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Acting
tips from the bard himself…
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 had 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 your passion, you must
acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, 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 ...
... 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 over-
done, or come tardy off, though it make the unskillful laugh, cannot but
make the judicious grieve ... (Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2)
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