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1 results

  • Chapter 10 - The Tug of Memory

  • from Part IV - Memory, Affect, and Stagecraft
  • Edited by Jonathan Baldo, University of Rochester, New York, Isabel Karremann, University of Zurich
  • Book:
    Memory and Affect in Shakespeare's England
    Published online:
    07 June 2023
    Print publication:
    27 July 2023, pp 201-219

  • Summary

    This chapter examines Shakespeare’s dramaturgical “cuing the past” through spoken directives to recall things preceding the play’s chronology. His ingenious staging of “the tug of memory” – grounded in traditional mnemotechnic oratorical tactics – elicits and guides the audience’s affective response to some specific aspect of a character’s backstory. Special attention is given to “invention” and “memory” from classical rhetoric (where the relationship of affect to emotion is shown to function analogously to that of invention to invented text), by way of illustrating how the appositive yet complementary tropes of “augmentation” and “abbreviation” in Merchant of Venice and Comedy of Errors, for example, can be used to unpack the rampant play of proverbs in Henry V (3.7). Shakespeare’s affective cueing of the past sets memory to work, tugging at what is to be recalled and yanking it center stage for all to see and then factor into their judgment of the character.