Why Paper Is Eternal - Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press ...

the stylus and erasing them later. It was the period equivalent of our own Palm
Pilots and Blackberries, and it remained popular for hundreds of years. Thomas
Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin both owned an ivory version that was in
vogue in their time. 51
The device even makes an appearance in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In Act 1
of the play, after the Prince first meets and converses with the ghost of his
father, that specter vanishes with the famous, spooky farewell: “Adieu, adieu,
Hamlet. Remember me.” In reply, Hamlet basically says, “How could I possibly
forget you?” spinning a metaphor in which he likens his memory to the gadget
that Shakespeare’s audience knew well – erasable tables:
Remember thee?
Yeah, from the table of 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 alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain
Reflecting on what he’s just learned – that his uncle, the King, killed his
father – Hamlet curses the murderer: “O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd
villain!” This idea, that an assassin could walk around smiling, seems to strike
him as a rather original insight and he pulls out his own writing tables to record
it. 52
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