, but use all gently; for in the very
torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you
must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it
offends me to the soul to see 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 could have such a fellow whipp'd
for o'erdoing Termagant. It out-herods Herod. Pray you, avoid it.

_First Player._ I warrant your honor.

_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, tho it make the unskilful laugh, can not
but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must, in
your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theater of others. 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.

_First Player._ I hope we have reform'd that indifferently with us,
sir.

_Hamlet._ O, reform it altogether. 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 tho in the mean time some necessary question of the play be
then to be considered. That's villainous, and shows a most pitiful
ambition in the Fool that uses it. Go, make you ready.

[_Exeunt Players._

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 54: From "Julius Caesar," Act III, Sc. ii.]

[Footnote 55: From "The Merchant of Venice." Act III, Sc. ii.]

[Footnote 56: From "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark," Act III, Sc. ii.]

BEN JONSON

Born in 1573; died in 1637; became a player in 1597; his
first play, "Everyman in His Humor," performed a