'Rare Accidents' in 1 Henry IV and the Ad Herennium

Abstract

SHAKESPEARE’s familiarity with the Ad Herennium is widely recognized.1 This rhetorical treatise, still generally ascribed to Cicero in the sixteenth century and frequently studied in schools, has been seen as one of Shakespeare’s chief guides to rhetorical practice. It is occasionally a source for specific phrases in his plays and poems, and occasionally too its Latin could directly influence Shakespeare’s English.2 There is one moment in 1 Henry IV when Prince Harry appears to recall the language of the Ad Herennium directly. This occurs in his memorable soliloquy about his tavern companions: The passage on which Shakespeare drew here occurs in the discussion of artificial memory in Book 3 the Ad Herennium, which a few years after 1 Henry IV was to feed into Hamlet’s association between the act of recollection and the recording of notes in table-books.4 Towards the end of his discussion of artificial memory the author of the Ad Herennium argues that an orator should create vivid imagines, or mental pictures, with which he should people the ‘places’ in which he stores these cues to memory. These imagines should not be day-to-day events, but remarkable: Nam si quas res in vita videmus paruas, vsitatas, quotidianas, eas meminisse non solemus. propterea quod nulla, nisi5 noua, aut admirabili re commouetur animus. At si quid videmus, aut audimus egregie turpe, aut honestum,6 inusitatum, magnum, incredibile, ridiculum, id diu meminisse consueuimus. At quod recens audiuimus,7 obliuiscimur plerunque quae acciderunt in pueritia, meminimus optime saepe: nec hoc alia de causa potest accidere, nisi quod vsitatae res facile e memoria elabuntur, insignes & nouae diutius in animo manent. Solis exortus, cursus, occasus nemo admiratur, propterea quia quotidie fiunt: at ecclypses solis magis mirantur, quia raro accidunt: et solis ecclypses magis mirantur quam lunae, propterea quod hae crebriores sunt. Docet ergo se natura vulgari, & vsitata re non exuscitari, nouitate vero, & insigni quodam negotio commoueri. Imitetur igitur ars naturam, & quod ea desiderat, inueniat: quod ostendit, sequatur.8 (3.22.35) [When we see in everyday life things that are petty, ordinary, and day to day, we generally fail to remember them, because the mind is not stirred up by anything except the novel or the marvellous. But if we see or hear something exceptionally base, or honourable, extraordinary, great, unbelievable, or laughable, we are likely to remember it for a long time. But what we have seen recently we generally forget; incidents of our childhood we often remember best. Nor could this be so for any other reason than that ordinary things easily slip from the memory, while the striking and novel stay longer in the mind. A sunrise, the sun’s course, a sunset, are marvellous to no one because they occur daily. But solar eclipses are a source of wonder because they occur seldom (‘raro accidunt’), and indeed are more marvellous than lunar eclipses, because these are more frequent. Thus nature shows that she is not aroused by the common, ordinary event, but is moved by a new or striking occurrence. Let art, then, imitate nature, find what she desires, and follow as she directs.]