Watching Shakespeare Roll In His Grave

   "Manuscript culture had taken intertextuality for granted. Still tied to the commonplace tradition of the old oral world, it deliberately created texts out of other texts, borrowing, adapting, sharing the common, originally oral, formulas and themes, even though it worked them up into fresh literary forms impossible without writing" (Ong loc 2842).

     Ong also noted that when learning to write poetry, young men were expected to memorize lines of other poets and put them together. At this time there was none of what Bloom called the "anxiety of influence". This sounded interesting to me, so I thought I would give it a try. I dusted off my giant Shakespeare anthology which nearly takes a crane to lift and began grabbing lines from his sonnets. I put them together in an experiment to see if I could create something grand. Here is what I came up with:


Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, (xxvii page 1497)
I all alone, beweep my outcast state, (xxix 1498)
I summon up remembrance of things past, (xxx 1498)
Which I by lacking have supposed dead; (xxxi 1498)
The living record of your memory. (iv 1502)
It is so grounded inward in my heart. (lxii 1503)
When beauty liv'd and died as flowers do now, (lxviii 1504)
So are you to my thoughts as food to life. (lxxv 1505)
So oft have I invok'd thee for my muse (lxxviii 1506)
While comments of your praise, richly compil'd (lxxxv 1507)
And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn (lxxxviii 1508)
From you I have been absent in the spring (xcviii 1509)
More flowers I noted, yet I none could see (xcix 1509)
Because I would not dull you with my song (cii 1510)

Okay, so it's not grand; it was fun though. Not that fun counts for much, but still, what a great way this would be to introduce young people to poetry. I was actually not expecting to do anything beyond try the method, I was jesting about creating a grand sonnet. I do encourage everyone to try it. I imagine it would be interesting to do the same with parts of songs or something similar. I am personally terrible with poetry; I can never quite hear the meter properly to actually count it. When it is wrong I can generally catch that something is amiss, but to sit down and see if a word fits here or there is more difficult. Enough meandering; back to Ong.

    According to Ong, writing puts pressure on us to be original. We must keep moving forward instead of telling the same tale over and over again. This is due to the fact that we can now look things up. We do not need to memorize everything. So why should we? Well, first off, how do we know what we are doing is original without knowing what else is out there. Secondly, memory can be used as a training device. The young poets memorized the lines before they jumbled them into something new as I have. Next, when we memorize we bring things beyond the fact or story and into our hearts. San Gimigano's memory rules state, "The second is that he should adhere to them with affection"(Yates 85). The things we memorize become a part of us; they are easily called upon when we need their guidance. I feel this is the most important aspect of the many more I have pondered. I will leave you to decide more reasons for yourself. As for memory and the anxiety of influence, remember Mnemosyne is the mother of the muses which you will need to call upon before creating a great work. This may be where I went wrong with my poem as well, I should have called upon the muses.