posted
Well, you should have started sooner, but I won't dwell on that.
The big question is, how are you being graded? Are you performing it or writing it down? If performing, will the teacher be sitting there with your text to make sure that every line is perfect?
Here's a starter: Either way, I recommend sitting down at your computer with the lines you've chosen and write them out in a word processor. Do this several times. The process of typing it over and over should help.
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Try: Up up down down left right left right B A start. It always has helped me get where I want to go with what little free time I had.
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posted
To be or not to be, that is the question Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.
To die, to sleep. To sleep perchance to dream. Aye there's the rub. For in that sleep of death what dreams may come? Who would bodkins bare...
Ok. That's all I remember from my High School Shakespeare Memorization requirements. Not bad for 25 years gone by.
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posted
Noble lord, Go to the rude ribs of that ancient castle. Through brazen trumpet send the breath of parlay Into his ruined ears, and thus deliver:
...Wait, that's Richard II.
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posted
It's a reference (and I thought an excellent one) to the NES game Contra (or is it Metroid?).
When I wanted to memorize Hamlet lines I checked out a film version, grabbed the audio and made a tape. I listened to the tape over and over, quoting along with it, until I had the lines memorized.
I agree that typing it will also help.
As for monologues, I'd recommend:
quote:O, that this too too solid flesh would melt Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this! But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two: So excellent a king; that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth! Must I remember? why, she would hang on him, As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on: and yet, within a month-- Let me not think on't--Frailty, thy name is woman!-- A little month, or ere those shoes were old With which she follow'd my poor father's body, Like Niobe, all tears:--why she, even she-- O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason, Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle, My father's brother, but no more like my father Than I to Hercules: within a month: Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, She married. O, most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! It is not nor it cannot come to good: But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.
followed by the infamous
quote:To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, 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, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? 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, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.--Soft you now! The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember'd.
Then you could do
quote:Now might I do it pat, now he is praying; And now I'll do't. And so he goes to heaven; And so am I revenged. That would be scann'd: A villain kills my father; and for that, I, his sole son, do this same villain send To heaven. O, this is hire and salary, not revenge. He took my father grossly, full of bread; With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May; And how his audit stands who knows save heaven? But in our circumstance and course of thought, 'Tis heavy with him: and am I then revenged, To take him in the purging of his soul, When he is fit and season'd for his passage? No! Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent: When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage, Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed; At gaming, swearing, or about some act That has no relish of salvation in't; Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven, And that his soul may be as damn'd and black As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays: This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.
By my count that's exactly 90 lines. In my cursory scan, there are no 90 line uninterrupted monologues, so I assume it's alright to do it piecemeal.
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posted
Ninety lines? Sheesh... When I took Hamlet in college, I was required to learn only the first 15-20 lines or so of "To be or not to be...". Guess it worked; still remember it fifteen years later.
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posted
" In my cursory scan, there are no 90 line uninterrupted monologues, so I assume it's alright to do it piecemeal."
Yes, I am doing "O that this too, too sullied flesh would melt," "What a piece of work is man," "O what a rogue and peasant slave am I," "To be or not to be" and "What is a man" for a total of 120 lines of the most famous monologues from the play.
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posted
Well, when you consider that Hamlet has about 2000 lines (I may be off, but I think that's right), 90 isn't all that bad. I find that once you learn iambic pentameter it's easier to memorize because of the way the lines flow.
As a side note, I once had a director who made us recite "O what a rogue and peasant slave am I" while we did jumping jacks. Nothing like Shakespeare-ersizing.
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Although the clip wasn't that uproariously funny, it was good just to see Hugh Laurie and Rowan Atkinson doing their thing. Blackadder Goes Forth has to be some of the best comedy ever.
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quote:Originally posted by Nighthawk: Ninety lines? Sheesh... When I took Hamlet in college, I was required to learn only the first 15-20 lines or so of "To be or not to be...". Guess it worked; still remember it fifteen years later.
Yeah, for me it was high school, but also 20 lines. And I still know 'em, mostly.
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