Of honour'd bones indeed. What should be said? I can create the rest: virtue and she, Be her own dower: honour and wealth, from me. X. Humlet's instruction to the Players. 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 had spoke my lines. And 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 robusteous perriwig-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. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'er. step not the modesty of nature: for any thing so over. done is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as it were the mirror up to nature; to shew virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of one of which must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. Oh! there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, (not to speak it profanely,) that neither having the accent of christian. nor the gait of christian, pagan, nor man, have sc strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of na ture's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably. And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them: for there be of them, that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. That is villainous, and shews a most pitiful ambition in the fool who uses it. XI. Polonius to Laertes. THERE, my blessings with you; Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, Bear it that the opposer may beware of thee. Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; XII. The Countess Roussillon to her son Bertram, Be thou blest, Bertram! and succeed thy father In manners as in shape! Thy blood and virtue G Contend for empire in thee! and thy goodness Share with thy birthright! Love all; trust a few; and keep thy friend Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence, But never tax'd for speech. What heaven more will, That thee may furnish, and my prayers pluck down, Fall on thy head! Farewell. XIII. Exiled Duke's encouragement to exiles. Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, XIV. Friar Lawrence dissuading Romeo from committing suicide. HOLD thy desperate hand: Art thou a man? thy form cries out thou art; Unseemly woman, in a seeming man! By doing damned hate upon thyself? Why rail'st thou on thy birth, the heaven and earth? And usest none in that true use indeed Thy dear love, sworn, but hollow perjury, And thou dismember'd with thine own defence. XV. Norfolk's advice to the Duke of Buckingham, to restrain resentment. I ADVISE you, (And take it from a heart that wishes towards you What his high hatred would effect wants not Let your reason with your choler question Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot -And lose by over-running. Know you not, Who's stronger to direct you than yourself; XVI. John of Gaunt encouraging his son Boling broke going into banishment. ALL places that the eye of heaven visits Arc to a wise man ports and happy havens. Teach thy necessity to reason thus; |