_Shakespeare._
* * * * *
HAMLET'S ADVICE TO THE PLAYERS.
HAMLET _and_ PLAYER _discovered._
HAMLET. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced
it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth
it, as many of our players do, I had as lieve the town-crier
spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your
hand thus; but use all gently: for in the very torrent,
tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion,
you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give
it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul, to hear a
robustious, periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters,
to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who,
for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable
dumb shows, and noise! I would have such a fellow
whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod
pray you avoid it.
1ST ACT. (R.) I warrant your honour.
HAM. Be not too tame, neither; but let your own discretion
be your tutor: suit the action to the word, and
the word to the action; with this special observance, that
you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for anything so
overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both
at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the
mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature,
scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the
time, his form and pressure.
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