In this treacherous atmosphere, the idea of a play about a violent rabble trying to overthrow the powers that be makes more sense. But it still doesn’t explain the rebels’ specific hostility to Gutenberg’s invention, a plot element that could not have come from the historical revolt on which the play is based, which took place in the fourteenth century, before the press even existed. It was Shakespeare who worked this detail into the story. Like Gutenberg, he left behind few clues about his life and the thinking that drove his work. However, we do know that he lived in a rapidly changing world, and one of the key forces driving the change was technology. The printing press was transforming society in countless ways, and, as with digital technology, some of the changes were a source of anxiety and tension.
The printing press had dramatically increased book production. There were an estimated 8 million printed copies of books in Europe by 1500 and far more by Shakespeare’s time. In most respects this was a tremendously positive development. As more people learned to read and gained access to books, the opportunities for individual growth and advancement multiplied, which in the long run could only be good for the world. There’s no better example of this than Shakespeare himself, who was born into a community where few could read and one day would be called “the poet of the human race.”
But it can take a long time for a society to adjust to a powerful new technology and figure out its best uses. And for all the salutary effects of print, it presented challenges. Though today we know the printing press played a crucial role in the rise of individualism and democracy, like any powerful medium it was sometimes used as a tool of social and political control. While books were more plentiful and accessible than ever, they remained expensive, and literacy was far from universal. As the ability to read took on greater importance, the divide between those who could read and those who couldn’t was felt often in everyday life, sometimes in disturbing ways. For instance, English law at the time made a distinction between literate people accused of committing felonies and illiterate ones. In certain cases, accused criminals who could read were tried in ecclesiastical courts, which did not impose the death penalty. The illiterate, meanwhile, went before government courts, where death was a frequent punishment. In effect, people were hanged as a direct result of the fact that they couldn’t read.
In this context, as Greenblatt observes, one can see how a playwright intimately familiar with both worlds, literate and not, could imagine a gang of unlettered ruffians wanting to destroy the presses. Print represented power, and the nonlettered had cause for resentment.
More broadly, this technology simply increased how much there was to know and process. Some 1,500 years after Seneca complained about the burden of all those books, the hunted-mind syndrome was back in a more intense way. Once again, there had been a colossal expansion in the sheer amount of available information, without a matching increase in the capacity of the human mind to absorb it. Beyond books, Europe was awash in pamphlets, advertising placards, commercial and public documents—bureaucracy mushroomed wildly in this period—and many other types of printed matter. The first newspapers were about to be launched. There was a lot to handle, and everyone, even the illiterate, felt its effects. Then as now, it was unsettling just knowing it was all out there. As modern-day scholar Ann Blair has shown, those who lived through the Renaissance experienced something very much akin to the overload we feel today.
What did they do about it? The answer lies a decade further along in Shakespeare’s career, in the most familiar and resonant of his plays, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. There’s a moment in Hamlet that speaks to our technological dilemma and helps explains the curious persistence of paper notebooks in a digital world. In Act I, Hamlet meets the ghost of his dead father, whom everyone at this point believes was killed by a serpent’s bite. The ghost has a news flash: he wasn’t done in by a snake but poisoned by his brother, Hamlet’s uncle Claudius, who is now king. The ghost beseeches Hamlet to avenge this “murder most foul,” and bids him a spooky farewell, “Adieu, adieu, Hamlet. Remember me.”
Hamlet’s reaction to all this is a bit surprising. Rather than focus on the ghost’s staggering message, he reflects on his own state of mind and in particular his memory:
Remember thee?
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe.
The distracted “globe” he’s talking about is his head—the actor playing Hamlet would have grasped his own while reciting the lines. Yes, he’s saying, of course I’ll remember you, because somewhere in this chaotic, unruly brain, I do still have a memory. Shakespeare also seems to be punning off two other meanings of “globe.” On one level, he’s suggesting that the whole world is distracted, and on another, that the audience watching the play in the Globe Theatre might be having some mindfulness issues. Attention deficit disorder was apparently raging long before we gave it that inelegant name.
Hamlet goes on:
Yea, from the table of my memory
I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain
Unmixed with baser matter.
What he’s basically saying is “I’m going to clean out all the mental clutter that makes me so distracted, so the only thing taking up space in my head will be you, Mr. Ghost, and this hideous crime.” Notice that twice in the above lines Shakespeare has Hamlet mention books, but with a different meaning in each case. In the third line, books (and the “saws,” or clichés, that that they contain) are part of the detritus and “pressures” he needs to remove from his mind so he can think clearly. Then, just a few lines later, he likens the brain itself to a book, a very appealing one devoted to a single important subject and absolutely free of worthless trivia (“baser matter”). In effect, he’s saying he’s determined to cure his own mental overload by throwing out the equivalent of a lot of books in order to make room for the one book that really matters, his mind.
Shakespeare had an intense interest in books, as one would expect of a man whose life was shaped by them, and they figure often in his works. There’s another moment in Hamlet where the stage directions call for the prince to enter reading a book. From the above passage, it’s clear that the playwright had a nuanced understanding of the wide range of effects books can have on a person. A book could be a huge obstacle to clear thinking or it could be a tremendous help, depending on how one used it.
But why, amid all this talk of books, does Shakespeare also throw in a table? In the first line of the same passage above, Hamlet compares his memory to a table he’s going to wipe off. When modern audiences hear the word “table,” we think of the four-legged kind that figures prominently in our kitchens and dining rooms. And since we do wipe off those tables, the image initially makes sense. In fact, when Shakespeare used the word “table” in these lines he wasn’t thinking of a piece of furniture. He was thinking of a piece of technology. Several lines down, the word returns:
My tables—meet it is I set it down
That one may smile and smile and be a villain.
At least I’m sure it may be so in Denmark.
[He writes.]
Here Hamlet is marveling that King Claudius can walk around with a smile on his face even though he’s a cold-blooded assassin. This strikes him as a thought worth remembering, one that it would be wise (or “meet”) to record (“set down”). If you’ve seen the play performed, you may have watched the actor playing Hamlet scribble a note at this point. However, you likely didn’t realize that the object he pulled out for this purpose was the one he was referring to when he said “My tables,” as well as in the earlier passage about wiping away the mental clutter.
What are these tables, anyway?
They were an innovative gadget that first appeared in Europe in
the late fifteenth century. Also known as writing tables or table books, they were pocket-sized almanacs or calendars that came with blank pages made of specially coated paper or parchment. Those pages could be written on with a metal stylus and later erased with a sponge, so they were reusable. Tables were a new, improved version of a technology—wax tablets—that had been around for centuries. Instead of wax, their surfaces were made of a plasterlike material that made them much more durable and useful. They became enormously popular in Shakespeare’s lifetime as a solution to the relentless busyness of life. A harried Londoner or Parisian would carry one everywhere, jotting down useful information and quick thoughts, perhaps checking off items on a to-do list.
We don’t know that Shakespeare owned a table himself, but since he took the trouble to insert one into Hamlet and they were very popular among people in his world, it’s not unreasonable to imagine he did. It would have been useful to a man who was not only constantly writing plays (and collecting words and phrases to use in them) but also acting (he played the ghost in Hamlet), running a business of which he was part owner (the Globe), and investing in real estate on the side, all while trying to stay in touch with distant friends and family—his wife and children remained in Stratford, never coming to live with him in London. Never mind the sonnets, the alleged love affairs, and who knows what else. He had a lot on his plate, and for anyone who did, this technology was a godsend. It was a portable, convenient way to manage the endless details of an active life, the period equivalent of our BlackBerrys and iPhones.
According to a scholarly article published in the Shakespeare Quarterly in 2004, the many uses of tables included:
collecting pieces of poetry, noteworthy epigrams, and new words; recording sermons, legal proceedings, or parliamentary debates; jotting down conversations, recipes, cures, and jokes; keeping financial records; recalling addresses and meetings; and collecting notes on foreign customs while traveling.
Users spoke effusively about their tables and swore they couldn’t get by without them. Michel de Montaigne, the great French essayist who was roughly contemporary with Shakespeare, said it was impossible for him to make his way through a complicated discourse with another person “except I have my writing tables about me” for jotting notes. “Yes, sure I never go without Tables,” says a character in an early-seventeenth-century play by Edward Sharpham. Tables migrated to the New World and caught on there, too. Thomas Jefferson owned one, and they remained popular into the nineteenth century.
Given that it played a central role in people’s lives for hundreds of years and helped some of history’s most brilliant minds organize their time and thoughts, it’s remarkable that this device has been almost completely forgotten. In fact, Hamlet’s trusty handheld has a few messages for us.
ONE OF THE most widely held assumptions of modern culture is that when a new technology comes along, it automatically renders obsolete the older ones that performed roughly the same function. The classic case is the buggy whip. When society switched from carriages to automobiles in the early twentieth century, there was no longer any need for buggy whips, and they effectively disappeared. However, it doesn’t always work this way. Older technologies often survive the introduction of newer ones, when they perform useful tasks in ways that the new devices can’t match.
The best example is the hinged door. Watch a science fiction movie some time and pay close attention. You’ll notice that the houses, office buildings, and spaceships of “the future” almost always have sliding doors. Since the 1920s, filmmakers have assumed that in the future there would be no hinged doors whatsoever. Why? Because hinges are old-fashioned and cumbersome. The doors that swing on them take up a lot of space. There’s no good reason we should continue to use this antiquated, literally creaking technology when sliding doors make so much more sense. They’re so sleek and logical and, well, futuristic. Thus, in the popular imagination hinges are always on the verge of extinction.
Yet, as you’ve undoubtedly noticed, hinged doors are still very much with us. Why? Because though sliding doors are aesthetically appealing, when you come down to it, they do only one thing, slide in and out, which is kind of boring. Hinged doors are more interesting precisely because of the way they occupy and move through space. You can burst through one and surprise somebody. You can slam a hinged door loudly to vent your anger or close it very quietly out of concern for a sleeping child. A hinged door is an expressive tool. It works with our bodies in ways that sliding doors don’t.
“Time has given the hinge a rich social complexity that those who foresee its imminent demise fail to appreciate,” writes Paul Duguid, a scholar and author who has used the hinge to demonstrate that new technologies don’t always vanquish or supersede old ones.*
In some instances, an older technology will survive not just by doing what it’s always done well but also by taking on a brand-new role. When television arrived in the 1950s, many expected radio to disappear. Why would you want an old box that produces only sound, when you could have a new one with sound and video? In fact, television did replace radio as the dominant medium for news and entertainment and as a gathering place in the home. But radio found new roles to play. In the automobile, for example, where drivers were not in a position to watch video, radio was a natural choice. Today, in our information-jammed world, many of us enjoy radio precisely because it produces only sound—no text, images, or video—and can relieve media overload.
What does this have to do with Shakespeare? I likened Hamlet’s erasable table to the smart phones we carry around today because, like the latter, it was a new gadget that helped people better manage their busy lives. However, it was a new gadget built on two very old technologies. I’ve already mentioned one, the older wax-based device. The other, much older technology was handwriting. Remember, this was a time when handwritten communication was, in certain crucial ways, on the decline. After centuries of handwritten texts, Gutenberg had come up with a much more efficient technology. People had immediately recognized the value of his invention, and printing had taken off. According to the sliding-door school of thought, then, by Shakespeare’s time handwriting should have been relegated to a much smaller role in society and everyday life.
In fact, the opposite happened. Though hand-produced manuscripts did go into a long, slow decline, beyond the small world of professional scribes the arrival of print set off a tremendous popular expansion in handwriting. Even as the revolutionary new Gutenberg technology was taking hold—and in some ways because it was taking hold—the older one gained new life. There were a couple of reasons for this. First, as printed matter become widely available, the very idea of engaging in written expression suddenly became thinkable to more people. Previously, putting one’s own ideas into words on a page had been the province of the rich and powerful. With printed texts flying around everywhere, this rarefied activity looked less exclusive and intimidating and more appealing. Regular people wanted and often needed to participate in this new conversation. Since most didn’t have access to a press, handwriting was the best way to join in. Many who couldn’t read or write were suddenly motivated to learn.
“The advent of printing was a radical incitement to write, rather than a signal of the demise of handwritten texts,” write Peter Stallybrass, Michael Mendle, and Heather Wolfe, authors of groundbreaking scholarship on this phenomenon. As a result, all sorts of important new technologies for writing by hand appeared after the printing press, including graphite pencils and fountain pens. Print simply made more people want to write.
The second reason handwriting became so popular was that it turned out to be a very useful way to navigate the whirlwind of information loosed by print—to live in a crazy world without going crazy oneself. New shorthand methods were invented for taking down words more efficiently. The script style called “round hand,” the forerunner of the cursive writing we use today, was created during this period, for the same reason.
But the most compelling example
of handwriting’s ability to lighten the burdens of the post-Gutenberg mind was the gadget that Shakespeare gave Hamlet. Here was a fantastic antidote to the new busyness, a portable, easy-to-operate device that allowed the user to impose order on the clamorous world around him. Hamlet wasn’t the only one with a tumultuous, tricky-to-navigate life. Imagine Shakespeare back at home after a busy day at the Globe and perhaps some helter-skelter errands around town. At some point in the evening, maybe just before bedtime, he takes out his tables and reviews everything he’s written there since morning. He pulls the stylus out of its handy hidden groove in the binding and circles the jots he wants to keep, while X-ing out those that can be tossed. He transcribes each of the keepers to the appropriate hard-copy volume, which might be a diary, a commonplace book for saved quotes and scraps of language, or a financial accounts book. When he’s done, he takes a small sponge (or a wet fingertip) and erases the surface of the pages so they’re ready for the next day. And no charger to plug in!
The easy erasability of tables was central to their success. In an epoch when so many words were being committed permanently to the printed page—more than any one mind could handle—this gadget moved in exactly the opposite direction. At the owner’s command, it made words go away, vanish, cease weighing on the soul. “Don’t worry,” Hamlet’s nifty device whispered, “you don’t have to know everything. Just the few things that matter.”
In effect, it was a pushback against all the people and information that were closing in, or often seemed to be. With one of these in your pocket, you were in the driver’s seat. You could be selective about what you brought home with you—both literally home to your dwelling and figuratively home to your mind. It was a surrogate for the mind, a visible, tangible representation of what was going on inside your own “globe,” and a way of improving its performance. This is essentially what Hamlet vows to do when he likens his own mind to a table that he’s erasing, so he can focus on Topic A. He is cleaning up the internal mess, starting fresh.
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