How to learn Shakespeare

Here is Hamlet's most famous soliloquy divided up in learnable chunks. Shakespeare's original text is printed in italics with my observations underneath. Commit each section to memory and do not move to the next section until you are completely happy with the one you are on.

My observations are intended to introduce mnemonic techniques that might help each section stick in the mind. They may or may not suite you, so feel free to devise your own associations with each bit of text. After learning each section, go back to the beginning and repeat everything you have learnt so far. If some bits are not sticking, try to find a concept which links them to the preceding well-learnt section.

Once you have memorised the whole text, which may take a few days, try to repeat it all at least once a day until you can do it without stopping – perhaps when you are lying in bed, on the train, or sitting on the loo.

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To be or not to be that is the question

No problems here surely!

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Pretty well known and often quoted. Think of Donald Trump or Paris Hilton (outrageous fortune) with both arms in slings and two arrows sticking out of their head. It sometimes helps to distort words to make them more memorable, so you could think 'knobblier' instead of nobler.

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.

Often considered not one of Shakespeare's best images, but probably quite vivid enough to make other mnemonic tricks unnecessary. If you need help with the second part, and you are a football fan, you might think of where the opposition supporters sit at your home ground – the opposing end; you could pour a sea of troubles over their heads to make it even more vivid, even with a few severed arms floating around in it. Get the picture?

To die, to sleep,

Here we are helped by the repetitive structure of the soliloquy. The same phrase, with a much more famous follow-up comes just four lines later. On this occasion Shakespeare continues:

No more – and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to.

This is a bit difficult, I admit, especially the second half of the first line. I myself divided it into three portions, which are in alphabetical order and are memorable by being so silly – Asleep (a sleep) Touché (to say) Weekend (we end). It gets easier after that with some dramatic imagery.

'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished.

In other words, how nice it would be to die and not have to put up with the hardship of living in a world of pain and suffering.

To die, to sleep;
To sleep: Perchance to dream: Ay, there's the rub

This is the second repetition mentioned above, and for some reason most people seem to know this one. Rub here means an obstacle or an uneven piece of ground, as in the expression 'rub of the green' in bowls or golf.

For in the sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause.

In other words, we may die, but will our suffering end? Will our eternal rest in fact be the eternal nightmare of hellish torment? That possiblity is enough to give us pause when we contemplate suicide – or to give us 'paws' if you want to think of a silly canine or feline alternative. If you are a Monty Python lover, the intervening line should not cause you much trouble. (For those that that aren't, it is paraphrased in the famous Parrot Sketch.)

There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.

There are several occasions in this soliloquy when Shakespeare chucks a full stop in the middle of a line. It is good to remember at which point these breaks (or caesurae) come; this one – helpfully – is preceded by the word pause.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

A colourful image that starts a five line shopping list of things that people will put up with rather than face an unknown fate through committing suicide. Note the association of life at the end of the previous line and time this one.

The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

Most of these burdens of life remain as resonant today as they were 400 years ago – unfair government, insulting behaviour (contumely), lost love, lawyers, jumped-up officials. The last in the list is a bit more obscure, meaning the abuse that a good person receives from those not fit to tie their shoelaces.

When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?

Some unusual language here, quietus meaning a 'rest' or 'release from life', and bodkin being a kind of sharp tool used to punch holes in leather, i.e. a weapon with which to take your own life. Note the helpful rhyme between takes and make.

Who would fardels bear
To grunt and sweat under this weary life

Here is the second notable mid-line sentence break in the soliloquy – a useful milestone when learning the whole thing. A fardel is a burden. Perhaps the very peculiarity of some of the words in the preceding two sections helps tie them together around the question mark.

But that the dread of something after death,
That undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will

Call me smutty, but I always think it helps to think of the rudest possible associations in order to make some texts memorable. Therefore the unassuming conjunction but becomes the huge, great, hairy American 'butt', or backside. It fits quite nicely after the preceding descriptions of grunting and sweating, and bare bodkins. Slightly more poetically, you may also notice the juxtaposition here between life and death (contrasting the life/time of a few lines earlier).

And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

Pick up the will-ills rhyme, and think of the Animal Kingdom when approaching the words bear and fly, two creatures of great dissimilarity which make an appealing, and memorable, juxtaposition

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

Another repetition to look out for (thus) and what now appears to be a somewhat politically incorrect, or non-inclusive, invocation of vigorous native behaviour, and a more pallid introspect approach.

And enterprises of great pitch and moment
In this regard there passions turn awry
And lose the name of action.

If you've had enough, you could stop here. This is where Hamlet's musings come to their conclusion, namely that life sucks, but for most of us the fear of what comes after means we're stuck with it. Some readings of the text give pith instead of pitch. The last section is when he is disturbed by Ophelia, who is praying as she walks (orison is a kind of prayer)

Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd`

Hamdillah ala Salama, Alan

Mnemonic method

A word of explanation about this photomontage. I've been reading up on memory techniques and stumbled across the "Dominic Method" . The originator, Dominic O'Brien, says the best way to remember long combinations of numbers is to link any pair of numbers (00, 01, 02... 98, 98) to a memorable character. That way long numbers become a series of memorable characters doing things to each other - or positioned along a familiar journey - which is much more memorable than a string of random numbers.

In his book How to Develop a Brilliant Memory Mr O'Brien says start off by writing down the numbers 00 to 99 and any combinations that immediately suggest characters to you (Number 10 - British Prime Minister, or Bo Derek/Dudley Moore) should "be" that number. Then he suggests you make up the rest using a letter=number system (so that 20=BO=Billy Ocean, 21=BA=Bryan Adams, 22=BB=Brigitte Bardot, etc). He suggests the characters, but gives you the chance to make up your own ones using the same initials.

Well, I found this damnably difficult to learn (and it threw some slightly sinister numbers - 18=AH=Adolf Hitler, which apparently is the neo-Nazi code for Der Fuhrer as well, using exactly the same system - PLEASE NOTE, I am not suggesting that's how Mr O'Brien got there!).

Anyway, I thought I'd try to look for my own purely numerical links, however tenuous or obscure. And here they are:

00) The Mean Machine - Dick Dastardly's car in Wacky Races
01) Peter Shilton - former England goalkeeper's shirt number
02) Number Two - Dr Evil's sidekick in the Austin Powers films
03) The Three Witches - from Shakespeare's Macbeth
04) Freddie Flintoff - England cricketer hitting a boundary, scoring four
05) The Jackson ....
06) The Number of the Beast (and the Devil from South Park)
07) The Magnificent ...
08) Spiderman - bitten by a radioactive spider - arachnid - eight legs
09) Kim Basinger - .... and a half weeks
10) Bo Derek, in the film .....
11) Neil Armstrong - astronaut on Apollo ....
12) Apostles at the Last Supper
13) Dan Marino's shirt number at the Miami Dolphins
14) Thierry Henry's shirt number at Arsenal
15) JPR Williams shirt number for Wales (full back)
16) Pope Benedict XVI
17) Queen Silvia of Sweden at whose wedding Abba sang the song Dancing Queen ("young and sweet only 17"), thought to be a tribute to her, although she was 33 at the time
18) Seve Ballesteros, playing an 18-hole golf course
19) Mick Jagger, singing about a series of nervous breakdowns
20) The international dialing code for Egypt
21) The best hand in Blackjack/Vingt-et-un
22) Joseph Heller, author of a well-known anti-war novel
23) David Beckham's shirt number at Real Madrid
24) Jack Bauer - the number of hours in one of his bad days
25) Tina Turner - the speed limit in Nutbush, Tn, her childhood home
26) Pheidippides - who ran the first marathon (= ... miles)
27) Wild Al Yankovic - obsessed with the number ...
28) Cillian Murphy in Danny Boyle's film ... Days Later
29) Atomic number of copper - Chief Wiggum of the Simpsons, a well-known copper
30) June Whitfield - days in the month of June
31) Brian May - days in the month of May
32) Teeth of an adult human
33) Revolutions per minute of a long-playing record
34) The ninth number in Leonardo of Pisa (aka Fibonacci)'s series
35) David Hemings with 35mm camera in Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup
36) Views of Mount Fuji by Hokusai
37) Age of the character Dennis in Monty Python and the Holy Grail
38) Longitude of line dividing North and South Korea
39) Steps, Film Alfred Hitchcock, Book John Buchan
40) Pop group UB...
41) George Bush Snr, America's 41st President
42) Pop group Level ...
43) George Bush Jnr, America's 43rd President
44) Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry, with .44 calibre Magnum
45) Tony Blair's purported number of minutes in which Saddam Hussein's Iraq could attack the UK with weapons of mass destruction, subsequently proved to be utter nonsense.
46) Monty Panesar's one-day-international number for England
47) Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle
48) Year of the Nakba, David Ben Gurion declares State of Israel
49) The California Gold Rush (1849)
50) Ways to leave your lover (Paul Simon)
51) Area 51 in Nevada, USAF base linked to alien conspiracy theories
52) Pop group the B-....s
53) Herbie, the Love Bug, its race number
54) Studio 54 performer Donna Summer
55) BC, when JC invaded GB
56) Gamal Abdul Nasser, protagonist in Suez Crisis in that year
57) Heinz varieties
58) Year Elvis Presley conscripted
59) New York street, leading to Queens. Actor Kevin James in US sit-com King of Queens
60) Crafty Cockney Eric Bristow, a darts player. Highest score with single dart
61) Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisted
62) Wallace and Gromit's house number (West Wallaby Street)
63) Hull number of USS Kitty Hawk
64) Positions in the Karma Sutra
65) Year Winston Churchill died
66) Year Bobby Chalton lifts World Cup for England
67) Year of Naksa, Moshe Dayan commands Israeli forces in capture of Sinai, West Bank, Gaza and Golan Heights
68) Year of Paris student riots
69) Year Jimi Hendrix played at Woodstock festival
70) Year Brazil won World Cup
71) Year (BCE) in which Roman army quashed Sparticus' slave uprising (Third Servile War)
72) Year (C20) that Marlon Brando won an Oscar for The Godfather
73) Age of James Brown (the real Godfather) when he passed away
74) Year Al Pacino won an Oscar for The Godfather II
75) Rover model
76) Trombones in the Big Parade (film "The Music Man")
77) Václav Havel, one of the founders of Charter 77
78) Revolutions per minute on old gramophone record
79) Year Margaret Thatcher came to power in UK
80) Jules Verne, author of Around the World in Eighty Days
81) Lizzie Borden, gave father 40 whacks, mother 41 (=81)
82) Year of Israeli invasion of Lebanon, masterminded by Ariel Sharon
83) Year (BCE) of Mark Anthony's birth (played by Richard Burton
84) Year of setting of George Orwell's book 19...
85) Year of birth (BCE) of Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy
86) Code of Special Agent Maxwell Smart in Get Smart
87) Unlucky number in Australian cricket (greatest Aussie Cricketer, Sir Donald Bradman)
88) Two fat ladies in bingo callers slang
89) Year of the French revolution (C18)
90) Joe 90, TV puppet
91) Year Saddam Hussein's forces expelled from Kuwait
92) In Fourteen hundred and ...., Columbus said the ocean blue
93) Flight number of US jet hijacked on 9/11
94) Continued on P94, a running joke in Private Eye magazine
95) Nine-to-Five, song by Dolly Parton
96) Number of tears in song by the Stranglers of that name
97) Year Diana Princess of Wales died
98) Human body temperature in degree system of Gabriel Fahrenheit
99) Neun und neunzig Luftballons, song by Nena

So if you need to quickly and permanently memorize the number, for example 45295302

Tony Blair launches an unprovoked attack on Chief Wigguum, and tries to escape in Herbie the Lovebug, but Dr Evil's sidekick, No2, is already in it. and locks him out.

Not ready for Web 2.0

The head of my department has spoken, and it's not good news I'm afraid: I'm not allowed to write anything about my work or link to any of my articles in this blog. Unfortunately it's a decision I have to accept under our rules.

I can, however, keep this page going and link to my favourite blogs. I can also make posts of a non-BBC nature. And I can blog my stuff on Flickr. So that's something.

Waiting

There's been some internal debate at my office about the necessity/advisability of me having this blog, and at the moment I'm waiting to see if the powers that be can come up with some clear parametres for any blogging activity I might undertake. Sorry for the delay.

In the meantime, I am becoming ever more acutely aware of the news values of blogs in my work at the Middle East index on the BBC News website, so at least my own list of blogs is serving a useful purpose.

Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem

Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem
Originally uploaded by masser.

My first picture on Flickr to go past 1,500 views. I wonder why.

DOs and DON'Ts and DON'T KNOWs

I've been doing a bit of research about what is and isn't possible for me to do on the web in some pretty precise BBC guidelines for editorial staff, such as myself, about what they can and can't do in private blogs.

If you're not identifying yourself as BBC staff and are talking about personal interests, you can pretty much do what you want.

If you are identifiable, like me, the main points are that you're supposed to "behave well" when blogging and must abide by the corporation's editorial values and policies in your posts. You can discuss you work for the BBC in "ways that benefit" the corporation, but mustn't reveal confidential information about it.

You also need to tell your manager, which I've done, and include a disclaimer that says you're not speaking on behalf of the Beeb, ditto.

It continues: "Unless there are specific concerns about the nature of your job, you are free to talk about BBC programmes and content on your blog. Consult your manager if in any doubt."

Well, obviously working on the Middle East there are plenty of concerns - it's one of the most controversial subjects we deal with - so I still need to clear that one up with my bosses and work out what's permissible. However, in the guidelines for managers section, it says they shouldn't take an unnecessarily restrictive approach. But:

"In some cases individuals may be dealing with matters which are so sensitive (that sounds like me) that rules may have to be set on what they can and cannot talk about on their personal blog.

"For example those involved in factual areas should not advocate a particular position on high profile controversial subjects relevant to their areas."

Fair enough, but I'll have to wait and see what they say.

PS, I liked the line in the guidelines: "You should not use your blogs to attack or abuse colleagues" (only in person, then!)