Shakespeare's "Books of Memory": 1 and 2 Henry VI

Shakespeare's "Books of Memory": 1 and 2 Henry VI JEROME MAZZARO In Shakespeare's 1 Henry VI (1589-90), Plantagenet tells Somerset and Suffolk thathe will note them "in [his] book ofmemory" and scourge themlater fortheirgibes about his father (2.4.95, 101-02), and in2Henry VI (1590-91), Gloucester repeats the phrase in assessing the effects of Henry's marriage. It has canceled peers' fame, "[bjlotting [their] names from books ofmemory, / Rasing the characters of [their] renown, / Defacing monuments ofconquer'd France; / [And] Undoing all, as all had never been" (1.1.99-103). Both expressions are part ofwhat, in European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (1948), Ernst Curtius sees as Shakespeare's preoccupation with the book. Besides books of memory, Shakespeare mentions love books,jest books, inventories, chronicles, account books, conjuring books, and, in Coriolanus (3.1.291), "Jove's own book" (i.e., the book of heavens). Shakespeare continues, moreover , the medieval metaphorical conventions ofboth "the face as a book" (Love's Labor's Lost, 4.3.349; KingJohn, 2.1.485; A Midsummer Night's Dream, 2.2.122; Romeo and Juliet, 1.3.87; Macbeth, 1.5.62; etc.) and "the book of nature" (As You Like It, 2.1.16 and 3.2.5). Curtius notes that especially in his treatment of love books Shakespeare appears to prize bindings, and he concludes that Shakespeare's real "'life-relation' to the book is that of aesthetic enjoyment. Richly bound books are a feast for his eyes."1 Such an appreciation is not uncommon in the sixteenth century. In art,an iconographietradition ofceremoniously dressed readers continues, built upon medieval illuminations ofJerome, and in a letter to Francesco Vettori (10 December 1513) Machiavelli describes himself slipping off his day's clothes with their mud and dirt. At the threshold ofhis study, he dons "royal and curial robes" before entering "the ancient courts of men of old."2 393 394Comparative Drama This preoccupation with the book is not a denial ofAugustine's sense of discovering God within memory. One recalls that in the Confessions (c.400), Augustine uses the Aeneid, Cicero's Hortensius, Platonic texts, and the NewTestament as guides and undertakes in the last three books a reconciliation of Scripture and understanding. Curtius, noting Greek links of memory and writing, points to the emergence in medieval thought ofthree distinct models: God's book, the book ofmemory, and the book ofnature. Being concordant, these"books" eventually become analogous and, with grace, alternatives.3 In literature, Dante cites a personal internal "book of memory" whose incidents in the Vita Nuova (1294) assist him in remembering himself (1). Although he makes no claim ofa congruence ofthis book and other books, including that"book of life" on which men are judged (Rev. 20:12), Dante clearly implies a coincidence at points oftruth, including knowledge ofGod. By the final sonnet ("Oltre la spera che più larga gira"), he indicates beginnings of such truth within the work. For readers accustomed to Cartesian separations of subjective and objective and empirical differences between them, these accords and coincidences may seem mistaken, but to emphasize their unifying force and set faith as the means oftheir apprehension , both God and truth are often defined asjoined opposites. In an age ofchanging classes and self-made men whose success depended on their bringing their inner feelings in line with what manuals indicated was proper and convention determined was assimilable, this coincidence of outer and inner"books" takes on added social and political importance, achieving less salvation than dependable conformity. In going to books ofmemory, Shakespeare thus notonlygives objective shape toAugustine's interior "many and indescribable departments" but avails himself of associations attending actual texts. In the Henry VIplays, Shakespeare surrounds his books ofmemory with allusions to lawbooks, God's book, and prayer books. The Lawyer in 1 Henry VIpresents the claims ofYork in the Temple Garden on the basis of legal "study and ... books" (2.4.56). Later, in responding to efforts to arrange his marriage, theyoungking repeats thewords (5.1.22), converting them to conditions that in 2 Henry VI his wife reveals are clearly religious (1.3.58). This bond between law and Scripture continues...