Hamlet as Emblem: The Ars Memoria and the Culture of the Play

JEMCS 3.1 (Spring/Summer 2003) Hamlet as Emblem: The Ars Memoria and the Culture of the Play Adam Max Cohen CiRemember me," demands the ghost of King Hamlet just before he disappears into the pre-dawn light (1.5.91).1 Because this demand comes at the very end of his exchange with his flabbergasted son, the words "remember me" make a prominent imprint on Prince Hamlet's mind.2 Alone after the ghost's disappearance, the Prince ponders the ghost's command in his ensuing soliloquy: "Remember thee?/ Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat/ In this distracted globe" (1.5.95-97). Here "globe" has three senses. First, on the most personal level, Hamlet means that memory is a distinct component of his own mind. Within the distracted globe of his mind, there is a place, a seat, a locus formemory. Second, the word "globe" suggests that memory is a crit ical component of the world of the play, the larger social and cultural context inwhich Prince Hamlet finds himself. This mnemonic landscape has received relatively little critical attention, perhaps because of the tremendous pull which the solitary and self-reflective protagonist provides to readers and viewers of the play. Part ofmy goal in this essay will be to show that memory is a critical component of the culture of Hamlet's Denmark and, by extension, Shakespeare's England. Third, the word "globe," together with the reference to holding a "seat," is clearly a reference to the actual playing 78 The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies space of the Globe Theater, which was opened in 1599 and provided the physical venue formost of Shakespeare's new plays, including Hamlet, until its destruction by fire in 1613. With this single word "globe," then, Shakespeare alerts us to the tripartite importance of memory in any analysis of the play. Memory is an important facet of Prince Hamlet's own mind, the play culture as a whole, and the playing space in which players made impressions upon the minds of audi ence members.3 In his recent study of the relationship between Renaissance emblems, the memory arts, and melancholy, William Engel describes Anthony Hoskins' 1605 "Epistle of Saint Bernard, known as the Golden Epistle," as "an elabo rate personal artificial memory scheme, with subsidiary schemes located within it that are designed to particularize the rules of its use. The organizational mnemonics within the larger structure contain encoded mnemonics that are to be appropriated by the individual."4 Engel goes on to say that early modern memory devices ranging from emblems to chapels to entire sermons provided "several and sometimes overlapping (and yet still discrete) mnemonic systems" which "enhanced rather than confused apprehension of the whole design" (31). Respect for the quality and complexity of Hamlet schol arship over the past 400 years precludes anyone from asserting that Hamlet is or is not identifiable with a single Renaissance epistemology. But the importance of memory and remembering throughout the play and throughout sec ular and religious components of Renaissance culture rec ommends that we consider whether itmight be useful to view the play in relation to the wealth of early modern mnemonic material. For example, Hamlet's frenzied solilo quy spoken after the disappearance of the Ghost gestures towards the "organizational mnemonic" of the memory the ater, and it also employs particular mnemonic theories about reading and writing. The blank verse of portions of Hamlet's soliloquy provided a mnemonic aid to Richard Burbage, the actor who played Hamlet. In short, Hamlet's soliloquy possesses "several overlapping (and yet still dis crete) mnemonic systems" which together "enhanced rather than confused apprehension of the whole design" of the play. Cohen 79 Engel's study "places the widespread body of emblem and mnemonic material of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries at the core rather than the periphery of [English] culture" (3). Among the materials that Engel discusses are treatises on natural and artificial memory, emblem books, illustrated "bibles of the poor," dialogues on emblems, col lections of heroic devices, commonplace books, thesauri, behavior manuals, essays, anatomies, and medical treatises (7). Engel focuses on preachers, poets, engravers, and essay ists who use...