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While perusing my Shakespeare this evening, I wondered if it would be possible for anyone to accurately memorise the complete works – even if only by rote? Given that prodigious feats of memory were commonplace before we all learned to read and subsequently lost the ability to remember whole sagas at a sitting, would even the highly trained and practised balladeers of the time have had the ability to accomplish this feat (or its equivalent)?

“Would trained balladeers of the time have been able to memorise the complete works of Shakespeare?”

Doug Hunt, Auckland, New Zealand

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This article appeared in print under the headline “A labour lost?”