A Research On "Memory" In Shakespeare’s Plays

The early modern period was a time of changing circumstances and technological change that led to changes in the understanding and perception of memory.As a great playwright who was deeply concerned with his time,Shakespeare depicted many memory-related objects and contents as well as characters and episodes associated with memory in his plays,showing his thoughts on the problem of memory in the early modern era.This paper attempts to explore the unattended issue of‘memory’ in Shakespeare’s plays in the context of early modern history,and to reveal the memory crisis faced by early modern England.This paper analyses the depiction of the phenomenon of memory presented in Shakespeare’s plays with the relevant theories of memory to explain the subjects of memory and identity,emotion and history presented in the plays,and attempts to analyze the value and significance of Shakespeare’s focus on the issue of memory in his plays.Chapter 1 Introduction provides an introduction to the significance of the research,a review of national and international research,and research methods.Chapter 2 focuses on memory in early modern England.Writing,printing technology and the Reformation brought attention to the preservation of memory,and the early modern perception of memory was enriched by the doctrine of bodily fluids and the promotion of memory training in humanist education.The crisis of memory in the context of the times drew Shakespeare’s attention to early modern understandings of memory,which helped Shakespeare to think about ‘memory’ in his plays.Chapters 3 focuses on the analysis of the links between memory and identity and love.Four works,Romeo and Juliet,A Midsummer Night’s Dream,Twelfth Night and All’s Well That Ends Well,are discussed.These plays all share a concern with identity,with emotion,and with memory as it relates to the identification of identity and the establishment of emotion.The emergence of love brought about the effect of forgetting,including the forgetting of familial and class relations that constitute the memory of identity.Chapter 4 focuses on the links between memory,kingship and the writing of history,and analyses forgetfulness in the struggle for kingship and the writing of history.Three plays are selected: Hamlet,Richard II and Macbeth.The story of Hamlet takes place at the completion of the struggle for kingship,and Hamlet is the descendant of the disempowered man.Richard II is set in the middle of the struggle for kingship,and Richard II is the disempowered man himself.Macbeth serves the future of the struggle for kingship,and Macbeth is the usurper.In historical memory,there is the problem of the forgotten,both on the side of the dispossessed and on the side of the usurper,who constitute a link in the writing of history with the memory of their own suffering.Shakespeare focused on the problem of the memory of the forgotten dead under the writing of history.The problems of memory in Shakespeare’s plays reflect the memory crisis of the early modern period.Shakespeare incorporates early modern concepts of memory in his plays to present a unique literary imagination of the process of memory.Shakespeare’s writing on memory allows us to better understand early modern perceptions of memory and,in this sense,Shakespeare’s plays participate in the construction of the ideological history of memory in the early modern period.