Balz Engler, University of Basel
www.BalzEngler.ch
Zaporozhzhje, April 2009
Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war‟s quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
„Gainst death and all oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgement that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers‟ eyes.
The continual claims that poetry preserves and
immortalizes read oddly against the vagueness of its
descriptive vocabulary--”fair”, “sweet”, “lovely”, and
“beauteous” leave so indefinite an impression that
almost any candidate put forward as the historical
reality behind the young man can find persuasive
support within the collection. In this sonnet there is
little more than merely the „gait‟, but nothing distinct:
the reader‟s impression is of a vague Coriolanus-like
figure striding over scenes of desolation. (Hammond
1981: 72)
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Inscriptions become illegible on the “unswept
stone besmeared with sluttish time”
Manuscripts may be lost
Books may be misplaced and forgotten


Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.
[...] (Sonnet 55, 1-4)
The living record of your memory.
where breath most breathes, ev‟n in the mouths of
men. (Sonnet 81, 14)
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Performance in front of an audience
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
Reading
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In the armchair
Discussion
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
In the theatre
In the class-room
Citation: Quotation and allusion

In public address and conversation

“Shakespeare will go on explaining us, in part
because he invented us.”

Harold Bloom, Shakespeare and the Invention of the
Human

Stories
the Trojan War, the foundation of Rome, the Taming of the Shrew, the
love of Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth‟s ambition. Tom Stoppard,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1966), John Updike, Gertrude and
Claudius (2000), Rebecca Reisert, Ophelia’s Revenge (2003).

Moments
Hamlet, dressed in black, holding Yorick‟s skull

Figures
Don Juan, Madame Bovary, Oblomov, Falstaff, King Lear, Hamlet

Phrases and passages
There is something rotten in the state of Denmark, Frailty, thy name is
woman, With an auspicious and a drooping eye, To be or not to be
http://www.prism-magazine.org/april/html/research.html
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Motivation

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
the wish to have a share in the cultural authority of
the author or the work cited
the wish to communicate the general context that the
phrase calls up
Recognition

a sense of belonging to the same community

Three phases

Beyond the rules
Eighteenth century
overcoming classicist rule poetics

Beyond criticism
Nineteenth century, Romanticism
Shakespeare judges the critic

Beyond the text
Twentieth century, interest in performance
Dissolution of textual authority
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Yorick (1761/62)


Romeo (1766)


„Alas, poor Yorick.“Sterne, Tristram Shandy
OED “A lover, a passionate admirer; a seducer, a
habitual pursuer of women.”
Hamlet (1775)

OED Hamlet without the Prince (of Denmark): a
performance without the chief actor or a proceeding
without the central figure”.

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Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we
both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in
nature.
The concepts that govern our thought are not just
matters of the intellect. They also govern our everyday
functioning, down to the most mundane details. Our
concepts structure what we perceive, how we get
around in the world, and how we relate to other
people. Our conceptual system thus plays a central role
in defining our everyday realities.
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson (1980). Metaphors We
Live By. See http://theliterarylink.com/metaphors.html