ows and noise. Many of
Shakespeare's contemporaries complained that there were playgoers who
approved nothing "but puppetry and loved ridiculous antics," and that
there were men who, going to the playhouse only "to laugh and feed
fool-fat," "checked at all goodness there."[7] No public of any age or
country is altogether free from such infirmities. But the reception
accorded to Shakespeare's plays in the theatre of his day, in
contemporary theatrical conditions, is proof-positive of a signal
imaginative faculty in an exceptionally large proportion of the
playgoers.

[Footnote 7: Chapman's _Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois_, Act I., Sc. i.]

To the Elizabethan actor a warm tribute is due. Shakespeare has
declared with emphasis that no amount of scenery can secure genuine
success on the stage for a great work of the imagination. He is no
less emphatic in the value he sets on competent acting. In _Hamlet_,
as every reader will remember, the dramatist points out the perennial
defects of the actor, and shows how they may and must be corrected. He
did all he could for the Elizabethan playgoer in the way of insisting
that the art of acting must be studied seriously, and that the
dramatist's words must reach the ears of the audience, clearly and
intelligibly enunciated.

"Speak the speech, I pray you," he tells the actor, "as I pronounce 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.

"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. O! 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
Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted
and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made
men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably."

The player amiably responds: "I hope we have reformed that
indifferently with us." Shakespeare in the person of Hamlet retorts in
a tone of some impatience: "O! reform it altogether. And let those
that play y