It's not so difficult, Jayne. When I was eighteen I played Iago, which was 700 lines to learn, even in our cut version. It was a bloody sight easier than learning all those Chemistry thingies, because what iago says is interesting and chemistry is terminally boring. Thank God there are geeks who will do it for us.

Oddly enough, after damn near fifty years I can remember Othello's speeches better.

I have my kids (9th and 10th graders) memorize a sonnet's length every two weeks. Here we are in April and we started in August, so about 240 lines for the year so far. That's including Chaucer's "Your eyen two wol sley me sodeinly" and Donne's "Go and catch a falling star, get with child a mandrake root..."

One point: I let them do the poems in accents. British, German, French,
Unidentifiable. I do them, too. Stereotypes: dumb jock, pampered mamma's boy. I speed them up and slow them down. We say them in unison as if marching off to war. Drunk. Dying. The Russian formalists would have given what I do some name like foregrounding or impounding or rebounding. Occasionally, I find someone who wants to do it straight up, no chaser.

God bless Lance Levins.

Tim, haven't you always sworn that Warren made you memorize the first book of "Paradise Lost"?

Edna Millay claimed to have memorized Keats' "Lamia" & "Eve of Saint Agnes".

(I'm still working on Macbeth's speech that begins "Now o'er the one half world Nature seems dead...")

Can I be in your class please, Mr Levens, sir? :)

Jayne

You're all invited, St. John's Episcopal Church, Cranmer Hall, Savannah GA, every Tues and Thurs, 10-11:30. Just listen for "The Ancient Mariner" sounding arr--gh!, suspiciously like Long John Silver.

Just heard the link of "O'Driscoll." Terrific! Thanks, John.

Yes, Gail. Mr Warren had me memorize 90 lines of Milton the first week, then the rest of the first book, the second week, then five more books in the succeeding weeks. Then he switched me to Chaucer and Shakespeare. What a teacher!

Tim,

'Mr Warren had me memorize...' is such a very telling expression. Compliance is required to 'have' anyone 'do' something, and I think it's truly marvellous that Mr Warren had those expectations of you, and you complied with them!

(My husband would 'have me' wash my car, and not load it up with crap, but he's got no chance!)

Jayne

Jayne, drive your car across the pond, then half way across the continent, and I'll wash it. Red Warren was a great teacher.