Shaping Remembrance from Shakespeare to Milton

Intertheatrical Cues and Shakespearean backstories

“…[43][44], is a collocation of memory images and suggestively urged associations that cause the narrative to fold back on itself in order to move the plot forward (Cym., 2.4.68-90). 55 By such means the audience is primed to gain access to a hypodiegetic "memory picture," much in the same way as emblems, collocated commonplaces, and other mnemotechnical schemes enable one to invent and retain whole histories for future recollection and use. Such is the powerful tug of memory in the on-stage disclosure of Shakespeare's allusively proleptic backstories.…”