speech'; and, being requested to choose one, he
refers to a speech he once heard the player declaim. This
speech, he says, was never 'acted' or was acted only once; for
the play pleased not the million. But he, and others whose
opinion was of more importance than his, thought it an
excellent play, well constructed, and composed with equal
skill and temperance. One of these other judges commended it
because it contained neither piquant indecencies nor
affectations of phrase, but showed 'an honest method, as
wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than
fine.'[260] In this play Hamlet 'chiefly loved' one speech;
and he asks for a part of it.

Let the reader now refer to the passage I have just
summarised; let him consider its tone and manner; and let him
ask himself if Hamlet can possibly be speaking ironically. I
am sure he will answer No. And then let him observe what
follows. The speech is declaimed. Polonius interrupting it
with an objection to its length, Hamlet snubs him, bids the
player proceed, and adds, 'He's for a jig or a tale of bawdry:
or he sleeps.' 'He,' that is, 'shares the taste of the million
for sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury, and is
wearied by an honest method.'[261] Polonius later interrupts
again, for he thinks the emotion of the player too absurd; but
Hamlet respects it; and afterwards, when he is alone (and
therefore can hardly be ironical), in contrasting this emotion
with his own insensibility, he betrays no consciousness that
there was anything unfitting in the speech that caused it.

So far I have chiefly followed Warburton, but there is an
important point which seems not to have been observed. All
Hamlet's praise of the speech is in the closest agreement with
his conduct and words elsewhere. His later advice to the
player (III. ii.) is on precisely the same lines. He is to
play to the judicious, not to the crowd, whose opinion is
worthless. He is to observe, like the author of Aeneas'
speech, the 'modesty' of nature. He must not tear a 'passion'
to tatters, to split the ears of the incompetent, but in the
very tempest of passion is to keep a temperance and
smoothness. The million, we gather from the first passage,
cares nothing for construction; and so, we learn in the second