The Arithmetic of Memory: Shakespeare’s Theatre and the National Past

Summary

I want to begin with two exemplary memorial moments. The first is from Henry V, in the lull before the battle at Agincourt. It is a famous moment of social remembering, framed as reminiscence in the future tense:

Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,

But he'll remember, with advantages,

What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,

Familiar in his mouth as household words [...]

Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.

This story shall the good man teach his son.

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by

From this day to the ending of the world

But we in it shall be rememberèd,

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.

For he today that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition.

(4.3.49-63)

As Harry presents it, the source of social cohesion is the potential for future re-telling offered by the events that are about to take place. Both the soldiers clustered around Henry and the audience in the theatre are projected forward, into a narrative moment that will give the present (or, more precisely, the near-future) retrospective meaning. The story will be passed on, and embellished ('with advantages'), gaining a momentum of its own, a fictional reality that will allow it, among other things, to be staged at the Globe theatre almost two hundred years later.