Shakespeare’s Brain and Hamlet’s Books

HAMLET: I’ll have these playersPlay something like the murder of my fatherbefore mine uncle. I’ll observe his looks,I’ll tent him to the quick. If a do blench,I know my course.

Hamlet, II.2.547-51

‘Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks?’

‘That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once.’

1. Imaginatio, vel fantasia

2. Aestimativa, vel cogitativa, vel cognitiva

3. Memoria, vel reminiscentia

LADY MACBETH: When Duncan is asleep ... his two chamberlains

Will I with wine and wassail so convince That memory, the warder of the brain,

Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason A limbeck only...

(Macbeth, I.7.61-67)

LADY MACBETH: When Duncan is asleep ... his two chamberlains

Will I with wine and wassail so convince That memory, the warder of the brain,Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason A limbeck only...

(Macbeth, I.7.61-67)

1. Imaginatio, vel fantasia

2. Aestimativa, vel cogitativa, vel cognitiva

3. Memoria, vel reminiscentia

HAMLET: What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such large

discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To fust in us unus’d.

(Hamlet, IV.4.36-42)

HAMLET: Remember thee? Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat In this distracted globe. Remember thee? Yea, from the table of my memoryI’ll wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past That youth and observation copied there, And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmix’d with baser matter.

(Hamlet, I.5.95-104)

‘this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire’

HAMLET: Remember thee? Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat In this distracted globe. Remember thee? Yea, from the table of my memoryI’ll wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past That youth and observation copied there, And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmix’d with baser matter.

(Hamlet, I.5.95-104)

HAMLET: Remember thee?Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seatIn this distracted globe. Remember thee?Yea, from the table of my memoryI’ll wipe away all trivial fond records,All saws of books, all forms, all pressures pastThat youth and observation copied there,And thy commandment all alone shall liveWithin the book and volume of my brain,Unmix’d with baser matter.

(Hamlet, I.5.95-104)

HAMLET: Remember thee? Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat In this distracted globe. Remember thee? Yea, from the table of my memoryI’ll wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past That youth and observation copied there, And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmix’d with baser matter.

(Hamlet, I.5.95-104)

MACBETH: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart?

(Macbeth, V.3.41-46)

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BRUTUS: Let’s kill him boldly, but not wrathfully;...

And let our hearts as subtle masters do,Stir up their servants to an act of rage

And after seem to chide ’em ...

Julius Caesar, II.1.172-77