Ecclesiastes xii. 5. Man goeth to his long home, And the mourners go about the streets. Job iii. 17. There the wicked cease from troubling, Habakkuk iii. 17. Although the fig tree shall not blossom, Though the labour of the olive tree shall fail Though the flock shall be cut off from the fold I will joy in the God of my salvation! Philippians iv. 8. Whatsoever things are true, Whatsoever things are pure, Whatsoever things are lovely, Whatsoever things are of good report If there be any virtue, If there be any praise, Think on these things. And what you have learned and received and heard Those things do ye. T. MARSHALL. [In Percy's Reliques.] The sturdy rock for all his strength The stately stag, that seems so stout, Is caught at length in fowler's net; Yea, man himself, unto whose will Doth fade at length and fall away : There is nothing, but time doth waste The heavens, the earth, consume at last. But Virtue sits triumphing still Upon the throne of glorious fame Though spiteful Death man's body kill, Yet hurts he not his virtuous name; By life or death, whatso betides, The state of virtue never slides. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. ["Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild."-Milton's L'Allegro.] HAMLET ON HIS FATHER. Act I. Scene 2. He was a man, take him for all in all, HAMLET'S SOLILOQUY Act III. Scene 1. To be, or not to be, that is the question :- And, by opposing, end them?-To die,-to sleep,-- Must give us pause: there's the respect, That makes calamity of so long life : For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The undiscovered country, from whose bourn Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; HAMLET TO THE PLAYERS. Act III. Scene 2. 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 towncrier 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) the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious periwigpated 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-hereds 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'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 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 the which, one must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre 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. 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 meantime, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that's villainous; and shews a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. |