Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Towards a European History of Henry V
- History and Histories
- The Bad Quarto Hamlet and the Polish Connection
- Cross-Histories, Straying Narratives: Anglo-Portuguese Imbrications and Shakespeare's History Plays
- The Art of War in Shakespeare and in European Renaissance Treatises
- The “Histories” of Henry VI
- Shakespeare's Imperfect Memory of History
- “Retail'd to All Posterity:” The Case of Richard III
- Halting Modernity: Richard III's Preposterous Body and History
- History and Memory: Criticism and Reception
- History, Memory, and Ideological Appropriation
- Theatre: The Act of Memory and History in the Making
- Index of Authors
The “Histories” of Henry VI
from History and Histories
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Towards a European History of Henry V
- History and Histories
- The Bad Quarto Hamlet and the Polish Connection
- Cross-Histories, Straying Narratives: Anglo-Portuguese Imbrications and Shakespeare's History Plays
- The Art of War in Shakespeare and in European Renaissance Treatises
- The “Histories” of Henry VI
- Shakespeare's Imperfect Memory of History
- “Retail'd to All Posterity:” The Case of Richard III
- Halting Modernity: Richard III's Preposterous Body and History
- History and Memory: Criticism and Reception
- History, Memory, and Ideological Appropriation
- Theatre: The Act of Memory and History in the Making
- Index of Authors
Summary
In his dedication to Edward VI of The union of the two noble and illustre families of Lancastre and York (1548), one of the intertexts Shakespeare draws on for The First Part of Henry the Sixth, Edward Hall depicts his chronicle as being in the service of “memory.” Hall interconnects memory with fame, history and literature while structuring the dedication round the dichotomy of “memory-oblivion” and “oblivion-memory.” Oblivion, which is represented as a diseased enemy of Fame and as “the sucking serpent of ancient memory,” has been defeated by Memory, operating through the invention and intervention of letters and literature. Memory by literature, claims Hall, is “the very dilator and setter forth of Fame.”
History is mnemonic. The act of recording is the process that creates the memorial phantasm and the compilation of history is thus undertaken to dilate, or spread abroad, the glory of forbears. We can see here one of the classical and medieval archetypes of memory as a tablet awaiting inscription. What stands out in Hall's exposition on memorial inscription of history is its hierarchical selectivity: “For what diversity is between a noble prince and a poor beggar, ye a reasonable man and a brute beast, if after their death there be left of them no remembrance or token.” From the exempla that Hall then offers – Augustus, Caligula and Nero – it would seem that infamy and power have as equal a share in memory as fame and nobility while the beggar perforce is consigned to oblivion. Further, memory is accredited with remarkable longevity.
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- Information
- Shakespeare in EuropeHistory and Memory, pp. 79 - 88Publisher: Jagiellonian University PressPrint publication year: 2008