You kiss by the book

Sonnets are a girl's best friend

My dear lover, body and soul, has of late importuned me with love in Shakespearean fashion... meaning, he's sent me emails full of poetry. Appropriately, a few of them have been Elizabethan sonnets, which, as all the boys should know, are still a surefire means of winning any girl's heart. Or at least a girl whose hobby is memorizing Hamlet and King Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing and what-not.

But he has also been bugging me (in the most delicate and nerdy ways possible) to join him in memorizing some more Romeo and Juliet. The first fourteen lines the titular characters speak to each other form a sonnet, and represent a most romantic (if not ultimately auspicious) meeting of souls. It's a semi-cheeky dance of phrasing and it speaks to both of these kids' abilities to charm and evade with nought but words. Comparing Juliet to a holy shrine, Romeo implores she grace his "unworthy" lips with a touch of hers, so that he, the pilgrim, be blessed. She is convinced, eventually, and sin is purged by their pure kisses.

So yeah, OF COURSE I'd love to add this to my repertoire! If only because it would be our repertoire in the end, which will probably grow as time progresses. Given our mutual adoration of all things Shakespeare (and many other beautifully geeky things), I anticipate the day we recite this to each other will be exciting enough that it will inspire us to continue the tradition. Possibly with some Macbeth, and definitely some Benedick and Beatrice banter. Oh, the possibilities.



Romeo and Juliet, Act I Sc. V

ROMEO	[To JULIET] If I profane with my unworthiest hand
	This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
	My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
	To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
JULIET	Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
	Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
	For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
	And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.
ROMEO	Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
JULIET	Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
ROMEO	O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
	They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
JULIET	Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.
ROMEO	Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take. (kisses her)
	Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.
JULIET	Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
ROMEO	Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
	Give me my sin again. (they kiss)
JULIET	You kiss by the book.

Sassy Shakespeare: My favorite one-liners

There's a lot of these "Shakespearean insult generator" memes out there, where you choose one item from each column to create a sufficiently archaic-sounding verbal poo-fling. Gems such as "gleeking knotty-pated harpy" or "puking beef-witted apple-john" or "yeasty tardy-gaited moldwarp." Most of these sound more like Harry Potter incantations than insults.

As giggle-inducing as some of them are, they aren't genuine, actual lines from the plays. And after you'e heard some of the more pointed and exotic barbs, you begin to find it a tragedy that these colorful words and phrases aren't used more today. For example, I was irrationally tickled that the word "clotpole" is often utilized in one of my favorite BBC series: Merlin. Lear used it, as did Guderius in Cymbeline. Having encountered it before, and read about its very bawdy origins, I gasped when I heard it uttered in such a family-friendly TV show. Of course, no one outside an English Lit professor would normally pick up on it.

But it's not just the bawdy stuff I love. It's the clever throw-away lines and the chronically taken-out-of-context quotes that I've highlighted throughout my Complete Works that I feel could be useful in everyday conversation. Enjoy!

"I like this place, And willingly could waste my time in it."
--Celia, "As You Like It," Act II, Sc. IV

"You do assist the storm."
--Boatswain, "The Tempest," Act I, Sc. I

"In nature, there's no blemish but the mind; None can be call'd deform'd but the unkind."
--Antonio, "Twelfth Night," Act III, Sc. IV

"Some rise by sin and some by virtue fall..."
--Escalus, "Measure for Measure," Act II, Sc. I

"Scratching could not make it worse and 'twere such a face as yours were."
--Beatrice, "Much Ado About Nothing, Act I, Sc. I

"This is the fruit of rashness!"
--Gloster, "King Richard III," Act II, Sc. II

"He that loves to be flattered is worthy of the flatterer."
--Apemantus, "Timon of Athens," Act I, Sc. I

"For defect of judgment Is oft the cure of fear." 
--Belarius, "Cymbeline," Act. IV, Sc. II

"O, pardon me; For when no friends are by, men praise themselves."
--Lucius, "Titus Andronicus," Act V, Sc. III

"Where's hourly trouble for a minute's ease."
--Helicanus, "Pericles, Prince of Tyre," Act II, Sc. IV

"No sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir; but I do bite my thumb, sir."
--Sampson, "Romeo and Juliet," Act. I, Sc. I

"Most spend their mouths when what they seem Runs far before them."
--Dauphin, "King Henry V," Act II, Sc. IV

"Unquiet meals make ill digestions."
--Abbess, "The Comedy of Errors," Act V, Sc. I

"More matter with less art."
--Queen, "Hamlet," Act II, Sc. II

"Trifles light as air Are to the jealous confirmation strong As proofs of holy writ."
--Iago, "Othello," Act III, Sc. III

"...didst thou ever hear that things ill got had ever bad success?"
--King Henry VI, "3 King Henry VI," Act II, Sc. II

"'Tis no sin for a man to labour in his vocation."
--Falstaff, "1 King Henry IV," Act I, Sc. II

Such stuff as dreams are made on

Our memories are rounded in a sleep

Let an astrophysicist teach you a little something about learning Shakespeare. Yes, Neil deGrasse Tyson has helped me on my journey toward good memorization. The above video, which explains what biologists are finding out about the function of sleep in all animals' lives, points out that sleep is more than just rest. Sleep is like the great defragmenter of our brains, rearranging our memories of the day, organizing our jumbled thoughts and helping us access new memories more efficiently.

Just as Neil does in the video, I perform new memory tasks (repeating my speech of the week) right before bed. As I'm drifting off, I read the speech in my mind's eye. The next morning, while driving to work, I make myself repeat the speech at least two times without assistance. I find it works better than practicing in the middle of the day and expecting the same results. The lines I learned tend to get mixed up and lost with all the other events of the day. But when shoehorning some Shakespeare in before bed, the lines are more clear to me the next day.

After weeks and weeks of doing this on my own, I found this recent Talk of the Nation story on sleep and memory. Some subjects were trained in the morning and tested later in the day, and others were trained in the evening and tested the next morning. The study confirms what Neil's colleagues found; we tend to perform better with memory tasks if we are allowed to "sleep on it" before testing our recall.

I like to think of memories as tire tracks in a dirt road. The more the car or bike runs through that exact path, the deeper the grooves become. Also, the more your verbalize, the more than words become facial muscle memory, much as an athlete strives to achieve when drilling with a specified set of movements.

I can't tell you how many repetitions it takes to achieve an expert ease with a speech, but it's probably in the thousands. The first speech I ever deliberately memorized, Hamlet's "To be or not to be," took a few weeks to get down and I have often repeated it to myself over the years. I can do that one upside-down, drunk as a sailor if I have to.

Nowadays, it's a bit more scientific. On the first day, I start with four-line chunks. I usually repeat them until I can say them with my eyes closed (~10 times). By the time I've got all the lines of the speech down, I've probably repeated it all about 20-30 times total. Just before bed, I say it at least two more times. The next morning, two more times. After dinner, five to ten times, plus at least two more before bed, depending on how long it is and how tired I get. Over six days, that's well over 100 repetitions of a full speech in a week.

I often revisit old speeches from weeks before to keep them fresh. The grooves get filled in with rain and mud and I have to keep rolling through them. I've managed to add a handful of newer speeches to the "I can do it in my sleep" list, such as King Henry V's "Unto the breach" and Berowne's "Why? all delights are vain." Richard III's opening soliloquy is almost there as well as "All the world's a stage."

Sometimes, I feel like I'll NEVER get a certain speech as trippingly as that first one, but I've proven myself wrong already. It's a shocking, fantastic feeling, and I highly recommend it.

Hung be the heavens with black

The Wars of the Roses began with a bunch of pansies fighting in the back garden...

Henry VI Part One was written after Henry VI (Parts Two and Three), which were all written before King Henry IV (Parts One and Two) and King Henry V, and you can totally tell. The Henriad plays (Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V) have more of a Shakespearean flair than those earlier plays, which were likely written collaboratively with other authors. It helps that the Henriad plays have significantly more empathetic characters (in number and quality) and the triumphant battle of England over France contained within--Harfleur and Agincourt and all that. By comparison, the story of Henry VI and his so totally not living up to his father's fame and admirability is a bit of a letdown, especially since the famously reviled (but infamously quotable!) Richard III is well on his way to ascending the throne by the end.

The play itself is full of literal battles royale between those firebrand Plantagenets of Lancaster and York. It's got crowd-pleasing fights, murders, and prophetic details that are so often easily inserted into prequels. Joan of Arc even has a glorified cameo role in which she defeats the French Dauphin in single combat--an event that is less of a nod to feminism than one example of just how far back the whole "effeminate Frenchman" joke goes.

That said, Henry VI, Part One opens with the funeral of the great Henry V, narrated with a handful of encomiums worthy of the man that was to be portrayed in the eponymous uber-prequels we know and love to see made by Sirs Olivier and Branagh today. I chose Bedford's because it references the stars, and any poetic waxing about the heavens is enough to win over this amateur astronomer in a heartbeat.


1 King Henry VI, Act I, Sc. I
Bedford: Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!
Comets, importing change of times and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars
That have consented unto Henry's death!
King Henry the Fifth, too famous to live long!
England ne'er lost a king of so much worth.

I know you all...

I would be remiss not to acknowledge how much the BBC's Hollow Crown series influenced this particular choice of speech. On the brink of full-throttle fangirling over Tom Hiddleston's Loki in Thor/Avengers and his Magnus in Wallander, I fell once again into the King Henry V trap known as the "Wooing of Kate" scene. It pushed me over the edge in regards to Sir Ken, and it did the same with Hiddles. My heart had no chance. 

The Hollow Crown is a thoroughly engaging series anyway, and I highly recommend it to all who enjoy really solid acting and movie-making. The series covers the Henriad, aka Richard II, Henry IV (Parts One and Two), and Henry V. It was a treat to see the character arc of one of my favorites--Prince Hal--brought to life by a damn pretty man, who just happens to be talented as well, which is always a plus. 

The Prince of Wales appears to be a wayward son. As much is hinted at within the text of Richard II, wherein the newly-crowned Henry IV mentions that his "unthrifty son" frequents taverns and hangs out with "unrestrained loose companions," engaging in wanton, youthful activity most unprince-like. The King's chagrin continues into the next two plays as the jolly Prince Hal carouses with the likes of John Falstaff and his knobbly-nosed bosom buddies in Eastcheap amongst winos and prostitutes.

But Hal has a plan, which he deftly outlines in the first act of 1 Henry IV. His soliloquy reveals to the audience that all his delinquent behavior is an act meant to make his planned rise to the throne and subsequent sudden competency appear miraculous, therefore completely blowing his enemies' minds. Meanwhile, it's hinted later on that Hal is steeping himself in the base environs of his subjects to better understand the nuances of the commonweal and how to best relate to their motivations--presumably, a kingly tool to be wielded later as soldiers are mustered for a questionable foreign war. 

However, one cannot assume Hal's not enjoying himself immensely during his wild salad days. He's witty and loves to banter with the sack-soaked Falstaff, but knows deep down that it shall not last much longer. The beauty of these plays is the depth of the dynamic Prince's characterization and how a few key events subtly disclose Hal's inner hatred and ultimate acceptance of the ambivalence required of a king. This first speech is not yet too cynical, and full of the hope that his prodigal son project will work out in the end.

King Henry IV, First Part, Act I, Sc. II

Henry, Prince of Wales:

I know you all, and will awhile uphold 
The unyok'd humour of your idleness. 
Yet herein will I imitate the Sun, 
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds 
To smother up his beauty from the world, 
That, when he please again to be himself, 
Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at, 
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists 
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him. 
If all the year were playing holidays, 
To sport would be as tedious as to work; 
But, when they seldom come, they wish'd-for come, 
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents. 
So when this loose behaviour I throw off, 
And pay the debt I never promised, 
By how much better than my word I am, 
By so much shall I falsify men's hopes; 
And, like bright metal on a sullen ground, 
My reformation, glitt'ring o'er my fault, 
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes 
Than that which hath no foil to set it off. 
I'll so offend to make offense a skill, 
Redeeming time when men think least I will.

Virtue? A fig!

Only Sir Olivier has the stones (and the talent) to play Othello in blackface. Do not try this at home, kids.

Every deceitful villain in literature, film, and pop culture has Iago's DNA in their blood. From Professor Moriarty to Loki, Dennis Nedry to Gollum, anyone who presents themselves as trustworthy while they smile and smile and work to betray our heroes has descended from that granddaddy of evil genius who could drive a man to murder with nought but a wave of a handkerchief. 

With 1097 lines,* Iago is third only to Richard III (1152) and Hamlet (1422) in pure lung power (per play... Hal/Henry V, whose breath sweeps through three plays, has over 1800 lines, and Falstaff has over 1600 in his three appearances). What does he accomplish with all this vocal ability, other than a whole lot of soap operatic trouble?

As with all Shakespearean villains, he speaks hard truths that cannot be cast aside with all his lies. The speech I chose strikes me as one of those particularly obvious observations of human nature. He is honest after all, since Iago is well aware that he is a perfect example of one who has chosen to sow his own seeds of villainy. He is the quintessential example of how WRONG Polonius** is when he utters   

"To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." Iago is true to himself, and yet is false to everyone. 

After all his silver-tongued philosophizing, one line haunts me the most. It's Iago's final line in the play, directed at Othello after Iago's one-man complot has been exposed: 

"Demand me nothing; what you know, you know:

From this time forth I never will speak word."

Lodovico's immediate response is "What, not to pray?" and Gratiano grumbles "Torments will ope your lips." But Othello stares at Iago and says "Well, thou dost best."

Iago's felt slighted the entire time, ever since Othello made Cassio his lieutenant, and perhaps even before that, as this line suggests. They appear to have a secret between them, and despite Iago's attempt to ruin Othello's good name, when Iago's honesty is finally stained, the bastard decides to zip his lip. What  have they seen and done together in their battles and voyages? What makes Iago loathe and love Othello so much? Why do I love Iago more than Polonius? Because in the end, Iago is honest.

Othello, Act I, Sc. III

Iago: Virtue! a fig! 'tis in ourselves that we are thus

or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which
our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant
nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up
thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs, or
distract it with many, either to have it sterile
with idleness, or manured with industry, why, the
power and corrigible authority of this lies in our
wills. If the balance of our lives had not one
scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the
blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us
to most preposterous conclusions: but we have
reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal
stings, our unbitted lusts, whereof I take this that
you call love to be a sect or scion.

*The actual numbers of lines depend on the version/edition you read, but you get the idea.
**I fucking HATE this quote because everyone uses it out of context and they never seem to realize that everyone in Shakespeare's time understood it to be an empty, banal platitude worthy of so much eye-rolling.

Once more unto the breach

Sir Laurence of Olivier as King Henry V (1944)

As a kid, I read "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and a few other sundry Sherlock Holmes stories. One does not forget the twist of "The Speckled Band" very easily. A few years ago, in preparation for the new Robert Downey Jr. movie, I made sure I read every story Sir Arthur Conan Doyle reluctantly wrote about this most beloved of fictional characters. I remember very clearly Holmes' quoting of King Henry V ("Come, Watson, come. The game is afoot."), so I was very pleased that RDJ and Jude Law both repeated from the same speech together in the film ("Follow your spirit, and upon this charge, cry, 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'") Obviously, this speech is quintessentially BRITISH, and therefore, I would be remiss to NOT know it by heart.

"Unto the Breach" was on the shortlist in my mind. It was delivered with deliciously fiery aplomb by Sir Ken in his film, though Sir Laurence recited the thing in its entirety in his (Why cut it down, Ken, why? Thank the Universe you were such a stickler for Hamlet!). Tom Hiddleston's more toned-down, smouldering version was also cut short for The BBC's Hollow Crown series, unfortunately. But all fed my desire to conquer this speech.

It's one of the most stirring and famous Shakespeare speeches of all, declared before the gates of Harfleur while Henry is leading his soldiers in his French campaign. Henry's years of slumming with Poins and Falstaff in Eastcheap pay off, as he is able to speak to his men in their own language and summon great national pride and excitement by appealing to the nobility within them all. It's a testament to Henry's leadership skills (and relatively youthful cocksure ambition) that he's even able to lead his army as far as they go, and he has even more evocative speeches along the way, some of which can be argued are even more powerful. But that's for another day...

Henry V, Act III, Sc. I

King Henry V: Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'

Yea, from the table of my memory

Sir Kenneth Branagh working with John Gielgud on the set of Hamlet (1996)

Not long ago, I made up my mind that I would read EVERYTHING SHAKESPEARE EVER WROTE. After years of on-off studiousness and a final flourish of reading Sonnet 154, I celebrated my achievement by having a few pumpkin ales and reciting every Shakespeare speech I knew from memory to an empty house. This was made possible because several weeks before, as an amendment to my resolution, I had passed a personal law to learn a new speech from Shakespeare every week until I knew at least one from every play.

Halfway to my goal (and still going strong), I realized that there's not a whole lot of Suzy Q, non-theatre/non-lit scholar folks who take up memorizing tracts of Shakespeare for fun (or at least they don't blog about it). This disappointed me. I thought for sure someone would have the same idea and felt it was worthy of rumination... but not so much. This had to be amended.

All my inspiration for this can be traced thusly:

In my studies, the name Kenneth Branagh came with the wheat separated from the chaff. He was mentioned so often that I could come to one of two conclusions: this guy is a genius or a total dick. Outside of a random viewing of As You Like It and Thor, I was tragically unconscious of his extensive  work.

But then came Henry V. I thank Netflix everyday for streaming this masterwork. Sir Ken's wooing of Catherine of Valois rendered me a puddle of sighs. Then his Hamlet entered my Blu-Ray player, and I beheld this ballsy, epic undertaking of recording the entirety of my favorite on film for the first time. I was done. I was nuclear-reactor-level smitten with this man. It was inevitable, I suppose, given his passionate grasp of the material and my recent re-upped love of the plays. I floated on an inexplicably delirious intellectual high for days, nursing the brand of fawning, explosive fangirl crush that has become my trademark since I first posted on LiveJournal ten years ago.

The second time I watched Hamlet, I listened to the director's commentary. It was the most edifying four hours of movie commentary I had encountered since The Lord of the Rings. Sir Ken lit up the movie with insights. Along the way, I found myself envious of his ability to rattle off quotes to make his points. I came away thinking: "I want to be the person who can quote Shakespeare."

I was going to seriously memorize some shite.

Having already undertaken memorizing the Periodic Table from hydrogen to americium, I felt it was entirely achievable and sufficiently challenging. Memorization is a parlour trick in the end. Humans are capable of memorization feats that boggle human minds. People have long set themselves to committing holy scriptures to heart in the hopes that it will enrich their souls. Shakespeare's words are so essential to and ingrained in the English language and culture that they command no less respect than divine inspiration. That's why I've not only resolved to memorize these speeches, but to deeply analyze them within their contexts to discover clues as to how to properly recite and ruminate over them and gain understanding of the characters' thoughts.

These selected speeches have become, for me, a living canon--the soul's scripture--as accessible to me as my thoughts, and as important to me as my journey through life. It's as serious as it is comic at times, but always enriching, always nourishing, and completely worth enduring the wide-eyed looks of bemusement I get when I tell people what I'm doing.