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Enter HAMLET and
PLAYERS
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HAMLET and the
PLAYERS enter.
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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
your players do, I had as lief 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 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.
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HAMLET Perform the speech just as I taught you, musically and smoothly.
If you exaggerate the words the way some actors do, I might as well
have some newscaster read the lines. Don’t use too many
hand gestures; just do a few, gently, like this. When you get into a
whirlwind of passion on stage, remember to keep the emotion moderate
and smooth. I hate it when I hear a blustery actor in a wig tear a
passion to shreds, bursting everyone’s eardrums so as to
impress the audience on the lower levels of the playhouse, who for
the most part can only appreciate loud noises and pantomime shows. I
would whip a guy for making a tyrant sound too tyrannical.
That’s as bad as those old plays in which King Herod
ranted. Please avoid doing that.
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FIRST PLAYER I warrant your honor.
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FIRST PLAYER I will, sir.
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HAMLET 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'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. Now
this overdone or come tardy off, though it make the
unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve, the
censure of the which one must in your allowance
o'erweigh
a whole theatre of others.
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HAMLET But don’t be too tame, either—let your good
sense guide you. Fit the action to the word and the word to the
action. Act natural at all costs. Exaggeration has no place in the
theater, where the purpose is to represent reality, holding a mirror
up to virtue, to vice, and to the spirit of the times. If you handle
this badly, it just makes ignorant people laugh while regular
theater-goers are miserable—and they’re the
ones you should be keeping happy.
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