I want to begin with two exemplary memorial moments. The first is from Henry V, in the lull before the battle at Agincourt. It is a famous moment of social remembering, framed as reminiscence in the future tense:

As Harry presents it, the source of social cohesion is the potential for future re-telling offered by the events that are about to take place. Both the soldiers clustered around Henry and the audience in the theatre are projected forward, into a narrative moment that will give the present (or, more precisely, the near-future) retrospective meaning. The story will be passed on, and embellished ('with advantages'), gaining a momentum of its own, a fictional reality that will allow it, among other things, to be staged at the Globe theatre almost two hundred years later.