**Samples of Characterie**
# Introduction
To get experience reading Characterie, it is important to read many examples. Sadly, historical texts provide very few surviving examples of Characterie. I'll provide here additional texts for you to practice on.
However, more than many other shorthand methods, Characterie is written to make sense to the original author above all else. Word associations that make sense to you will not necessarily make sense to others. Once you have read these, it is important that you try to write some texts of your own, and then practice reading those back weeks or months later.
# Contemporary Writings
## Hamlet - *Act 3, Scene 1*
!!!
**Original text.**
To be, or not to be, Ay there's the point,
To Die, to sleep, is that all? Ay all:
No, to sleep, to dream, Ay marry there it goes,
For in that dream of death, when we awake,
And borne before an everlasting Judge,
From whence no passenger ever retur'nd,
The undiscovered country, at whose sight
The happy smile, and the accursed damn'd.
*Note:* This is a particularly interesting quote since it comes from what is known as the "Bad Quarto" of *Hamlet*. This is a version of the play that differs from all the others, and is often viewed as being of lower quality.
One of the proposed theories of its origins is that it was written down in Characterie and then transcribed, perhaps during a performance of an abbreviated version of the play presented at Oxford or Cambridge. Being published in 1603, 15 years after Characterie itself, and filled with various points at which synonyms that start with the same first letter are substituted, it seems distinctly plausible.
Look up at this again. It might very similar to the original text used to preserve this performance in 1603.
**Original text.**
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
**Original text.**
But soft, what light forth yonder window breakes?
It is the East, and Iuliet is the Sunne,
Arise faire Sunne, and kill the enuious Moone
That is alreadie sicke, and pale with griefe:
That thou her maid, art far more faire than she.
Be not her maide since she is enuious,
Her vestall liuerie is but pale and greene,
And none but fooles doe weare it, cast it off.
*Note:* This is again taken from a bad quarto (1597), and thus may have been recorded originally in Characterie before publication. Now, ask yourself: do you think Characterie could have produced this text?
**Original text.**
We fewe, we happie fewe, we bond of brothers,
For he to day that sheads his blood by mine,
Shall be my brother: be he ne're so base,
This day shall gentle his condition.
Then shall he strip his sleeues, and shew his skars
And say, these wounds I had on Crispines day:
And Gentlemen in England now a bed,
Shall thinke themselues accurst,
And hold their manhood cheape,
While any speake that fought with vs
Vpon Saint Crispines day.
*Note:* This is yet again taken from a bad quarto (1600).
**Original text.**
What though the sea with waves continuall
Doe eate the earth, it is no more at all;
Ne is the earth the lesse, or loseth ought:
For whatsoever from one place doth fall
Is with the tyde unto another brought:
For there is nothing lost, that may be found if sought.
**Original text.**
**The Three Laws of Robotics.**
* *The First Law:* A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
* *The Second Law:* A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
* *The Third Law:* A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
**Original text.**
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before!
**Original text.**
The thing that he was about to do was to open a diary. This was not illegal (nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if detected it was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced-labour camp. Winston fitted a nib into the penholder and sucked it to get the grease off. The pen was an archaic instrument, seldom used even for signatures, and he had procured one, furtively and with some difficulty, simply because of a feeling that the beautiful creamy paper deserved to be written on with a real nib instead of being scratched with an ink-pencil. Actually he was not used to writing by hand. Apart from very short notes, it was usual to dictate everything into the speak-write which was of course impossible for his present purpose. He dipped the pen into the ink and then faltered for just a second. A tremor had gone through his bowels. To mark the paper was the decisive act. In small clumsy letters he wrote: April 4th, 1984.