing and noshing on delicious delicacies.

The next performance is on Sunday night at the QNI in the Nieuwe Anita. In that night Steve G. is the Comedy VJ and plays sketches onscreen which he has culled from many sources. There is always a theme around which the films play.

The CCG is allowed a 10 minute block and the only stipulation is that we never repeat ourselves. Below you’ll find one such block around the theme of counters.

Enjoy this non-shakespearean bit of silliness!

[iframe_vimeo video=”21432841″]

Sonnets Trailer Passion in Practice

So Passion in Practice will have a new life in May. For anyone interested the fb group page has all the information. True to actorly form we have no idea what that month will bring in the form of employment. (Do now. 30.3.11)

Several sonnets are featured in this trailer. Dave and Ben are seen on the still shot below taken during the stick game we used for warm-up. Correction we misidentified the stick. This still is actually from forum work on 2 Gents.

We (I feel royal when I write) really enjoyed the workshop and wish it were part of our weekly life. Motivated actors are like young children playing. Delight is the prominent feeling.

Depression is its opposite and the curse of many of our ilk. In part Will Shakespeare helped us through and out of our depressed years. We look back now and see a life lived. We look forward and see a life yet to be lived.

One day these words will stop and that is the most terrifying truth a human has to live with. The yet still undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns. All our truths and lies exposed to that great book of judgement Time is holding.

And what is it all for? Why wonder about a beginning and an end when we have tectonic plates and continental shift theory?

Sorry got a little heavy there. But Instant news has repercussions. We are reminded today of our passion in practice sesh and immediately laughter comes to mind. Don’t forget it is a roomful of thesps doing Shakespeare.

We all know how to keep our mouths shut and listen and do but you can’t keep actors quiet for too long and that leads to winding one another up. This giddy occupation is done a stealthily as it ever was at primary school. Sometimes the get it out of your system giggles is necessary.

We also paid close attention to the verse allowing it to suggest the pauses and stresses and breaths. Weighing each word with the testing of it. If you don’t think the line was delivered correctly, you do it.

Learning to see the broader through-line of the scene, act, play that each character follows in that exact moment that he is saying his words. Ambition is a mighty motivator. And our fellows in our group were and are motivated.

From the workshop, all we know currently of these excellent playmates is Dave’s in Hollywood, Di is back in London, Dan, Warren and Laura fb, Jaz (you’re gonna make it, yar) and Jamie (love you man) no contact, and Nat just did a 6 person Makkers. Ben and us is mates.

COz that’s the other side of an actor’s professional life. They bond in undying terror, form a group with its own dynamics, swear loyalty and fidelity in continued friendship and contact. Then life gets in the way.

It’s thanks to fb and the internet that we can stay in touch as little as we do. We’ve had hundreds of situations in our growing years when this medium existeth not.

Our father had crystal radio sets and early 78 record players, so his son could have 45’s and 33’s and 8 Track cassettes and VHS Video tapes, so his son could have HD TV, DVD’s CD’s, and the internet where fealty is lost as quickly as an e-mail identity.

Alles zerfliesst wie eitelschaum. Same shit, different medium.

we blog you lot. Thanks for reading btw. Seems to be every blogger has to acknowledge their audience and cater to their needs and cares. Well we ain’t selling.

These words are for free. If you want better written, better elsewhere. Or why you still reading this? Click away. No! Come back we love you.

[iframe_vimeo video=”21337098″]

Sonnet 117 Passion in Practice

Well here’s YT who decided on this sonnet 5 mins before filming some RED HD footage to remember the process week by:
[iframe_vimeo video=”19991175″]

The ever-vigilant will notice a misplaced ‘from’ which should be ‘to’.
ie ‘That I have hoisted sail to all the winds
Which should transport me farthest from your sight.’

Perhaps we should have chosen sonnet 77:

The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show,
Of mouthed graves will give thee memory,
Thou by thy dial’s shady stealth mayst know,
Time’s thievish progress to eternity.

I Love Shakespeare

Sonnet Book

Blog Pages

Archives

Categories

Moonwalking with Einstein…

Dating Sonnet 107…

Sonnets in Amsterdam

IDEA Sonnet to the Readers

A plain reading of the sonnets

The 10 MUSE Sonnets

Sonnets in Leiden

Playtime…

Sonnets Trailer Passion in Practice

Sonnet 117 Passion in Practice

Recent Posts

Elizabethan Grammar School

LANG/LIT School

Look and Listen to Others

Online Works of Shakespeare

Play School

Renaissance School

Scholarly Renaissance-related blogs

Shakespeare Blogs

Shakespeare Institutions

Shakespeare or SOMEONE ELSE?

Sonnet School

Meta