JOHN FLORIO & SHAKESPEARE: THE ART OF MEMORY | PART III

So, I showed you Giordano Bruno and the art of memory, with the memory power system and the wheels combination system, but how John Florio and Shakespeare used the art of memory. We know that John Florio knew Giordano Bruno very well, they spent three happy years together at the French embassy in London and I will tell you in details in the next video what happened during those happy years in London. Florio was hugely influenced by Bruno, his ideas, thesis radically changed Florio and he most certainly used the art of memory. Bruno was a sort of mental tutor to Florio and to have such a genius explaining you how the art of memory works was for Florio a honor and a privilege. To learn by Bruno himself this art of memory gave Florio a better technique. Besides Bruno lessons on the art of memory, Florio also owned books on art of memory. This year I have had the pleasure to make an extensive research on a work This work reveals a new series of books that Florio owned and were never previously mentioned. They are mostly ancient and classic writers and among them there is also Guillermo Grattarolo. Grattarolo was a famous Italian doctor from Belcamo. He was also a philosopher who wrote three works on the art of memory. Bruno himself knew Grattarolo very well so Florio's interest in the art of memory is based on his personal experience with Bruno. The authors that most certainly Bruno mentioned to Florio, this is why we also find Grattarolo, which was an author that both Bruno and Florio knew and this means that after the years that Florio spent with Bruno together at the French embassy, Florio continued to study both Bruno's art of memory and other authors to improve his technique. If we look in fact at the works that Florio published after the years that he spent with Bruno, so after 1585, there are many references to the art of memory. We know that Florio accumulated 6,000 proverbs, 1,000 words. This method of accumulating common places, words, witty sayings, proverbs, is the same method used in the art of memory. Proverbs are a poetic way of arranging everyday speech in a memorable and useful way. They are an homage to the art of memory and in Florio's works they are also underlined with an asterisk, which means that they are worthy to be remembered and to place in your mind palace. Florio also understood the importance of thought patterns in terms of sound pattern. What does this mean? It means that he understood that in order to memorize a speech, a word, a proverb, the sound of the words is important. That's why he has been often defined a musical lexicographer, because for Florio when you write a sentence, that sentence must have a music, a rhythm. In that way it's also easier to memorize. I'll make a couple of quick examples with some proverbs that Florio wrote. Fast bind, fast find. That is quickly done, it is done well. You understand that the sound pattern helps you memorize the thought pattern, the words. Second fruit is a language lessons manual that Florio published in 1591 and that work contains an explicit reference to the art of memory. In the first chapter Florio describes himself and Bruno with a lively, entertaining, funny dialogue. At one point Florio writes a dramatic scene similar to those of Commedia dell'arte with a funny banter between master and servant. The servant can't remember where he put the keys. I cannot find a key. Where has to lay it? Too careless has to art. I put it in my pocket this morning. Oh, I have it. Art too short of memory. No man more forgetful than I. Two will never make statues nor houses with three stories. Two will never make statues nor houses with three stories. The reference to the statues and houses with three stories is a reference to the memory palace. The statues usually adore the memory palace. This sentence is also marked with an asterisk by Florio to show his readers that it is a sentence worthy to be remembered and collected in your mind palace. When he published the first Italian English dictionary, The Word of Words, in 1598, Florio did an amazing work collecting 150 000 English words. I have explained in the past how this work is not just a dictionary, it's a creative work in which Florio collected vernacular Italian words borrowed from different dialects, borrowed from legal and illegal texts that contain many salacious terms as well. It is a multilingual works that is the expression of Florio's extravagant and creative personality. It is a work in which Florio collected every word that appealed to him, even those that he couldn't translate. Now, how could he collect such an astonishing amount of words, 150 000? He collected them from his library, from his books, recording every possible different meaning of each word. I'll make an example how Florio explained the word erudizione. Erudizione, teaching, distraction, nurture, bring up, education. Yet, I find this word used by Machiavelli in another sense towards the end of the last chapter of the second book of his Decades upon Lee. Costa it as to please. He used thus something it should be eruzione. Now, what Florio is doing here? He remembers how that word had a different meaning in that Machiavelli's book. Note how he visualized where his own words were the last chapter of the book, remembering the sentence where he found it. This is the result of the memory palace, of the art of memory, which gave him the possibility to collect and remember such an astonishing number of words. Now, what about Shakespeare? Some Shakespeare scholars have pointed out that in some Shakespeare plays there are many references to the art of memory. I'll take as an example just one play which contains the greatest number of references to Bruno and to the art of memory, which is Hamlet. The first reference to the art of memory is in the first act. First act, scene five. there. And thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain, unmixed with baser matter, yes, by heaven. Pernicious woman, villain, smiling damned villain, my tables meet it is. I set it down that one may smile and smile and be a villain. At least, I'm sure it may be so in Denmark. Hamlet references to the table of his memory and his vow to cancel everything written in them other than the ghost image and command is a reference to Bruno's art of memory. He compares his mind to a table, to a book of memory upon which ideas and impressions may be written or erased. All the information that Hamlet collected in his mind palace. The same Hamlet choice of remember me and its frequent repetition. This is a deliberate mnemonic device. The word used by Hamlet should be considered as a technical word used as an aid to memory in the Bruno system of the art of memory. The device to remember rhetorical passages by remembering one word on the page that would act as a trigger calling the entire person to mind is a memory system. In Hamlet, the path is dramatized through the art of memory. This connection between tables and memory is also found in Sonic 122. Thy gift, thy tables are within my brain, full-charactered with lasting memory, which shall above that idle rank remain, beyond all date, even to eternity, or at the least so long as brain and heart have faculty by nature to subsist, till each to raised oblivion yield his part, of thee thy record never can be missed. That poor retention could not so much hold, nor need I tallies thy dear love to score. Therefore to give them from me was I bold, to trust those tables that receive thee more, to keep an adjunct to remember thee, were to import forgetfulness in me. Shakespeare makes the precise point in the sonnet that he does not need written records to remind him of his love. In this sonnet, Shakespeare writes that he has given away the notebooks because the table of his memory is more reliable instrument to recall his love which will last forever. Another reference to Bruno's art of memory in Hamlet is in the second act, scene 2, which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambition is merely the shadow of a dream. A dream itself is but a shadow, truly, and a whole ambition, so airy and light-quality, is but a shadow's shadow. Then are our beggar's bodies, and our monarchs, and our stretched heroes, the beggar's shadows. Shall we to the court? The repeated play here on the theme ideas, shadows and dreams is a reference to the debate on memory, the shadows of ideas, the umbris idearum, I explained in the first part of this video. The whole evocation of the subject of shadows is linked to the importance of memory within Hamlet's search for knowledge of the truth of his world. Bruno's memory system was an attempt to create a symbolic fountain of shadows or signs through which the mind recreates and learns to penetrate the intimate structure of the universe. Another great and plain clear reference to Bruno's art of memory in Hamlet is the double show of the actors, the play within the play, that is a mnemonic system in form, content and character. It's a reference to the mind palace with a scene, actors and action, as I explained you in the first part of my video. Hamlet has designed its production to recall a series of past incidents to the king's mind. Claudius alone can recognize the details that he has excluded from his own imagination, so Hamlet uses the cold performance to provide him with an artificial memory. The inner play is the foremnemonic aid or memory system like that of Giordano Bruno. I hope that you liked this video on Bruno's art of memory with the wheel combination system and how John Florio and Shakespeare used the art of memory in their works. In the next video I will talk about the huge mess that Bruno did at Oxford University, turning the whole university upside down, talking about his thesis upon the infinite universe and the magical meeting they had with John Florio. I will also explain you the many references of his theory, the infinite universe, in Shakespeare's works. Let me know in the comments if you liked this video, don't forget to subscribe and stay Resolute! Bye!