Introduction to Literature, spring 2007
Memorization quiz #2

In class May 15, you will be expected to recite a selection from As You Like It from memory. Possibilities, some poetry and some prose, are attached. Please choose one that is especially interesting to you, or that you like, even if you don’t know (yet!) what you like about it – you will be living with it for a while!

There are two possible bonuses attached to this assignment. You can earn the first if you are still able to recite the poem you learned for the first memorization quiz. You can earn the second by memorizing the longest speech attached here (I’ve marked which one it is). (And yes, it is possible to do both bonuses if you like.)

As with the first memorization quiz, you should feel free to take the rest of class time on May 15 to read, work on other assignments, have breakfast, etc., and to leave when you’re done. If we need more than one class period to complete the quiz (this one may take longer depending on the number of people who are reciting bonus poems), then it will continue at the beginning of class on May 16. (The remainder of class on the 16th will be devoted to review for the final exam.)

Some suggestions about memorization:

• It helps to understand the passage fully. Be sure to look up any words that you don’t know.
• Work line-by-line – don’t necessarily try to learn the whole speech at once. Get the first line or sentence down, then add the second, or start at the end with the last line, and add the next-to-last line, and so on.
• Work on memorization even in odd moments of the day – for example, tape the poem to your mirror and study it while brushing your teeth.
• Do practice reciting the speech out loud, not only in your head to yourself. If you just think through it, rather than talking through it, you may not be able to recite it out loud when the time comes. But it also may help to practice writing the speech from memory, as well as speaking it from memory.
• You might try recording yourself reading the speech, and playing the recording, memorizing from what you hear and not just from what you see.
• It sometimes helps to walk around while memorizing. I don’t know why this works, but many students have found it helpful in the past.

DUKE SENIOR: Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we not the penalty of Adam,
The seasons’ difference – as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind,
Which when it bites and blows upon my body
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile, and say”
‘This is no flattery. These are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.’
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
(2.1.1–17)

JAQUES: As I do live by food, I met a fool,
Who laid him down and basked him in the sun,
And railed on Lady Fortune in good terms,
In good set terms – and yet a motley fool!
‘Good morrow, fool,’ quoth I. ‘No, sir,’ quoth he,
‘Call me not fool till heaven hath sent me fortune.’
And then he drew a dial from his poke,
And looking on it with lack-lustre eye
Says very wisely ‘It is ten o’clock.
Thus we may see’, quoth he, ‘how the world wags.
’Tis but an hour ago since it was nine,
And after one hour more ’twill be eleven.
And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe,
And then from hour to hour we rot and rot,
And thereby hangs a tale.’
(2.7.14–28)

This most famous, yet longer, speech is the bonus:
JAQUES: All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school; and then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow; then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth; and then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
(2.7.140-167)
(Or memorize just the first half, up to “Even in the cannon’s mouth,” for regular credit.)

ROSALIND: No, faith; die by attorney. The poor world is almost six thousand years old, and in all this time there was not any man died in his own person (videlicet, in a love-cause). Troilus had his brains dashed out with a Grecian club, yet he did what he could to die before, and he is one of the patterns of love. Leander, he would have lived many a fair year though Hero had turned nun, if it had not been for a hot midsummer night; for, good youth, he went but forth to wash him in the Hellespont and, being taken with the cramp, was drowned, and the foolish chroniclers of that age found it was Hero of Sestos. But these are all lies. Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.
(4.1.86–92)

TOUCHSTONE: O sir, we quarrel in print, by the book, as you have books for good manners. I will name you the degrees: the first, the retort courteous; the second, the quip modest; the third, the reply churlish; the fourth, the reproof valiant; the fifth, the counter-check quarrelsome; the sixth, the lie with circumstance; the seventh, the lie direct. All these you may avoid but the lie direct and you may avoid that, too, with an ‘if’. I knew when seven justices could not take up a quarrel, but when the parties were met themselves, one of them thought but of an ‘if’: as, ‘If you said so, then I said so’; and they shook hands and swore brothers. Your ‘if’ is the only peacemaker; much virtue in ‘if’.
(5.4.89–101)

ROSALIND: It is not the fashion to see the lady the Epilogue, but it is no more unhandsome than to see the lord the Prologue. If it be true that good wine needs no bush, ’tis true that a good play needs no epilogue. Yet to good wine they do use good bushes, and good plays prove the better by the help of good epilogues. What a case am I in then, that am neither a good epilogue, nor cannot insinuate with you in the behalf of a good play. I am not furnished like a beggar, therefore to beg will not become me. My way is to conjure you, and I’ll begin with the women. I charge you, O women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of this play as please you. And I charge you, O men, for the love you bear to women (as I perceive by your simpering none of you hates them), that between you and the women the play may please. If I were a woman I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me, complexions that liked me, and breaths that I defied not. And I am sure as many as have good beards, or good faces, or sweet breaths will for my kind offer, when I make curtsy, bid me farewell.
(Epilogue, 1–21)