Within the book and volume of my brain

List, list, O, LIST

While I was working through the last 41 weeks of memorization exercises, I've had this paper taped to my closet door. It's just a chronological list of all Shakespeare's plays. Every time I read a play, I highlighted it in pink. Every time I learned a speech, I added a blue dot next to it. When I reached my goal, I snipped the paper into candy-colored strips, each with a play on it, and threw them into a bag. Now, every evening, I randomly select a strip from the bag and practice it a bit before bed, then proceed to spend my morning and afternoon commute to work reciting to myself, usually with the accompaniment of some old-school, wordless M83 songs.

Some are as easy to recall as that first "To be" speech; others require more polishing, as very often the one I grab from the bag is one I haven't revisited in so many weeks. But so far, this rehash activity has proven fruitful. Just yesterday, after a few weeks of this practice, I dumped the pile of re-visited speeches onto my bed and proceeded to pick one up, recite, then pick another and another until they were all gone. It took a half hour, and I did it with only one cheat: it was to make sure Hamlet said "my uncle" and not "mine uncle" in his first soliloquy.

My fear near the end was that I'd forget some of the less favorited speeches, so doing this both confirmed and destroyed that fear, since practice really is the silver bullet when it comes to achieving any level of proficiency at anything. (Plus, I've surprised myself that I even have enough room in my mental hard drive lately, since a large percentage of RAM has been dedicated solely to squeeing over Benedict Cumberbatch again.)

Obviously, this thing is not over.

I still have a mental list of speeches I'd like to still learn:
1) Hamlet's third soliloquy
2) John of Gaunt's speech about England in Richard II
3) Berowne's epic 77-line rave about love from LLL
4) Prince Hal's plea to his father about redemption in Henry IV Part 1
5) Ophelia's "What a noble mind is here o'erthrown" speech

I wonder if any of my readers could suggest any others for my tackling pleasure?

The longer the achievement, the more apt I am to unlock them. I'm not entirely sure why. Perhaps it's just the meditative quality of a good, lengthy thought process that keeps my brain at attention for so long and serves to defrag it or something. Maybe it impresses me more deeply because it seems so intimidating when you see it on paper, but turns out to be quite natural once it's uploaded to my brain. Whatever the reason, it's always fun.

Has anyone else given this a go?

More happy do not make our outward wall

Thou shalt talk to the hand

Not bad for a "missing play," Edward III chronicles the exploits of the grandfather and father of Richard II. Generally accepted as at least partially penned by Shakespeare, it proves at least more engaging than Cardenio and the plot is reminiscent of the Henriad in places. History tells us that Edward III was actually a very effective leader, so it's entertaining to see the King's foolish wooing of the Countess of Salisbury contrasted with the victorious French war heroics of his son, the Black Prince. It also gives us some insight as to why Richard II's reign was such an epic disappointment.

The play begins with a lot of Scot-bashing, so no wonder it wasn't included in the First Folio; no one wanted to rile up King James in those days. Anyway, Edward goes to rescue the poor Countess from some dirty Scots and winds up thoroughly infatuated with the woman, nagging his secretary Ludowick with his paltry attempts at dictating some primo poetry to win her married hand. The countess is flattered, but sees through the King's hormonal haze and shows him nothing more enticing than her raised palm. Perhaps it was her initial flowery greeting at the gate of her manse that he mistook for flirtation:

Edward III, Act I, Sc. II

Countess of Salisbury: Let not thy presence, like the April sun,

Flatter our earth and suddenly be done.

More happy do not make our outward wall

Than thou wilt grace our inner house withal.

Our house, my liege, is like a country swain,

Whose habit rude and manners blunt and plain

Presageth nought, yet inly beautified

With bounties, riches and faire hidden pride.

For where the golden ore doth buried lie,

The ground, undecked with nature’s tapestry,

Seems barren, sere, unfertile, fructless, dry;

And where the upper turf of earth doth boast

His pied perfumes and party coloured coat,

Delve there, and find this issue and their pride

To spring from ordure and corruption’s side.

But, to make up my all too long compare,

These ragged walls no testimony are,

What is within; but, like a cloak, doth hide

From weather’s Waste the under garnished pride.

More gracious then my terms can let thee be,

Intreat thyself to stay a while with me.

Speak the speech, I pray you: 5 quick and dirty tips to maximize memorization

I just started my 41st speech this week. No, I'm not done yet, so don't bust out the tankards of mead and cups of sack quite yet. I've doubled up on a few (quadrupled on Hamlet), so I have handful left before I reach my goal of at least one speech from each play. I felt this a good time to begin imparting some wisdom to anyone who might be inclined to try this on their own.


1) Practice every goddamned day. I start on Sunday with a new speech. I find it is best to learn the whole thing all in one go, and then over successive days, I progressively wean myself from checking the text every other line until I get more confident with it. I tried breaking up longer speeches up into eight- or ten-line bites over four days... but very few of them are so long that I feel I must do that to keep my sanity. I did Richard III's monstrosity over several days early on in the project, but did Richard II's behemoth much more quickly. Soon enough, shorties (20 lines or less) became a piece of the proverbial cake. Cram before bed, when your brain is ripe for filing away new things. Practice in your shower. Practice in your car on your way to or from work. No one will judge you there.

2) Say it out loud. Turn your speech into an earworm. Just like a catchy song you hear fifteen times on the radio at work, the speech will follow you around better if you know how your own voice sounds reciting it. Say it without a sound. Mouthing the words without giving them voice helps develop muscle memory. You tend to exaggerate it when you voicelessly recite, but I've found it opens you up to delivering it more clearly and effortlessly when you voice it again. It's like isometric exercise for your tongue.

3) Watch or listen to actors delivering the speeches you choose. I cannot tell you how much more easy it was to memorize speeches that were already done for me. Sir Kenneth Branagh's recitation of Hamlet's fourth soliloquy ("My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!") will never sop rolling around in my brain. Ben Whishaw's Richard II sitting on the sunny shore of his England as his voice fights the breeze will forever inform my delivery of his monologue about the death of kings. I will never not think of Tom Hiddleston soliloquizing as Prince Hal in King Henry IV Part One. They are more than just pretty faces to me ;)

4) Research the character. Research the vocabulary. Never try to recite anything out of context. Find out what is supposed to be motivating the character and keep it at the forefront of your mind. For each speech, I read the corresponding chapter in Marjorie Garber's "Shakespeare After All" just so I'd recall the plot and get more in depth analysis of characters. Look up every unfamiliar word or phrase. It'll all come more naturally if you know what the bloody hell you're actually saying. Memorization is a party trick. Comprehension takes work. We're here for enrichment of our brains, not for boot camp drills.

5) Choose speeches that intrigue you. At first, this is simple. There are so many speeches on the menu. But after a while, you're bound to hit plays that don't enthuse as much as others, or you simply aren't familiar with them at all. If you can't find something that you like, you're not going to spend as much time with it and you'll lose interest. I've read every play and highlighted the bejesus out of my old paperback copy of the Complete Works, so I could always spot a passage that got my attention and analyze it for potential memorization material. If you lack such a personalized resource, I recommend checking http://www.shakespeare-monologues.org for worthy suggestions.


This will take more than 40 weeks. I don't think I'll be satisfied with myself until a year passes. I took a few breaks to give myself a chance to review old speeches and just because real life carries you away sometimes.

I've already chosen my final speech--one that I think will test all my skills and patience. It's Shakespeare's longest soliloquy, and it marks the return of that trusty bastard Richard Gloucester in his salad days during Henry VI Part Three. 71 lines of pure, uncut soliloquizing. I can't wait!

Let's talk of graves, worms, and epitaphs

             Psst: Scrub to 1 h 6 m 45 s for the "Hollow Crown" speech

If ever Hamlet's nugget about how "A thought which quartered hath but one part wisdom/And ever three parts coward" applied to anyone (because I personally don't think it actually describes Hamlet Jr.) it's Richard II. This young monarch, who is a Class-A wanker from the start, is prone to frilly rhetorical speeches throughout this eponymous play. However, may his dollophead status never cloud our appreciation of his insights, for he has as much (or more) tendency as any other king in Shakespeare to wax truthfully about the unique discomforts of sitting upon the throne. 

Richard is a psychological nightmare. He is the rightful heir to the throne, but it is implied that he was complicit in his own uncle Gloucester's murder. He was ten when he ascended, which, on top of acne and half-descended testicles, must have been stressful. He also has this uncanny Jesus complex, and believes anyone working against him to be "thrice worse than Judas." Perhaps because his father was the famous "Black Prince" Edward, whom he could never live up to, Richard has this nagging self-esteem issue, which he barely covers with a deep belief in the divine right of Kings and the strength of his name alone. He abuses his power and hangs out with a bunch of low-lifes--Bushy, Bagot, and Green, which sounds like some second rate Flogging Molly cover band.

It's when Richard steals and liquidates the newly deceased John of Gaunt's property, gives some to his flunkies, uses the rest to fund an unpopular war in Ireland, and then returns to find that Gaunt's son, Bolingbroke, has amassed a small army of loyal followers willing to fight in Bolingbroke's name that Richard begins to fret. His peeps deliver this information and Richard loses his shit. But at the same moment, he seems to gain this poetic and wise perspective on life as a Royal. This speech alone--the so-called "Hollow Crown" speech--should be proof enough that this somewhat under-garnished play (which is written entirely in verse, BTW) is worth a close reading.

King Richard II, Act III, Sc. II

King Richard: No matter where; of comfort no man speak: 

Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs; 
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes 
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth, 
Let's choose executors and talk of wills: 
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath 
Save our deposed bodies to the ground? 
Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke's, 
And nothing can we call our own but death 
And that small model of the barren earth 
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones. 
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground 
And tell sad stories of the death of kings; 
How some have been deposed; some slain in war, 
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed; 
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd; 
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown 
That rounds the mortal temples of a king 
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits, 
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp, 
Allowing him a breath, a little scene, 
To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks, 
Infusing him with self and vain conceit, 
As if this flesh which walls about our life, 
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus 
Comes at the last and with a little pin 
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king! 
Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood 
With solemn reverence: throw away respect, 
Tradition, form and ceremonious duty, 
For you have but mistook me all this while: 
I live with bread like you, feel want, 
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus, 
How can you say to me, I am a king?

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.

Why doth the crown lie there upon his pillow?

Jeremy Irons as Henry IV in BBC's Hollow Crown series

Henry IV is losing it--and by "it" I mean not just his sanity, but his hold on his own kingdom. Sure, he defeated Northumberland's rebellion and his previously disreputable son grew a set and killed Hotspur, but the Archbishop's already got a conspiracy brewing against him and both Wales and France are getting ornery. Shit is getting real, and he thinks his son has reverted back to his previous dissipation and cares not for his well-being. The exact opposite is true, but Hal knows that suddenly appearing to be concerned would look hypocritical to the max.

Still, the moment Hal is summoned with news that his father is deathly ill, he races to his bedside to be alone with him and his not-so-surprisingly deep thoughts. The supreme irony of the Henry IV plays is that Hal knows more about the burden of the crown than anybody else--save Richard II, whose experience within the "hollow crown" is intimately disillusioned for most of his play--as this quiet, touching monologue proves. I'm a bit miffed at being cheated of the whole speech in the BBC's Hollow Crown episode--I would have loved to have heard more of Tom Hiddleston's dulcet whisperings--but it catches the drift.

My favorite bit is "When thou dost pinch thy bearer, Thou dost sit like a rich armour worn in heat of day, That scaldst with safety." Richard's own earlier assessment is that within the crown "Keeps Death his court... scoffing [the king's] state and grinning at his pomp," and that the mortal flesh of a king is believed to be "brass impregnable" that can in fact be breached by a "little pin." Both of these young men have realized their hard truth about power in very different ways, and it serves them with opposing results. One is deposed, the other, renowned. But they both die prematurely--one murdered, one diseased from war. Such is the price of encompassing the crown.

Between them, we peasants are privy to a unique insight about what it is to hold "divine" power.

2 King Henry IV, Act IV, Sc. V

Prince Henry: Why doth the crown lie there upon his pillow,

Being so troublesome a bedfellow?
O polish'd perturbation! golden care!
That keep'st the ports of slumber open wide
To many a watchful night! sleep with it now!
Yet not so sound and half so deeply sweet
As he whose brow with homely biggen bound
Snores out the watch of night. O majesty!
When thou dost pinch thy bearer, thou dost sit
Like a rich armour worn in heat of day,
That scalds with safety. By his gates of breath
There lies a downy feather which stirs not:
Did he suspire, that light and weightless down
Perforce must move. My gracious lord! my father!
This sleep is sound indeed, this is a sleep
That from this golden rigol hath divorced
So many English kings. Thy due from me
Is tears and heavy sorrows of the blood,
Which nature, love, and filial tenderness,
Shall, O dear father, pay thee plenteously:
My due from thee is this imperial crown,
Which, as immediate as thy place and blood,
Derives itself to me. Lo, here it sits,
Which God shall guard: and put the world's whole strength
Into one giant arm, it shall not force
This lineal honour from me: this from thee
Will I to mine leave, as 'tis left to me.

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.